When progress was reported last night I had made some effort to deal with the question of the valution for reconstruction and for the extension of the time for making these grants retrospective. I had very nearly concluded but there are some two or three points which I still wish to say a few words on. Throughout the country, and in the cities, there are public utility societies who make application for people who propose to build houses and a larger sum is payable to them than to private individuals. For the last five or six years it has been brought to my notice that some of these societies are not all they should be.
Housing (Amendment) Bill, 1947—Second Stage (Resumed).
Hear, hear!
It has been brought to my notice that some societies have failed to pay over the sums received from the Department to the persons who build the houses in a reasonable time. I believe there are reasons in some cases why that has happened. I am aware that there is a large number of societies who have done excellent work but I want the Minister to take official notice of the societies who are not discharging their duties properly. I have in mind one society and I am sure the Minister can find in his Department that there are some others. In the particular case of which I am aware the grant is outstanding for two years. The house is finished almost two years and the money has not yet been paid. Apparently the applicant himself can make a fresh application but if he does so he immediately loses a sum of £10. Where a case such as that arises the Minister should regard the personal applicant in the same light as he would regard the public utility society and the full grant should be paid to that person. I do not wish to refer to the matter any further. I only want to make it clear that when I am referring to public utility societies I am not referring to the public utility society nearest to me, namely, the one in the County of Longford. I want to say positively that when I am speaking of public utility societies I am not referring to that particular one and the Minister is, therefore, in a position to make his own investigations in connection with my assertion. The point I want to stress is that the applicant should not suffer because of the failure of the society to attend to his rights.
In Section 30 I notice that where a cottage has been built under the Labourers Acts and is let to a tenant who is an agricultural labourer within the meaning of the said Acts because
(a) he is normally engaged in doing agricultural work on the land of a relative and
(b) he resided with that relative when he applied for, or became tenant of, such cottage,
such council shall not prepare a purchase scheme under the Labourers Act, 1936 (No. 24 of 1936), in relation to such cottage. I do not see any reason why that should be done. There is no reason in the world why that person for whom the cottage is built should not get the benefit of that Act and become the owner of his cottage the same as anybody else. The fact that he is a farmer's son is no reason why he should be debarred. First of all, it is given to him because he is a farmer's son but, because he is a farmer's son, he cannot become the owner of the cottage as laid down in the Labourers Act of 1936. The Minister is cutting the buttons off the gift when he does that sort of thing. He should encourage that type of housing as much as any other type. I would ask him to reconsider that matter. Of course, Sir, it is more properly a matter for the Committee Stage rather than for a speech on the Second Reading, but as a principle is involved I am raising the point now.
I do not know why the public utility society should get a grant of £10 more for the building of a house than the private individual, the farmer or the agricultural labourer, who builds it himself. I presume that the expectation of the Minister is that when this public utility society applies for the grant the intention is that they build the house themselves or that they give a loan or by some method assist the person in the building of the house. Generally speaking, in the rural districts the only assistance they give is to fill up the forms and lift a £1 off the fellow. As I understand it, if the Friendly Societies Act applies it simply means that every person who paid £1 to that society automatically becomes liable for the liabilities of that society. The Minister should urge his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to have these various public utility societies who are failing in their duty struck off the register. In that way we will get rid of that dud timber, as it were, that is hanging upon the housing scheme.
I want to compliment and congratulate the Minister upon the improvement he has made under this Bill. I have only one regret and that is that the Bill does not go far enough. I urge him to impress upon all and sundry the necessity for and the advantages of proper sanitary arrangements and amenities to their new homes, and that every new house built in the future should have the same amenities as are available in those built in the city. It should be compulsory that every house built in rural areas provide the amenities that are obligatory in the city. If anybody proposes to build a house in the city he will not be allowed to do so unless it comes up to a certain standard. As I have already said, the Land Commission, the local authorities and so forth, still persist in building houses which are obsolete in design.
Tá fáilte agus fior-caoin fáilte roimh an mBille seo ní hamháin 'sa Dáil seo ach ar fud na tíre uile. D'á fheabhas a bhí Act, 1932, in a ré féin, tá an Bille seo seacht n-uaire níos fearr ó gach aon gbné de agus tá moladh agus buidheachas na Dála agus an phobail tuilte ag an Aire i dtaobh í a thabhairt isteach agus na tairgsintí breaghtha atá innti do chur ós ár gcomhair. Tá suil agam nach fada go mbeidh an Bille i bhfeidhm agus go mbeidh tairgsintí an Bille le fagháil ag an bpobal i gcoitchinn. Tá suim fé leith agam ins an méid de'n Bhille a bhaineann le tighthe níos fearr do chur ar fagháil do mhuinntir na tuaithe. D'á fheabhas é an Bille tá phoinntí airighthe innti go mba mhaith liomsa tagairt daobhtha féachaint an féidir socrú níos fearr a dhéanamh ná mar atá innti cheana féin.
Some reference has already been made by other speakers to the principal points to which I wish to refer. But, before I refer to that, I would like to say how intrigued I was by the attitude of Deputy Mulcahy, who spoke after the Minister had made his introductory statement. It reminded me of the sinner who left his repentance too late. If we had been depending on Deputy Mulcahy during his period of office as Minister for Local Government to handle the housing situation or to cope with the dearth of houses that then existed, I am afraid the people would never have had an opportunity of doing anything to improve the housing situation for themselves.
You have had 15 years since.
The attitude adopted by Deputy Mulcahy here yesterday—I did not hear very much of him—struck me as being very funny. At any rate, the less Deputy Mulcahy says about housing, in view of his own record, the better for the country and the wiser for himself.
As regards the proposals in this Bill, there are a few that I would like to see changed in the interests of the people whom it is intended to benefit. There is a number of people who have had the hard luck not to wait for the introduction of this Bill to improve their housing conditions. In rural areas, particularly, a number of new houses for farmers and agricultural labourers are already in course of construction and the grants that will be available in these cases are the grants that operated since the passing of the 1932 Act. I would like—and I think there is a very good case for the suggestion— that in the case of houses that were in course of construction when this Bill was introduced the Minister should consider making the financial provisions of this Bill available. There is a very good and reasonable case for that.
It would be very unfortunate that people who set out within the past year or so to improve their housing conditions and to provide better houses for their families, who have encountered all the difficulties and shortages and scarcities that existed in regard to housing materials, and whose building operations were held up, should have to be satisfied with a grant at the old rate whereas people who start after the 1st November of this year can have a grant at the new rate. I would ask the Minister very specially to consider these cases.
The same would apply in regard to reconstruction grants in the case of houses that were in course of reconstruction before this Bill was introduced. The same case can be made for that type of house as can be made for the new houses that were in course of erection. The reconstruction grant has always been available for agricultural labourers and the definition of an agricultural labourer, as I understand it, is pretty wide but I do not think it is wide enough yet to cover all the cases in rural areas that should be allowed to benefit by these provisions. I have come across cases in dealing with applications for housing grants of people who could not qualify because they could not be classed as either small farmers or agricultural labourers but who lived in rural areas. I have known a couple of cases of teachers with large families living in small houses, who wished to reconstruct and who could not get a grant. I have known cases of small country and village shops which, for various reasons, could not qualify for a grant and I have seen the occupants of establishments like post offices, in recent years, which could not qualify for a grant because it was suggested that the sub-postmaster or subpostmistress, as the case might be, was not working for hire in a rural area, simply because he or she was getting a small annual remuneration from the State.
As far as rural applications are concerned, I think the provisions with regard to reconstruction grants should be made available in all those types of cases. They need the grants and facilities that will be available under this Bill just as badly as those who are provided for. Of course, I know quite well that, no matter how well we scrutinise a measure like this here, even with all the care in the world and with all the efforts that can be made to bring every section and class that one can think of within its ambit, after the Bill becomes law there will be a hard case here and there which is not provided for. I do not know how that can be surmounted. It is my experience with regard to nearly all the legislation we pass here from time to time.
There is another aspect of the Bill in which, from a rural point of view, I am very interested also, that is, the provision for special grants for the installation of running water and sanitary accommodation in rural houses. As I understand the Bill, and I think it is the correct interpretation, that grant will be available only in the case of new houses which are built under the ambit of this Bill. I do not see why such a provision would not also apply to houses in rural areas—farm houses and other houses—which do not need reconstruction, but which would qualify for a reconstruction grant. That could be a house of a person whose valuation was over the £35 limit or a house of a good type that did not need reconstruction. I do not see why the special grant for the installation of running water and a sanitary system would not be made available in these cases. There is an outstanding case for that.
We propose, under the auspices of the Electricity Supply Board, to have rural electrification of the entire country and electric light and other amenities provided by electricity will be available for all rural houses. I do not see why the section of the Bill which provides for a grant for the installation of water and sanitary arrangements in the case of houses built under the Bill should not also apply to houses of the type I have mentioned. Of course, I know the Minister will have to go to the Department of Finance and that he will have a difficult job there but I think the Minister should consult the Minister for Finance and have that aspect of this Housing Bill carefully and sympathetically examined.
People have varying views with regard to the operations of public utility societies but I think the encouragement of public utility societies is a good thing. I think that they are good and that the work they are doing for their members is valuable work and should be continued and extended. The Bill, on the whole, is a comprehensive measure and the Minister deserves the thanks and congratulations of the country for having introduced it. I hope he will see his way to consider the points I have brought to his attention in regard to houses in course of erection or reconstruction and in regard to grants for running water and sanitary arrangements in country houses.
From the title of this Bill, Housing (Amendment) Bill, I suppose there is no measure that could come before us which would command a greater amount of support from all quarters. I do not know of any Deputy who is opposed to housing or to the utmost being done to solve the housing problem. It is a big problem with many sides. There are some extraordinary provisions in this Bill, some of which are more calculated to retard housing than to assist it. I am wondering what the Government's contribution is, when you consider that this Bill has been brought in and, of course, there is the ordinary financial provision for new grants to replace those which have more or less expired.
The Minister says the housing problem is composed of shortages of labour and shortages of materials. That is a very good definition and one begins to wonder what his contribution is to solve either of those problems. Take the shortage of labour. I think there is probably not very much shortage of unskilled labour for housing. The skilled trades have been an attraction across the water and in the North during the emergency period, by the reason of the dearth of materials here and the high wages there. One wonders what the Government intend to do or if they contemplate any effort to increase the supply of labour. Most people who are in touch with labour find that skilled labourers in other centres are highly critical before they come back here. They want to know if they can get housing accommodation and what the income-tax is and they have various other problems like that which are vexing the mind of the person who has to balance his family budget. That is in regard to bringing back labour.
I do not think the Government have done anything towards increasing the rate of recruitment to the skilled trades, a rate which has been built up slowly and gradually over a number of years by arrangements between employers. The rate of recruitment was governed by much more normal times than we are living in now. One wonders whether the Government has given any thought to increasing the supply of labour that goes to the skilled trades in two or three years. They would be very valuable certainly towards building these houses, where there is not the same amount of skill necessary as there was in former times when a house was much more ornate than it is at present. I do not think the Minister has mentioned that question of the supply of labour.
I do not say that it has not some relevance here now, but would not the supply of labour be a question for the Minister for Industry and Commerce?
The Minister mentioned that the problem was made up of labour and supplies.
But who would look after the supply of labour? Would it be this Minister or the Minister for Industry and Commerce?
I hope the Government is looking after it, that it is not left to the individual efforts of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I would be glad to hear from the Minister if there is any appreciation of the fact that, if we want to get increased labour, there will have to be an increased supply going in.
The Minister seemed to hint that everything had been prepared up and down the country for housing. He read out figures of the number of sites which had been prepared, and so on. I cannot check up on that, but I am a Dublin Deputy and I think I am correct in saying that the whole North County of Dublin is short of a water supply. I live in the Borough of Dún Laoghaire, which is very badly in need of a sewage system, as the sewage disposal is inadequate. The question has been under review for a number of years, but I do not know why it could not have been settled during the war period and made ready. I am mentioning it merely to show that the Government appear to be waking up to the position that a number of these details should have been prepared long ago and are really in arrears.
As regards the supply of houses, the problem is made up of a number of items. The Minister said we were short of timber. Of course, timber takes a long time to get in here, but I do not think it is in short supply. If you spoke to any timber merchant in Dublin or Cork he would say: "Well, there is a lot of timber on the quays and in my yard and I would like to see it going out faster. Of course, I have not got the stock I had in pre-war days, but certainly there is a lot of timber."
I merely mention that to show that, possibly, if there was a spurt to-morrow the position might be entirely reversed, and we might hear that it was a shortage of timber that was really holding up the supply of houses. Of course, each item in a building has its importance and has to be supplied at the right time. The Minister, I think, said that he had advised all the local authorities to get in supplies of any materials they could for their housing schemes. That led to this position across the water, that they found that while one district had labour and no materials another district had materials and no labour.
There is another point I would like to stress though, really, it is a thing that I do not understand. I am speaking as one who has his eyes on Dublin and on Dublin County. The Minister seems to consider certain people as people who are providing houses for the working classes. He also mentioned houses for the black-coated workers. I take it that the local authorities are providing houses for the very poorest section in the community and that they have first call on all materials, etc. I think that is a very proper provision.
We come then to the utility societies, and these, I take it, are building houses for a class that might accurately be described as the one composed of black-coated workers. There is a third class of persons in this Bill and those in it seem to be treated like outlaws— the speculative builders who build houses on the chance of being able to sell them. The Minister seems to think that there is an enormous number of people who are going to build houses themselves and for themselves. As I have said, I disclaim any special knowledge of the country generally, but I would say that what I have just mentioned is a very rare thing either in Dublin or in Dublin County. The black-coated workers and, possibly, a class somewhat above them, have been content in the past with going around and looking at what the speculative builder is providing. He may be selling houses of a certain size for a certain price. If he finds that a particular type of house is selling like hot cakes he proceeds to build as many of them as he can. If they are not selling well he tries to find out what the difficulty is. He interviews prospective buyers. One person may say that he would like another room in the house. The builder tells him that would be so much extra, but adds that when he is building the next block of houses he will include one for him and so they agree on a price.
The Minister seems to think that houses are far too dear. Probably they are, but the only thing that will bring down prices is the provision of more houses and not strangling regulations or treating some people as if they did not exist. I wonder what would have happened in this country if the speculative and other builders had not continued to build at a slow rate during the difficult times through which we have passed, or if they had neglected to acquire supplies of building materials whenever they could get them: in other words, if they had not tried to keep together the skeleton organisation which could be enlarged when times got more easy and labour and materials were available? I think the Minister seems to enter on housing in fits and starts and that everybody who was engaged in it when the Minister had not an eye on building seems to be treated as if they did not exist.
I would like to make a plea for a realistic approach to this housing problem. It is not going to be solved by private individuals putting up their own houses. That might have been possible in the past, but in my opinion the private individual in the City or County of Dublin who, at the present time, endeavours to put up a house in which he intends to live himself might very easily have a very unfortunate experience. I would appeal to the Minister to put everybody on an equal footing: to see how far everybody can be mobilised on house production instead of making regulations which may interrupt the ordinary ebb and flow so far as the provision of houses is concerned. Between the two big wars I think the only things that were not in free supply were houses. At the end of the first world war, if a person wanted an overcoat and could not get it he had not to wait very long until he could procure one, if he had the price of it. The policy of trying to keep the classes of the community in various camps in relation to price, rent, controlled houses and various other regulations all tends to slow down the production and distribution of houses.
The Minister says he is anxious to bring back the class of people who built houses for renting. I suppose certain utility societies can do that, but they will require an extraordinary command of capital to be able to finance the letting of houses. Hitherto, the black-coated worker has seemed to favour purchasing his own house, and I want to suggest to the Minister that there is an enormous field which has been untouched in leaving people to select the type of house they desire, within certain limits—neither a dog kennel nor a palace—and assisting them to purchase these houses. It has been shown that what most people who set out to purchase a house lack is a margin. If a house is available at £2,000, they can probably raise £1,200 or £1,300, and if they could get the rest easily, they would be able to finance their own purchase of houses.
The State loses money on every house put up, every house with which it has anything to do, and I should like to bring the Minister's mind back to the Acquisition of Small Dwellings Act between the two wars. There never was enough money allocated to finance the grants for these small dwellings. The door remained open for about six months, during which time people could get grants for this purpose, and then the money was exhausted and the door was closed. If sufficient money had been allocated in that period, we would have gone a long way towards solving the housing problem. I hold, rightly or wrongly, that anybody who builds a house in an area in which houses are required is helping to solve the housing problem. There are houses which are obsolescent. There are a number of people, like the very poor, who have no other houses to go to, and I agree that the Government should go ahead on behalf of these people as fast as they can, but there are other types of tenant living in houses of which they do not approve, tenants who are looking for houses which would suit them better. They have the money and all they want is the opportunity to move into the new house.
I suppose the Minister will ask me: "What will that do for the very poor?" I will tell him what, in my opinion, it will do. It will hasten the obsolescence of a number of houses which have outlived their usefulness for the better class sections of the community. Those could be let, and have been let in the past. They have served their purpose for ten, 20 or 30 years and are then pulled down. I hold that the Government's approach to the housing problem in this city and in the country has been too narrow. They do not seem to want the assistance of everybody connected with the industry and I hold that in this Bill they are shutting out a certain section of the community who probably have organised machinery for dealing with the provision of houses. It would be a nice commentary on the Government's desire for increased housing if a number of the people with administrative ability and skeleton organisation migrated across the water after the skilled labour. Remember that it is not that these people could not do well across the water. At present there is an insatiable demand—and it is having its effect here—for building of all sorts in the countries around us.
The Government and some Deputies here are concerned as to how certain types of building are getting on so fast, in spite of the fact that they are handicapped in the matter of priority of materials. Building is not a static idea. The best type of house for all ages, all countries and all climes requires ingenuity and never so much ingenuity as to-day. There are substitute materials and methods which are considered dear and which in many cases are cheaper. If it were not for a number of these people, of whom the Government and the Minister think so little, having blazed the trail in the adoption of new methods, we would have been standing still altogether. I conclude by appealing to the Minister to open the door with regard to this housing question and get in everybody who can lend a hand.
There are just a few matters connected with this Bill to which I would like to draw attention. The introduction of a housing Bill in the Dáil is bound to give rise to a good deal of discussion and to excite a good deal of controversy. Practically everybody has a common interest in this matter and I was somewhat disappointed yesterday at the way in which the Leader of the Opposition treated the introduction of this Housing Bill. However, I suppose he has big problems on his mind at the moment and he feels worried. For that reason, we must forgive him for his attitude on this Housing Bill.
The Bill to my mind will give a much needed fillip to the construction of houses in the country. A great number of new houses are required. Yesterday the Minister mentioned some thousands of houses. For the last 20 years this country has been endeavouring to make up the leeway of a century in the matter of housing. Prior to 20 years ago the Government of this country showed little interest in the housing of its people with the result that a very big burden has been thrown upon the present generation. In the seven or eight years prior to the war great progress had been made. Since 1939 little or nothing has been done owing to circumstances outside our own control. We had not supplies. We had no materials. We had a certain amount of skilled labour, but not enough.
There are certain provisions in this Bill which call for some comment. Section 7 of the Bill makes provision for the control of certain premises. I think the principle involved there is a good one, but I would like to suggest to the Minister that it should be a reserved function. I think it is important that the provisions of both Section 7 and Section 8 should be reserved functions and I can see no reason why they should not be
These sections, when they pass into legislation, are bound to give rise to a good deal of controversy and it is for that reason that I suggest to the Minister now that these should be reserved functions. There are other functions which I think equally well could also be reserved. If the local authorities had more liberty they would be in a position to put more drive into housing. I would ask the Minister to consider that aspect before this Bill finally goes through the House. All that is really needed in order to provide houses is a plentiful supply of materials and skilled labour together with sufficient finances to utilise that equipment and organise that labour. I understand that an increasing amount of materials is becoming available, but it is still not sufficient to meet our needs. Within the last few weeks I have seen building held up for lack of cement. That is one item which is in short supply but I suppose that before very long it will be in full supply again.
The amount of skilled labour is not nearly sufficient. I would suggest to the Minister that something more will have to be done to provide skilled labour in the country. I would suggest that in order to attract such labour grants should be made available to apprentices and tradesmen. Something like that will have to be done to ensure a sufficient supply of skilled labour to carry out our big housing programme. Nothing worth while can be done in a very short time so far as housing is concerned. It takes five to ten years to measure output. It takes a year, or two, to acquire land. It is inevitable that there must be some delay in acquiring sites, getting contracts and going through all the necessary preliminaries. The country was just getting into its stride when war broke out. It had taken the country some years to get into its stride and it will take it some years again now. But I do suggest that some encouragement should be given to young men in the country to become skilled tradesmen. I am sure if the Government could guarantee full employment to those young men for a certain number of years in the building trade that would go a long way towards solving our present difficulty.
I notice that the Minister made no alteration in the provisions of the 1932 Act in regard to the subsidy payable to local authorities. I take it that he intends to use the Transition Fund to balance things up but I would suggest that some alteration should have been made in the 1932 Act in regard to finance. The local authorities who provide labourers cottages are paid on an estimated value of £300 per house. That £300 has become well over £600 at the moment. The Transition Fund is all right in its own way but it does slow up housing production. I would suggest to the Minister that he should increase that £300 to £500, or £600 or £700 and pay a subsidy on the actual average cost of rural housing at the present time. That would expedite the production of such houses because every added obstacle and every new regulation are responsible for a certain amount of delay.
The grants given to private persons and public utility societies are a definite improvement. They have been increased from £40 to £80 and the valuation has been increased from £25 to £35. I would suggest to the Minister that therein lies a greater impetus towards providing more habitable houses than under the large grants provided under the Second Schedule. Year by year thousands of medium-sized houses are getting into disrepair. There are far more dwellings falling into disrepair and becoming uninhabitable each year than can possibly be replaced by the building of new houses.
I put it to the Minister that we should give greater financial encouragement in the case of the reconstruction grants. I think that would go further to solve the problem than anything else, because if you provide 20,000 extra houses in the year and 20,000 others have become uninhabitable you have notadded anything to the pool of houses available. That was apparent during the boom building period between 1932 and 1939. For every house that was built, another had to be taken down or had fallen into disrepair and nothing was added to the pool of houses available at that time. That was apparent all over the country, but it was much more apparent in the city. Unless the existing houses are maintained 20 years' intensive building will not add anything to the pool of houses available. I suggest to the Minister that he should seriously consider whether the £80 grant should not be increased and also the valuation. In some areas in the West a valuation of £35 would be very high, but in Leinster a valuation of £35 would only mean a small holding. I think the same thing applies to Munster. I suggest that the grant should be increased and that the valuation should also be increased at least to £50.
Sections 16 and 17 provide for a new principle in housing so far as I know. The sections make it compulsory on local authorities to provide annual grants for persons undertaking to build houses for letting. I take it that that applies to a greater extent to urban authorities than to rural authorities. Personally, I do not think it is fair to local authorities to ask them to subsidise housing. They are subsidising housing to a very great extent at present as regards the houses they have already provided. The burden on local authorities for the provision of houses is already very heavy. I can see no reason why the State should not undertake the full cost of subsidising these houses that may be provided under Sections 16 and 17. It is a new burden on the local authorities, and I am afraid you will not get very many houses erected under these two sections.
Section 25 provides for the making of regulations for letting of these houses and Section 31 also makes provision for the making of regulations. I am wondering if these sections do not cut across one another to a certain extent. Rather different types of people will be housed under them, but I suggest to the Minister that there may be some difficulty in separating these two sections, because the same local authority may be operating both sections. The provision in Section 31, under which cottages erected in rural areas are to be confined to agricultural workers, is long overdue, because what was happening in rural areas was very bad. Originally labourers cottages were erected to house agricultural workers. The term "agricultural worker" has been so widened that in recent years it has been found, by the operation of the regulations under the 1932 Act, that almost anybody living in a rural area, even people moving into these areas from towns, became qualified for these cottages. The principle laid down in paragraph (a) of sub-section (2) is absolutely necessary and I hope it will be operated as laid down there, because you will find that people occupying cottages on land given by farmers are not working for farmers at all. When this section comes into operation, I am sure it will be a great improvement.
There is one other matter to which I wish to call attention, namely, that the increased grants will only be provided for houses built by individuals after November, 1947. I suggest to the Minister that that is grossly unfair. I have in mind two or three people who have been trying to erect houses for themselves for the last two years, but financial difficulties have prevented them from completing these houses. I think the Minister should make that provision retrospective to cover at least one year. If he does that, he will be helping a fairly numerous class of people who were compelled to undertake the erection of houses for themselves because they had no means of getting a house otherwise.
You have numbers of people trying to build houses at present who are unable to complete them. That aspect of the case should be taken into consideration by the Minister, because it is important that houses should be well-built so that the grants given will not be wasted. If, for some reason, people are unable to complete a house properly, they will be inclined to scamp the work and the result will be that in a few years they will be looking for a reconstruction grant. I believe this is a good Bill and that it will help towards a solution of the problem if the matter is tackled by local authorities and private individuals in the spirit in which the Bill has been introduced. It is a big step in the right direction and should go far to improve conditions.
Listening to some speakers in this debate last evening, one would get the impression that no thought was given to this problem which affects the country districts and which has led to such shocking living conditions in most of our towns and cities. No serious attempt was made to deal with this problem until the Housing Act of 1932 was passed. Under the Act, 120,000 houses were built or reconstructed. The work was going on apace until the war intervened and cut off our requirements in building materials and equipment and brought the campaign practically to a standstill. Now that conditions are coming back to normal and that the Government, as evidenced by this new Bill, are showing their concern for the housing needs of the people and their determination to solve the problem as expeditiously as possible, one would expect, not destructive criticism but something helpful and constructive. The most serious aspect of the housing problem is presented by the necessity for the clearance of slum areas. The work of slum clearance has fallen very much into arrears and if we are even to come to grips with that problem building must be greatly accelerated. From that point of view alone, this Bill should be warmly welcomed and every help should be forthcoming to expedite the carrying out of the programme in every possible way.
I do not intervene in the debate merely to criticism the attitude of the Opposition. On going through the Bill, I noticed a few points which I thought might be worthy of the Minister's reconsideration with a view to their readjustment. The first point is one to which reference has already been made by three or four other Deputies and I think I might be excused if I add my voice to theirs in appealing to the Minister for reconsideration of this matter. The grants, with one exception, will be payable only in respect of houses begun after the 1st November, 1947, and completed by the 1st April, 1950, the exception being in the case of houses built for letting purposes, the commencing date for which is the 1st November, 1945. I do not know why people building houses for letting should receive special consideration and I consider the existing provision rather unfortunate and rather hard luck on those people who have built houses in the last 12 months because undoubtedly such people would have deferred the building of their houses had they anticipated the introduction of this Bill with its improved scheme of grants. They would have deferred building in order that they might benefit by the new scheme of grants. If this section were made retrospective to include people who started to build subsequent to the 1st January, 1947, of whom I am sure there are not very many—I differ from Deputy Allen there—the extra demand on the Treasury would not be so very great.
Deputy Allen took the Chair.
There are two kinds of grants, a higher and a lower, in respect of each type of house, the higher grant being for a house where a piped water supply and sewerage are available and the lower grant being in respect of the house where such facilities are not available. Let us take the house in the country where there is no piped water supply, where the water is supplied by means of a pump or a well and where the sewerage would be taken into a septic tank, fully complying with the public health requirements. It is not clear from the Bill whether such houses would be entitled to the higher grant and in my opinion an announcement from the Minister to clarify the situation would be welcome.
With regard to the construction of the house, it must conform to certain definite standards. I believe the conditions laid down are satisfactory enough in the case of the three-roomed or four-roomed house but in regard to the house with five rooms or over, I have heard several complaints from the classes of people for whom such houses would be built or who would be building these houses themselves for their own occupation. I refer to people such as bank clerks, local government officials, teachers, civil servants, shop assistants, etc. I have heard complaints with regard to the upper limit of the floor space of these houses which must not exceed 1,250 square feet. It is the general opinion that no decent house with a bathroom and lavatory can be built to conform to such limited floor space. A slight alteration by increasing the limit of the floor space, say to 2,000 square feet, would not add greatly to the cost of the house and would satisfy the requirements of the classes of persons to whom I have referred.
With regard to the three-roomed or four-roomed house built mainly for the working classes, even if fuel were available in abundance, these people could not afford to heat their houses properly. The provision of cavity walls which would eliminate dampness would be a great asset and would make for the greater comfort and the better health of the occupants. I think also that it would be a great advantage to the occupants of these houses if something more substantial in the way of out-houses were provided to accommodate all the articles which require to be housed in such cases, such as garden implements, garden produce, turf, timber, coal, bicycles and numerous other articles. The present position is that you have many unsightly adjuncts of every conceivable size, shape and colour, built of all sorts of materials from a flattened-out tar barrel to the crudest piece of timber or galvanised iron, presenting an appearance that is certainly neither artistic nor picturesque. Some provision in the way of suitable out-houses would certainly be a great improvement.
I do not in the least subscribe to the view of some of the Opposition Deputies that to permit aliens to come in here to build houses and to settle down would lead to a re-conquest of Ireland. Such a suggestion is a very poor tribute to the intelligence and the national spirit of the Irish people. It is inconceivable that 99 per cent. of the people could be absorbed, dominated and brought into subjection by the one per cent. who would come in, all of whom are not aliens either. However, I would not make it too easy for these people to come in and settle down here. Recently, a property purchase tax of 25 per cent. was imposed upon them. If they desire to come in here, I would not allow them to circumvent the payment of that tax by acquiring sites for building. They should not be granted facilities to do so. Steps might be taken to withhold permits from them to build or not to release materials to them which will be in short supply for some time to come and which should be retained entirely for the needs of our own people.
The last point which I wish to make, housing being such a vital matter, is that nothing should be left undone to ensure the smooth and expeditious carrying out of this programme. There are at present 11 temporary housing inspectors. They were considered by the Civil Service Commissioners to be the best available experts some 12 or 13 years ago. With the experience they have gained since, it would be hard now to get better experts or advisers, particularly as engineering and architectural graduates have had, during the past five or six years, little or no experience of housing. It is obvious that the present housing programme cannot be completed in the lifetime of the existing housing inspectors and, therefore, there is a definite need for their establishment and for the recruitment of additional temporary men under these established officers. It is a great advantage to the housing section of the Department to have a tried and efficient staff of housing inspectors who will see that the work in the future will be carried out in an efficient manner, and who will insist that the progress and improvement in design and construction which has been apparent since 1932 up to the present time be maintained.
The first thing that strikes one about this Bill is that it was drafted fairly hastily. I am referring to the fact that there are so many amendments of previous Housing Acts included in it.
Does the Deputy think that can be done hastily?
I think the Bill was drafted hastily and that the Minister did not think it worth while to go to the trouble——
The Deputy ought at least to be honest with himself if he is not honest with anybody else.
Perhaps it might suit the Minister to talk about honesty. My point is that the Minister might have followed up the line taken by the Government within the past couple of years by consolidating all previous legislation into one suitable measure. That was done in the case of the Public Health Act and several other Acts. Legislation by reference is very handy, but it is not so easy when people find they have to go back on Housing Acts from 1892 onwards. In a fairly comprehensive measure of this kind—and it is a comprehensive and a good measure—I think the Minister ought to have repealed all the old Acts and embodied the whole lot in one readable measure for the benefit of the House, the country in general and those whose business it will be to refer to these Acts. We have sections 18 to 27 and several other sections referring us back to Acts passed 30 or 40 years ago.
The Bill is a good one; there is practically nothing to be said against it, but a few improvements could be suggested. One thing that strikes me as peculiar is the difference in the amount of grants set out in the Second Schedule. There is a difference of £50 between houses where there is a piped water supply available and houses where there is no water supply. I cannot understand that and the Minister did not explain it. A higher grant will be paid for houses erected in towns and other areas where there is a piped water supply. I would like to point out to the Minister, as I did to the Minister for Lands on another occasion, that the country house needs running water just as much as any town house. Think of the drudgery and slavery, particularly for the womenfolk in a country house. I believe that has contributed more than anything else towards making people discontented in rural Ireland.
In country districts where houses are being erected and where a grant is made under the provisions of this Bill, the specification should include a sizeable water tank to catch the water from the roof. Every country house should have a hot water supply. That would mean a vast saving in fuel and a saving in labour, particularly for the womenfolk. The present method consists of carrying water by hand from wells that in many cases are situated a considerable distance away. The practice in the country is to hang pots over the open fire. The people have to put down big blazing fires in order to get the water boiling. That happens many times during the day in every country house. It is quite a common thing to see the women, or the girls or boys, weighted down carrying water from the wells.
Roof water could be diverted to a concrete tank, which could be erected at a small additional cost. A boiler could be installed at the back of the kitchen fire and that would supply hot water to a sink, thus avoiding the present type of slavery, and also saving fuel. It is astonishing the amount of turf and timber used in a country house to boil water. With a boiler in the fireplace the burden of kitchen work would be lightened considerably and this could be done with very little expense. The heating systems available nowadays are trouble-free for at last 20 or 30 years.
I ask the Minister seriously to consider removing the difference in the grant. For a three-roomed house in an area where there is a water supply the grant is £175, as against £125 where there is no water supply. In a five-roomed house the grant is £275 as against £225. The £50 would make a tremendous difference. In rural districts no housing plan should be sanctioned that does not include an outside tank, hot water at least in the kitchen and a bathroom and lavatory.
You will have few new houses for farmers if you keep to that idea.
Deputy Blowick is not sincere—he is only play-acting.
These things could be installed in any country house if the Minister would only equalise those grants.
What would you do on a ten-or 15-acre farm?
Deputy Blowick has three farms.
What does the size matter? I would like to ask the Deputy one question, through the Chair.
Acting-Chairman
If the Deputy addressed the Chair it would be better.
Through the Chair, what difference does the size of the farm make or whether it is five acres or 50 acres if we are living in a civilised age? This is 1947, and what is wrong with having a bathroom and a lavatory in every house?
Has not the farmer to pay for it?
And he is willing to pay for it.
Is he willing?
This Bill seeks to give £50 more for houses where there is a piped water supply available. Why not leave it at the same figure and where a piped water supply is not available tank the roof water? A concrete tank holding a couple of thousand of gallons does not cost more than £10 or £12. I know what I am speaking about because I built the like. Farmers have built tanks like this without any grant except a few pounds from the Farm Improvements Scheme. You could have a pipe from the tank to the fireplace and a pipe from the fireplace at least to the kitchen sink if not all over the house.
The country man wants his open fire.
You will not interfere with the open fire. You would only be making use of the fire which is there in any case. I do not see what is wrong with specifying that every country house should have a bathroom and a lavatory. People in the country want a wash and look forward to it as much as any other kind of people.
What is to prevent them having it under this Bill?
In my opinion——
Your opinion does not count.
The Minister is aware that the cost of labour and the cost of building materials have both gone up. The grant of £250 is fairly good but the small farmer will have to supplement it pretty well in order to have any kind of a decent house. The £50 lopped off the country areas should be used as I propose. People in the country want proper sanitary accommodation. It is absolutely essential, and if we are ever going to make a start now is the time when the Bill is going through the House. I asked the Minister for Lands two years ago that the Land Commission should specify that they should be included in houses which they would build. He gave an answer at the time from which it would appear that there are two different classes of people, one class living in the towns who are entitled to certain things, and the other living in the country who are a lower class and who do not need these things. That was the attitude the Minister for Lands took on this situation.
Assuming that this Bill is passed into law, grants will be given to increase the number of houses in towns. We hear a good deal about the City of Dublin and Deputies have put up a case for it. We know what is happening here, that young people wishing to get married are held up, and if they do get married they are charged rents for a two or three-roomed flat of about £2 a week. As a result the wages of the husband are not sufficient to pay rent and to live, and very often we hear of young couples being separated because of the exorbitant rent. The one way to meet that situation is to make houses so plentiful that the rents will not be so high. It is the very same thing in the provincial towns. There is serious overcrowding and I am afraid that tuberculosis is the result of the overcrowding in many cases.
Many people have houses in the course of erection or which are about to be completed under grants from the Local Government Department under the previous Act. I think that this Bill should be made retrospective to cover those houses, at least, which are not yet completed. If an increased grant is necessary to-day it was just as necessary last March or April or last January because the cost of building materials has not increased at all since last spring. A good many of the people who tried to build a house with the £80 grant have gone into debt and the Bill should be made retrospective where the houses are not completed or where the families have not yet taken up occupation. The grant available up to the time when this Bill comes into effect was fair enough until wages and the cost of building materials increased so much. For the past two years the grant has become absolutely inadequate and plenty of people have actually gone into debt to complete a house. Many of the old thatched houses in the country were most unhealthy and it is a delight and a pleasure to see people getting away from those houses and building in a good healthy position and scrapping the old houses or converting them into much-needed out-offices.
In the country towns particularly the housing question is a very acute one. We have families, particularly young married couples, crowded together into the same house. We have a scheme at the present moment whereby when cottages become vacant the local authority or the county manager, as the case may be, gives preference to families who are declared to be suffering from tuberculosis. But let us not forget that while many of the families who are living in very bad houses are not suffering from tuberculosis, you will, I am very much afraid, ensure that they will be tuberculosis families in the future. I get a number of heart-rending complaints from people who are living in huts which are not fit to house stock.
While I absolutely welcome the Bill there are a few amendments or improvements which I would ask the Minister seriously to consider. They are very important. No. 1 is in regard to the £50 grant difference existing between the classes of people living in the two areas, and he should specify that that £50 should be spent on a boiler at the back of the kitchen fire. That will not disturb the kitchen fire as Deputy Giles is afraid. There could be hot and cold water laid on to the kitchen sink and a bathroom and a lavatory and proper sanitary provisions. Many people who built houses over the past ten or 15 years are now making arrangements to install a bathroom and a lavatory at their own expense. In the case of these houses erected by a grant from the Land Commission or the Housing Section of the Department of Local Government, a small additional grant could be given to people with good solid houses in order to install a bathroom and lavatory and the necessary fittings needed with these.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present,
I welcome the Bill. I believe it is an honest attempt to assist both public bodies and private individuals to provide housing accommodation for those who are in greatest need of it. I would, however, make some suggestions to the Minister. Any Deputy who has had experience on public bodies will realise that now is the time to submit any constructive criticism which in his view would make an improvement in the Bill. I welcome the Bill also because it will enable public bodies to provide houses for the small farmers who are not able to provide them for themselves. We have often had the experience, when selecting sites for houses for agricultural labourers, of going on land owned by a small farmer and of finding that his house was in a pitiable condition. One portion might be galvanised and another portion held together with props, yet we were unable, as a public body, to provide him with a house. I am glad that now the small farmer will be provided with a house by a public body whose bounden duty it will be to give him reasonable accommodation when he himself is not in a position to do so.
As other Deputies have pointed out, the Bill limits the grants from the 1st November, 1947. I am aware of some labouring men and tradesmen who have erected houses within the last 12 months, and I would appeal to the Minister, in Sections 15 and 16, to put this period back by at least a year, so as to enable these men to qualify for the grant. We all knew that the housing scheme would be introduced but these men did not delay their building by waiting for it and they should not be penalised.
Under the 1932 Act the space for a five-roomed house was limited to 1,250 feet. My experience on a public body is that it would be difficult to erect a house bigger than a four-roomed house within that measurement. The rooms are very small. Three of them can hold little more than a single bed. If the public bodies were given authority to go beyond that measurement of 1,250 feet they would be able to cater for the man with a large family. He would then have more space in his rooms and he could have double beds in them instead of the single bed which is all he can fit in the small rooms. I believe we are going against the interests of the people when we limit tradesmen and others who are prepared to build for themselves to that measurement. With the permission of the Minister, the local authority should be allowed to extend the measurement to at least 1,600 or 1,700 feet.
Prior to the war houses were condemned wholesale. It might happen that ten or 20 houses in a particular area would be condemned. They would then become derelict and reconstruction would not be allowed because the medical officer would not sanction it. At the present time we are building streets of 40 or 50 houses and in 40 or 50 years' time they, too, may be condemned. I have a particular district in mind where reconstruction will not be allowed although a case of infectious disease has never been known there because it is beside the sea. Some authority should try to reconstruct these houses—even a room and a kitchen—and they would then be suitable and comfortable for some of our old age pensioners and other old people. Our difficulty was that we were taking single men and old men and women out of such houses and putting them into houses at 7/- or 9/- a week. The position then was that we had to find extra home assistance to enable these poor old men and women to pay the increased rent for the new houses whereas if we were given permission to reconstruct these good slate houses they would be more comfortable and happy in the cheaper houses. Although we might have to spend £50 or £60 in doing so, I consider that it would solve our housing problem to a considerable extent.
We hear of families taking lodgings in labourers' cottages in order to try and qualify for any house which becomes vacant. That is happening very frequently at the present time and, on the other hand, a large number of people are living by themselves in single houses. They will not take in lodgers and they do not wish to be interrupted or interfered with. If discretion were given to local councils some such scheme for reasonable accommodation could be devised instead of giving a four-roomed house to the tenant of any house which may be condemned. People who have been living for years and years in old houses should not be moved but, instead, the houses should be reconstructed. That would mean that the houses which we would otherwise have to give to people from condemned houses would be available for men who have large families. That scheme would solve to a considerable extent our housing problem.
I am aware of a number of houses in rural areas which are suitable for recontruction and which could be let to people who are anxious to live in them. If we are going to insist on the operation of the Act a large number of these houses will become derelict because the owner has already got a house for himself. If he were given a grant he might, possibly, have the second house reconstructed and made available for a tenant.
I wish to point out to the Minister that I would like to see the grant under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts brought up to £2,000. The Minister has gone a certain distance in the matter but the practical experience of the public body with which I have been connected has made us appeal by resolution for authority to grant a loan under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts up to the value of £2,000. We find that, because of the increase in wages and for various other causes, houses which formerly cost £700 or £800 in my area are now costing £3,000. I notice that under Section 35, a fine now on the repayment of a Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts loan is not being charged against the public body. I hope it will not be charged against the individual repaying it. The position in this connection is rather vague.
I welcome the Bill. It is an effort to try to meet the housing requirements at the present time. Naturally, if we all make our suggestions, on the Committee Stage we shall probably have a Bill which will satisfy the majority of the people, which will be an improvement, and which will give encouragement to us to proceed with the schemes we already have in view. I believe this Bill will go a long way towards removing discontent and that it will bring hope to the men in the rural areas who are without houses. I feel sure that every representative on a public body will give his wholehearted support to make it a success and to provide the houses for the people directly in need of them.
I think almost every member of the House is glad and relieved that this Bill has been introduced. I am sure that the whole country is satisfied with it also. Deputy Mulcahy was the only Deputy I heard who disagreed. I do not know that he disagreed with the Bill but rather with the time of its introduction. No matter what the time is, the Bill is extremely necessary. All I hope is that we will have the necessary amount of labour to carry it out.
To my mind, the most important houses are the board of health cottages, or labourers' cottages. In Meath there is an extraordinary demand for housing and many young people who propose to get married are anxiously awaiting houses. Quite a number of families are living together in some of the cottages and this Bill will be a great relief to them.
The next most important item of this Bill is the provision of a reconstruction grant. I am not so sure that it will be available for everybody. The poor law valuation is limited. That is rather a pity, I think, because on many large farms in County Meath there are labourers' cottages with good stone walls and reasonably good roofs but which are completely out of repair. The owner is not at all likely to repair them. If some method could be devised by which he could get a grant or the houses could be taken over from him, it would help to relieve congestion. I do not believe that the building of cottages will end all our troubles. As long as people leave condemned or old houses and those houses are demolished, congestion is bound to continue. Reconstruction, therefore, is very important.
There are five or six very nice villages in County Meath that were built many years ago by landlords. They were nicely laid out and in cases where a few new labourers' cottages were built in those villages the cottages are of the latest design. I have nothing against the design. It is neat and extremely attractive, but the unfortunate thing is that there are many gaps. Some houses have been burnt; some are in ruins and the impression is created of complete desolation. I hope that under this measure, if it is at all possible, the Minister will try to have ruins of old houses removed and gaps eliminated, not alone in villages, but in other parts of the country. They suggest a depression which does not in fact exist and present a very bad appearance.
I hope the Minister will be able to increase the poor law valuation limit for the purpose of this reconstruction grant and allow more of these houses to be reconstructed. At present the poor law valuation limit is £35. In County Meath that represents 35 statute acres which, according to the measurement generally used by the people of County Meath and most other counties, represents only 22 Irish acres. That would be a very small farm. I have a very strong idea that that figure will have to be increased or else there will be a number of farmers, living on larger holdings, whose houses are very dilapidated, who will have no means of reconstructing. It is a pity to allow these houses to disappear in time. Many of them are capable of being reconstructed. I hope the Minister will consider that point. I know he has a difficulty because that valuation in other counties would indicate a very large acreage of land but in County Meath it indicates about 20 or 22 Irish acres.
The design of cottages in County Meath is reasonably good but, unfortunately, nothing more than a house and small out-office were built. It was not realised that the tenant would require accommodation for cows and whatever other stock he might have. There was no stabling provided. The result is that, although most of the cottages are very nicely kept, many of the tenants were forced to erect some sort of device which they try to screen, and which very often consists of old tar barrels, which are most unsightly. The expense of building an extra shed or two would not be too heavy.
The next point I want to emphasise, and in connection with which I am sure the Minister has control, is that the sites of many of these cottages are unsuitable. Recently I was in a cottage that was extremely well kept and nicely decorated inside. Every effort was made to keep it properly on the outside but the cottage had been built in a hole and when it rains the garden and cottage are flooded. Our engineers ought to be capable of selecting better sites. Even some of the new cottages were built on very bad sites. Whoever selects the site, and I take it it must be the engineer, should use his intelligence and see that the cottages are not built in holes. The cottages belong to the nation. They are erected at very considerable expense to farmers, and it is a great mistake to put them on bad sites. The cottage to which I have referred has an acre plot, which was a triangle. The result of that is that the tenant is not able to get horses in to plough it. A man working all day cannot be expected to dig a whole acre in the evening. There would not have been any trouble involved in making that plot square so as to allow a pair of horses in to plough. As the plot is laid out, he could not attempt to do that. That is a pity. Instructions should be issued to engineers and others to lay out plots in a common-sense way and to put them in a position in which they can be drained.
I come now to the question of the dates fixed in the Bill for grants for building houses. It has been stated that there was a number of houses commenced before the date laid down in the Bill. I do not think there were many but there were some. The Minister should put back the date by at least a year and thereby give the people concerned the advantage of the very generous grant provided in the Bill. I am talking about the rural areas and I expect that quite a number of farmers will be building houses and a few have already started to build. They should get every encouragement. If we are to succeed in getting some of the houses reconstructed, and sufficient labourers' cottages built, some effort must be made to collect labour, as it will be one of the biggest difficulties. Deputy Allen suggested a bounty or premium on apprenticeships. That would do a lot of good, but it is too far distant and we should do something sooner.
I understand there is some bureau for getting many of the men back from Britain, but I do not know if it is properly organised, how many men it has got back or if it is a success. The Minister and the Government should make an effort to improve on that question and get many of the men back from Britain. No matter what facilities we have, if we have not the workmen we cannot build. With contractors one of the big difficulties is labour. Notwithstanding that we are told there is a great number of unemployed, many contractors complain that they are unable to obtain men and cannot enter contracts as they are afraid they will not be able to get the labour. It is one of the most important things to be considered. If we cannot get sufficient workmen, masons and carpenters to carry on the business, there will be a great deal of disappointment. The measure is a very attractive one and I have seen a number of letters asking for information about it, showing there is considerable interest. If by any chance we are not able to get sufficient workers to erect the houses, it will be a great disappointment to the people concerned. I hope the Minister will consider that point, not so much as a long-distance policy but as something to be done immediately.
I welcome the Bill and think it is very necessary, knowing from experience that there is a terrible shortage of houses, especially in country districts. In some houses there are three or four families living and boys and girls of a marriageable age have no chance. The most important suggestion I have is to make the grants retrospective for houses finished in 1946-47. Any person who started to build within the last two years should be clapped on the back and encouraged, as it was next to impossible to get material and that has put them in debt. I know of two brothers who built homes — one finished a house last year and the other started on the 13th August last year. They are hard-working small farmers who have other brothers in the house, who have gone out and spent their earnings and gone into debt for this purpose. Their case is deserving of consideration, so I ask the Minister to make the Bill retrospective to 1946.
I also suggest the raising of the poor law valuation of the reconstruction part. In Westmeath, as in Meath, a very small holding has £35 valuation, as the land in those counties was highly valued long ago. If the Bill was raised to cover £50 valuation, it would take in a certain type of farmer living at present in appalling houses. They are not in a position to build houses, but the reconstruction grant would help if they could get it. I know of cases where they have been cut out— one in 1941 and the other in 1939. I ask the Minister to reconsider the matter and increase the valuation at least in the highly valued counties.
I am very glad to see an effort will be made to keep cottages for agricultural labourers. At present the shortage of accommodation is the real cause of the shortage of labour for farmers. There are cottages in the rural districts, but the tenant is often a baker or tradesman in the local town and that is of no use to the farmer. These cottages should be for the agricultural labourers alone.
The building of houses in towns should be better planned. In Trim and Mullingar, in the last ten or 12 years, houses have been built, and if you stand at the end you can see that they have no breadth: each house is only a big gazebo and the whole width is not that of a good room. If they were all built two or three feet wider, practically the one roof would cover it at about the same cost and it would make all the difference. As Deputy Everett mentioned, the people at present have not room for a good single bed.
I believe there is a £50 less grant for houses in country districts where there is no water supply. The Minister should give that £50 extra grant to houses where the builder puts in the water supply. Deputy Blowick mentioned tanks. If the builder got the £50, he could put in a suitable underground tank and erect a lavatory and bathroom. We have the rural electricity scheme coming on in our district and numbers of people who have houses and who can afford it are building underground tanks to catch all the water off the house. They can buy a pump cheaply and pump automatically at a very small cost for electricity. The Minister should look into that, as the electricity scheme will be spreading all over the country.
In regard to loans for small dwellings, we are at present restricted to £1,000. Everyone knows that, if you want to build a decent type of house, that is not sufficient. The small dwellings loan should be increased to £2,000 or £3,000, in view of the increased cost of material. It would help small farmers who may take advantage of such a loan along with the grant and be able to build a house and improve it for further members of the family. At present the loan is tied down too much.
I understand that if you build a house so many cubic feet beyond the specification you will not get a grant. That is stupid. A man gets only £200 or £250, yet he is tied down to building these little houses with small rooms where you cannot turn about. There should be no maximum measurements. If a man gets a small grant, there should be a minimum size certainly, but no maximum. If he can build a bigger house, let him do so, as the present position will only create new slums.
I also suggest that a concrete tank should be built at the back of every labourer's cottage in which the rain water from the roof could be collected, thereby making it available for use in the house. The tank would not cost any more than £2, and would be a great convenience for the woman of the house. I also suggest that decent outhouses should be provided. At present there is only a little house at the back. One has to stoop down to get into it. There is a little ladder in it for the fowl and it is not of much use. If a decent outhouse were provided it would enable a labouring man to keep a donkey, pony or a pig in it.
I welcome the Bill and urge on the Minister to see that it is put into operation as soon as possible. There is a great scarcity of houses in the country. One sees two or three families living in the one house. The Westmeath County Council, over the last three years, has passed schemes for the building of labourers' cottages. We are doing our best to get cottages built for people in condemned houses. We were told two years ago that these would be completed in six months, but the contractors are only leaving them now. We have young married people living in rooms. That means you have two or three families in some houses. If the Minister pushes forward the operation of this Bill it will help to keep people from leaving the country.
An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.
I most cordially recommend to the Minister the three suggestions which have been made by Deputy Fagan. He suggested the addition of a turf shed at the back of labourer's cottages, particularly where the cottages are built in rows near towns. The putting into operation of that suggestion would be an immense boon both for keeping the turf dry and avoiding the feuds that arise between neighbours about the loss of turf and small implements when there is no shed in which each tenant can lock up his property. I think Deputy Fagan's proposal that the £50 which is to be withheld from the waterless house should be given to the tenant purchaser provided he is prepared to supply his own water, is a most brilliant one. If one goes to the middle west of America — this is quite apart from the proposal to supply electric pumps — one sees all over the landscape on the western prairies wind-mill pumps. They are as typical of the prairie as the windmill is of the Dutch skyline. I imagine that, with one's experience of the windcharger in supplying electric current, it ought to be quite possible, in cases where electric power is not available to operate small electric pumps, to have a windmill pump erected. If a tank, such as Deputy Fagan has suggested, were built with the £50 to which he has referred, then running water could be made available in many houses, whereas, under the Bill as it stands, that would be impossible.
I take this occasion to direct the attention of the Minister to what has become a very serious problem in rural Ireland, and that is the extent to which the rules, prohibiting the taking of lodgers in labourers' cottages are being ignored.
That is administration.
Very well. May I refer to the sub-letting of cottages? The taking of lodgers is bad enough, but when you discover that a lady resident in England who has thereby become the absentee landlord of a labourer's cottage, is collecting a slightly larger rent from the person presently in occupation than she herself is paying, then things have come to pretty pass.
That is administration.
I am in your hands. I want to protest most emphatically against the continued treatment of some so-called utility societies in rural Ireland as genuine. We all know that there are in this country some well established, well run and well administered utility societies which are genuinely entitled to that description. We also all know that in 1932 a dirty racket was started in this country whereby the Fianna Fáil clubs throughout the country were to be called utility societies, the members of which were given larger grants than those given under the earlier Acts. That was a disgusting racket. It was dishonest to give larger grants to the members of Fianna Fáil clubs than were available to the ordinary citizens of the State. A few of them survive — broken, disreputable, fraudulent conglomerations of the usual type of the worthless down-at-heel pest who wants to live on his neighbour in rural Ireland.
That is not true.
I know them well, and the time has surely come when these relics of a disreputable past might properly be buried so that the genuine utility societies in this country that are doing honest work, and making some contribution to facilitate the erection of houses, might continue with their honest work without being discredited by being lumped together with these fraudulent, dishonest wrecks which constitute the broken down monuments of the earlier days of Fianna Fáil corruption and of the public generally by the bestowal of alms on their supporters.
On a point of order. The Deputy had an opportunity in another place to deal with this question of corruption, and I suggest that he should not be allowed to ascribe or impute corruption to any Party or to any person unless he is prepared to produce proofs here in the Dáil. I am putting that point of order to the Chair: Is the Deputy entitled, under the protection of the privileges of this House, to suggest——
Privileges of the House? I will go out into Kildare Street and tell you very blunt and plain.
I am putting a point of order, and the Deputy is standing.
It is a point of order?
Yes.
It is for the Chair to judge.
I am going to put the point of order when the Deputy sits down. I am putting it to the Chair that no Deputy is entitled to avail of the privileges which attach to this House by reason of his position here as a Deputy, and under an Article of the Constitution, to ascribe corruption to any person, named or unnamed, unless he is prepared to produce documentary evidence that, in fact, such corruption exists. I am putting that point of order, and I suggest that you should advert to the evidence which the Deputy has already given in another place and the flimsy foundation on which he has based these charges.
We cannot discuss what is happening in another place. I agree with the Minister that the word "corruption" might very well be dropped in this House.
I am sure the Fianna Fáil Party would like me to drop that word, but I will not drop it. I charge them—and for this purpose I waive— now, let the Minister note these words——
The Deputy is not concerned with the Fianna Fáil Party. He is concerned with the Bill before the House and might deal with it.
For this purpose, I waive my Parliamentary privilege.
But the Deputy cannot waive it. It does not attach to him personally. It attaches to the House and not to him.
I say that the Fianna Fáil Party——
Did you rule, Sir, that the word "corruption" was not to be used?
I have definitely so ruled.
I said that the Fianna Fáil Party, for the purpose of corrupting the electorate of this country, provided in a Housing Act when they came into office that you could convert a Fianna Fáil club, in effect, into a public utility society.
That is a gloss.
And that any person who was a member of that so-called public utility society would get an £80 grant, whereas his neighbour who was not prepared to sell out to the local Fianna Fáil club would get only £70.
That is not true.
The Deputy is accusing the Government of malversation of public funds.
No, I am not.
The Deputy, in my opinion, is so doing, and I will not allow the word "corruption" in the House from the Deputy or any other Deputy. There is another place, which is a model to the Deputy sometimes, where it was distinctly stated that the word should not be used in any connection in the House.
I accept that ruling. I am quite content, without any description, just to recite the story. Those who read it will judge what is the appropriate description.
That is running counter to the ruling of the Chair.
No; I accept your ruling.
May I again put a point of order? The present Government is not responsible for the fact that people can constitute themselves a public utility society and that to that society certain facilities to enable them to build houses can be given. I want to put this further point——
This is not a point of order any more than is Christmas Day. It is a lame kind of argument.
I want to put this point of order to you, Sir, when the Deputy has sat down.
This is not a point of order. Is it a point of order, Sir?
I have not heard the Minister out yet.
You have heard half of it.
If the Deputy is going to refer to the administration of previous Housing Acts, because he can only refer to that administration if he is going to raise the question as to how public utility societies——
Did you ever hear such a point of order —"if"?
——have been managed or administered up to this, I suggest to you, Sir, that he would be out of order, because it is a matter that should be raised, if at all, on the Estimate for the Department, and you must already be aware that Deputy Dillon has raised that on previous occasions on the Estimate for the Department——
Annually.
——and on every occasion his allegations were shown to be without foundation.
I do not think it is a point of order.
I am suggesting that on a Bill——
Is this a point of order?
Yes, it is.
I ask the Chair if it is a point of order.
I suggest that on a Bill the question of the administration of a Department cannot be raised.
Deputy Dillon.
This Bill proposes to confer advantages on public utility societies. There are decent, respectable, well-administered public utility societies in this country, and, as a result of the housing legislation passed by the Fianna Fáil Government——
May I again——
Another point of order?
Yes. I am putting it to you, Sir, that the Government does not pass legislation, that legislation is passed by the Oireachtas, and that the Deputy ought at least to be exact in statements he makes here in regard to that fundamental matter.
As a result of legislation passed by the Fianna Fáil Government——
By the Oireachtas.
——there were created a series of disreputable, dishonest, fraudulent cabals——
Again, on a point of order——
If the Minister will allow the Chair to rule — I want to hear the Deputy. The Deputy is discussing the administration of an Act.
I am discussing the existence of——
Of an Act.
I am saying that there are in existence a number of bodies which would benefit under this Bill as at present drafted. That is my theme and I am saying that these particular bodies should be excluded from benefit under it.
The Deputy was not precluded from saying that twice already.
I put it to you, Sir, on a point of order — and I think I am entitled to do so——
If it is like the last few, you certainly are not. Bhfuil cead agam bheith im' shuidhe, A Chinn Comhairle?
Ba cheart don Teachta suidh síos mar tá poinnt orduithe ag an Aire.
The Deputy has alleged — I am trying to quote his exact words — that, as a result of disreputable, corrupt and dishonest administration on the part of the Government, certain things have happened. Is the Deputy, without a scintilla of proof, entitled to make that charge in this House against the Government?
You are rambling.
The Deputy is not entitled to discuss administration.
He is making the charge here on this Bill and not on the Estimate for the Department. I put it to you, Sir: Is he entitled to make that charge of, again, disreputable, corrupt and dishonest conduct— and fradulent, too——
Yes; fraudulent, I said.
I put it to you, Sir, as a point of order: Is he entitled to make that charge against the Government on a legislative measure?
It does not arise.
The Deputy is making it arise.
You are surprised at language like that?
I am, but not from Deputy Donnellan or Deputy Dillon.
You are the boy who can use it at the cross-roads.
The Deputy is now under the protection of the privileges of the House. I am putting it to the Chair that the Deputy is making that charge under the protection of those privileges and under the protection of the Chair. I put it to the Chair that the Chair is bound to protect the members of the Government and members of the Government Party from the charges the Deputy is making, unless the Deputy is prepared to adduce evidence and not his mere——
Is this a point of order?
——obiter dicta in this House with regard to these charges. We have had experience of the Deputy in another place and I am putting it to you——
Is it a point of order?
The net point is this——
Is it a point of order? Sit down, if it is not.
Order!
Is the Minister raising a point of order?
The net point is this: Is the Deputy entitled to impute disreputable, dishonest, corrupt or fraudulent practices to the Government on this Bill and in this debate?
I have no desire to do so.
The Chair already ruled that he is not.
The Deputy, I submit to you, is proceeding in complete disregard of the ruling of the Chair to make precisely those charges.
As result of housing legislation passed by the Fianna Fáil Government a series of fraudulent, dishonest, disreputable cabals——
That is the third time that the Deputy has said that.
——constituted themselves first into Fianna Fáil clubs and then into public utility societies, usually calling themselves "St. Philomena's Public Utility Society" or the "Greyhound and Roundtower Public Utility Society".
The Deputy might now come to the Bill.
Most of them having brought themselves fully within the letter of the law collected for their members the £10 supplementary grant and then went out of existence.
That is not in this Bill.
Some of them have survived.
Nor is it true, Sir.
Some of them survive. How many public utility societies went out of existence in the last ten years?
That has nothing to do with this Bill.
It has, Sir, because their survivors are still with us.
But they are not in this Bill.
They are, Sir. Are not the public utility societies in this Bill?
All that are left.
Does anyone deny that? A few of them remain. Nobody knows better than the Minister that many of these public utility societies of the type to which I refer are public utility societies only in name. They do none of the ordinary services for their members that the old would-be respectable utility societies do in Dublin and Cork and elsewhere.
That is untrue.
What is untrue?
What you have said about public utility societies — the whole lot of it.
I do not suppose that the Deputy knows what I said.
I know about the operations of public utility societies in my constituency.
Fire away, so. I know about the operations of public utility societies all over the country. Thanks be to God, most of them are dead and buried.
What Deputy Dillon has said is completely false in regard to public utility societies in County Limerick.
Contain yourself.
Is he an honest, reputable man? That is nothing new to him.
No? The Deputy, I take it, accepts the implication that these public utility societies were Fianna Fáil——
Will the Deputy please come to the Bill?
In the last 20 minutes I have not got out six sentences. The Minister for Local Government and Deputy Ó Briain have been jumping up and down. I was told to sit down and I sat down, because you, Sir, said I was to sit down.
Then sit down.
I have not the least notion of sitting down. The Deputy has been trying to put me down for the last ten years and he has not succeeded. If he tries for the next forty years his efforts will be equally unsuccessful. Neither he nor his gang——
"Gang" is not a right term to apply to any section of the House.
It is typical.
Sir, I am talking of the Deputy and his gang.
The Deputy must come to the Bill.
I am dealing with public utility societies.
If a man belongs to a gang then he must be a gangster. Is it, Sir, orderly to apply that expression to any person in the House?
It is not Parliamentary to use the word "gang" in reference to any section of the House.
Or any member of the House, Sir, or any associate of any member of the House. Is the Deputy going to be asked to withdraw that?
I did not apply it to any section in this House.
You definitely did. "The Fianna Fáil gang" you said.
Is it right to apply it to a member of the House, Sir?
A member could not be a gang.
Deputy Dillon said Deputy Donnchadh Ó Briain and his gang. Is that a parliamentary expression?
Did the Minister ever refer to people as a "gang"?
I will use the expression "Deputy Ó Briain and his gang." If you say that is unparliamentary I immediately withdraw it.
Including any Deputy in a gang.
I did not say that. I said "the Deputy and his gang."
A very nice distinction.
And if you wish me to withdraw it I will withdraw it. I urge on the Minister that before these decrepit and disreputable relics are allowed to benefit under the provisions of the Bill at present before the House steps should be taken——
By administration?
No, Sir. Steps should be taken to week out the bad ones and steps should be taken under this Bill to ensure that the powers conferred on public utility societies should be made available only to genuine societies. I will ask the Minister now to survey that whole position and put in a Schedule at the end of the Bill naming the existing public utility societies which, for the purpose of this Bill and the housing code generally, he will recognise as public utility societies, with proviso that hereafter to have a public utility society for the purpose of the housing code, its constitution must be submitted to the Minister, be approved by him and that an annual inspection will be made so as to ensure that they are being carried on as genuine public utility societies — as that term is ordinarily understood. If that proviso is put in I shall be quite content, Sir.
There is another proposal I want to make. I think it was Deputy Everett who pointed out that a good many houses which ought to be available for the accommodation of married couples, or families, have in fact with the passage of time become the residences of elderly single people who are ill-equipped to look after themselves, living alone as they do, but who have nowhere else to go. They hang on to these houses which would comfortably accommodate families if they were available to them. Probably the Minister has noticed that in Great Britain they have embarked upon the task of housing the old people in comfortable hostels where the old people are within reach of their friends and neighbours and do not have to go away into an old barrack of a county home. I believe that if in every parish, or barony, or group of parishes we had a comfortable hostel where the old people would have their own rooms, decent meals and a friendly atmosphere, quite an appreciable number of small houses at present occupied by such old people and which have fallen into disrepair would be vacated and would make a not insubstantial contribution towards a solution of the housing shortage.
I direct the attention of the Minister to the problem of supplies for building houses at the present time. I am told that temporarily there is enough flooring available, enough slates and even enough roofing timber. There may be a shortage of metal goods. But, strangely enough, cement seems to be more difficult to get than it ever was. The Minister for Industry and Commerce made a great flourish about six weeks ago and announced it was no longer necessary to control supplies of cement and took off all the controls, whereupon Cement Limited clapped them on again.
If a Housing Bill of this kind is the success that one may hope it would be, the question is whether the cement situation will not become utterly unmanageable. If that is to be avoided. I suggest to the Minister that a survey ought to be made to ascertain where the supplies of cement are going and, if there is an undue consumption of cement in building cinemas, dance halls and the like, we ought seriously to consider prohibiting the erection of such structures until the requirements of the housing schemes contemplated have been provided for.
I want cordially to recommend to the Minister consideration of the observations of Deputy Fagan in regard to bathrooms and sanitary accommodation in small houses in rural Ireland. A detestable practice has grown up in this country of building small houses in rural Ireland without bathrooms and internal sanitation. To my mind, that is a very great abuse and I would go so far as to suggest to the Minister that in any future housing scheme no grant should be made available unless the houses are provided with baths, internal sanitation and some practicable method of heating water for the occupants. That does not of necessity demand the installation of a range in the kitchen, because many country people cannot work a range and find turf an inconvenient fuel for a range. There are types of fireplaces in which quite an efficient boiler can be installed for the service of hot water to the house on what is equivalent to an open hearth. I have one in my own drawing-room and it works admirably.
May I make a very special appeal on behalf of a class of the community that seems always to be forgotten and whose trials are becoming well-nigh unendurable? I refer to individuals who are earning between £5 and £7 a week in small towns — the bank clerk, the senior shop assistant, the Electricity Supply Board employee, the assistant surveyor and that kind of person. They are finding it virtually impossible to get a place to house their families. I know some of them to be acquiring half a house three or four miles from their place of work, some of them paying fantastic rents. In the last few years the supply of houses suitable for them seems to have shrunk steadily. For that reason, I suggest to the Minister that one measure that might be taken to alleviate that difficulty is that this extraordinary provision that grants are not to be made available where the cubic footage or the square footage of a house exceeds a certain figure should be done away with. Why on earth did you make that provison? That is the most obscurantist Department of Finance mentality.
I would give any man who builds a house a grant if he asks for it because, if he builds a new house, he moves into that house from another house. He does not move into it from the top of a tree and the fact that he moves from the house in which he was into a new house vacates a house. That may mean that another neighbour will move into his house; but when all the moving is done, there is one house empty at some stage for a newcomer, and all we want is houses. I have known this regulation completely to distort an admirable plan made by an architect, because it was discovered at the crucial moment that the plan involved 15 or 20 extra feet, whereupon the person who was concerned to get the grant disrupted the plan and spoiled his house. The people who are going to build a house like Cartron in Maynooth and ask for a housing grant from the Kildare County Council are not legion and from the number of people who build medium-sized houses the community will get very good value for the grant they give.
Of course it is not popular to say that the real root of all our trouble is the Rent Restriction Acts. So long as that infernal system of rent restriction continues, we will suffer from chronic shortage of houses, because people whose business it is to build houses are deterred from prosecuting their business vigorously by the Sword of Damocles which hangs over their head that when they build their houses they will not be able to get a rent which will give them a reasonable return on their outlay. We have got into a vicious circle because that rent restriction code has created a chronic scarcity of houses and, so long as that continues, every Government is afraid to take off the rent restriction. Until we break that vicious circle, we will be in a perennial condition of introducing Housing Bills here.
Surely this House can afford to be realistic about something. I put this to Deputies. Of our own friends who acquired a new house since each one of us reached our majority, how many bought a house from a builder and how many built their own house? Certainly, in my own experience, as regards 90 per cent. of my friends who want to build a house, it would never cross their minds to hire Sir Edward Lutyens to lay out a panorama and design the house and call in a builder and a clerk of works. They scan the newspapers or read the advertisement of a speculative builder who is developing an estate in Stillorgan, Dundrum, or somewhere like that and they go out and look at the houses and, if they are nice and appear to be good value, they buy one and move in.
So far as I can see the speculative builder is completely excluded from the operation of this Bill. He has all the building labour organised; he has the capital or the credit to acquire an estate for development and it is worth his while to take an area where he can put up 40 houses and develop it and arrange it so that the houses can be built upon it. He is the very man who at one bite would contribute 40 or 50 houses, but he will not benefit under this Bill. We expect a poor individual, a creature who wants to get a house for himself and his family, to go out on to a plot of land to build a house, dig the drains, level the neighbourhood and do all the development work which ordinarily is associated with building a house. Certain persons will be able to do that in rural Ireland. Around Ballaghaderreen and Charlestown it may be the ordinary natural thing to do; but around places like Wexford, Limerick, Cork, Dublin or Sligo the thing is fantastic. Why are we excluding the speculative builder? If it is houses we want, he is our best bet. Why should we try to harass him or handicap him at the very moment when he can be of most assistance? I suppose it is due to some kind of idea that that would be represented as bestowing largesse on a rich man. The rich man has only one vote and you might vex 40 fellows who had 40 votes. If that is the spirit in which we are going to approach the housing problem, we shall be short of houses for ever and aye.
I must try and think of a nice, kind, gentle amendment that I can put down for the Committee Stage to impose an obligation on the Minister to survey the pure, public-spirited, noble, disinterested, inspiring associations of public-spirited citizens who constitute the public utility societies of rural Ireland — perhaps a section empowering the Minister for Local Government to give a leather medal to each of those societies, beginning with Deputy Ó Briain's clutch in Limerick.
Leave Deputy Ó Briain's Limerick society alone.
The Deputy would not approve of the award of a leather medal to testify to the purity and efficiency of these societies——
The Deputy might say something about the Bill.
I shall try to design an amendment providing that as a reward for their disinterestedness, efficiency and public service——
That is what they gave.
I am going to propose an amendment and I do not think it will make a charge on the public funds. That is my anxiety, lest it should.
Who will provide the leather medal?
I shall provide the leather medal and all the Bill will require the Minister to do is to bestow it. I assume that out of his own largesse he will provide the pin.
I would be glad to welcome legislation which would tend to provide our people with more and better houses than we have at the moment, but I am sorry to say that this Bill comes at a very inopportune time. It comes at a time when there is talk of an election in the air and the people look upon it as an electioneering stunt. I am not saying that it is but I do say that it is a pity that it was not introduced three or four years ago, because at that time we were not able to build owing to the shortage of materials. That was the time to frame legislation which we could have ready to put into operation when building materials again became available.
I am satisfied, on the other hand, that we have had far too much legislation in connection with housing in the last ten or 12 years; it has been all legislation and no housing. I am further satisfied that a vast building programme, in fact a revolutionary programme, is necessary if we are going to get that balance in the country that I should like to see. The people for whom I speak are the small farmers down the country who are not in a position to build their own houses. The small farmer of that type is the most important person in the whole community but to that type of person this Bill is of very little use. There has been a certain increase in the grants provided but the Bill does not go far enough. There should be a better approach to the problem of providing houses for farmers and I am quite satisfied that a scheme of that kind could be put into operation without all this legislation. It could be done through the Land Commission. The Land Commission are a very important body who up to some time ago were mainly occupied with the division of land but that work has slowed down considerably in recent years and, in fact, has been almost terminated. It is a body of immense importance so far as the development of rural Ireland is concerned. Nearly all small farmers pay land annuities spread over a long period of years and I am satisfied that, in connection with the collection of these annuities, the Land Commission could take over the function of building new houses for the people living on the land. I am convinced that not alone would the farmers pay back some of the money expended on a scheme of that kind, but they would pay back every penny of the money lent by the Government because the farmers want nothing from anybody.
If a scheme were devised to provide new houses with suitable out-offices instead of the derelict houses and ramshackle sheds in existance on many farmsteads at present, I am satisfied that every penny of the expenditure on such a scheme would be repaid by the farmer if the instalments were spread over a number of years and added to the ordinary land annuities. I think it is only right that we should utilise a body such as the Land Commission for the purpose of providing proper dwellings in that way for our rural population. I think that such a scheme would obviate the necessity for a vast amount of legislation because I know that a large number of our farmers have not as yet taken out a proper title to their lands. When it comes to the matter of looking for grants or facilities, they cannot show a proper title to the land because over scores, or in some cases hundreds, of years no administration was taken out. Farmers looking for grants or loans under legislation of this type find the problem of taking out administration to establish their title a very difficult one. I think that in cases such as those the Land Commission should take over responsibility for rehousing our small and middle-class farmers on an annuity basis. The loans could be paid back with their ordinary annuities every year. It would be, no doubt, something revolutionary, but it is something worth considering.
There is one other thing we shall have to do if we are going to preserve a proper balance in the country. We shall have to put some limit to the extension of the big City of Dublin. I think far too much is being given to the City of Dublin. Like a big octopus, it is eating up the rest of the country. I would try to put a curb to that tendency and to pay some attention to the development of the rest of the country.
At the present moment many of our villages and small towns are nothing more than eye-sores. It is in such places I would spend money to try to bring back the people to the heart of the country where they should be, and not in the big business cities. I think the Minister should try to devise some scheme of developing villages. Villages usually spring up round a church and the local schools. In many of these villages at present there is no proper Garda barracks. In most parishes ramshackle structures serve as Garda barracks, and there is no proper attempt at housing the Guards. In the same way, we find maternity nurses living down boreens and little lanes, while the doctors in many cases reside miles away from the centre of the district. There is no proper provision either for the housing of national teachers, bank clerks or business people. In that way a vast amount of work of immense importance for the development of the country remains to be done. A start could be made by the Government in the reconstruction of these villages by providing decent buildings for national institutions, such as the Gardaí, medical and nursing services, etc. Around these buildings we could build our rural dwellings and then we could gradually proceed with the provision of facilities such as piped water supplies, sewerage, sanitation, light and heating in a big way. There is no use in talking of piped water supplies in the country under present conditions; that is fantastic nonsense.
We should make every effort to spend vast sums on the development of our towns and villages so as to make them happy centres for the people living there. In each village you could have a hall for various types of amusement, so that the people would be quite happy and contented. I am satisfied that the people are happy and contented, in any town or village where these amenities are provided. The majority of our villages have not these amenities and we should concentrate our efforts in providing them if we want to make this country a place worth living in.
As regards rural cottages, we should have a review of the whole position before we go much further in the direction of building cottages. Every cottage erected within the last 20 or 30 years should come under that review. There are many cottages not serving the functions they were originally intended to serve. In my own county there are many cottages serving no useful purpose. They are locked from Monday morning till Saturday night. Often you will see big cottages that cost £400 or £500 locked all the week. Sometimes you will find an old bachelor living in these cottages. He may be working in Dublin or in England and the key is turned in the door all the week and even longer. There should be some scheme whereby the cottages will be occupied by responsible people prepared to give a return to the community. We have numbers of old spinsters and bachelors living in houses miles away from churches, chapels and shops.
I think the position should be reviewed and perhaps we might consider building more in the vicinity of small towns and villages, constructing two-roomed houses near the shops and the chapels. The old people would be only too willing to live in these places. I know lots of people who have to hobble along the roads three or four miles on Sunday, and they frequently have to ask others to bring them goods from the shops. If these old people could get a two-roomed or three-roomed cottage cheaply near a village or town they would be only too glad to occupy it. In that way you will be releasing throughout the country scores of fine, hefty cottages built during the last 50 or 60 years and in perfect repair. At the moment those old people are living in them. We could release these houses for married men with families and thereby save ourselves from building scores of houses in the coming years.
In Meath, we always went in for big housing schemes. I do not say that the schemes were all well carried out, because there is a lot of jerry-building that never should have been passed. Of course, you could build hundreds of cottages and then when the slump comes you will have many people in dire straits. I would like to see a wellbalanced scheme with a fair number of cottages to suit workers on the land. I would like to see around the towns and villages houses erected for the old people who cannot drag themselves along the roads to the churches and the shops. These poor old people would be very glad to end their lives in a quiet easy way near the churches and the shops.
We should first cater for those people and then we could talk about sewerage, sanitation and piped water. It is a terrible thing after 25 years of native government to find our villages and small towns in such a pitiable condition. I know villages in my area and they are absolutely isolated. We have more town planning schemes and officers than we need. The trouble is that the plans are not being made operative. If we had the older people gathering around our towns and villages there would be little need for others to go to the cities and larger towns.
I am satisfied the Minister for Local Government has a fair amount of knowledge as to the scientific development of rural areas; at least, he can talk well enough on that subject. I think he is anxious enough to do the right thing. I believe we are some 20 years behind time in putting a halt to the growth of the City of Dublin. That has brought about much decay all over rural Ireland. None of the wealthy houses that we can see built around the City of Dublin should have been permitted. The people who occupy them should have been forced to go down the country and build near towns and villages. I believe that any man engaged in business in the city could get to his work by car or bus from a radius of 40 or 50 miles. If those people were forced to build down the country it would be a good day's work.
With regard to the grants and the increase in valuation, I believe we have not gone far enough. We should have gone up to £50 valuation. I know that the holding with a £50 valuation in Meath is a very small one and I feel we should raise the valuation from £35 to £50. However, we are always thankful for small mercies. If we are intent on having a proper housing programme, it would be better to be generous on the right side. Let us do something for the people who from the corner-stone of the whole edifice, and that is the rural farmers.
At the moment the biggest problem we have to face is the finding of enough land for labourers' cottages. We must have at least 400 cottages in County Meath. Every man with a cottage will take all the land he can get. We could build a good many cottages with less land attached to them. Many men with an acre around their cottages are making good use of the land but many others consider the land an eyesore and they have not made any effort to bring it into proper use. When a man works from eight in the morning till six at night with a farmer he has not very much time to devote to his own land. A good many men working with farmers get vegetables and milk, with the result that they require very little land for their own use. We should think twice before we give a full acre to every cottage.
I certainly would like to see a few acres, perhaps five acres given, if they were put to a proper use, but I am satisfied that about 1,000 acres of land are not put to any use in the county to which I refer. They are full of dock and weeds and thistles, but it is the ratepayers' money, it is the national money, which is buying this land. We have a huge drive for food to feed the people —and it is a hard job to get the food— while at the same time acres and acres of the best land are lying idle without even a goat tethered in the centre or a pair of hens walking across them. I am not against anyone getting an acre of ground, but let them make use of it. There may be some excuse for old bachelors and spinsters but there is no excuse for a healthy young fellow.
This will certainly do good; it is a step in the right direction and I welcome it, but more is needed if we are to make the country a place worth living in. The Bill could be more satisfactory in making the villages more attractive with sewerage and sanitation and piped water supply, but the Bill should have been drafted years ago. If we plan now and get Guards' homes, nurses' homes and teachers' residences built and build villages around them and arrest the tendency of the people to go across the water, we are doing good work, national work and work that we can be proud of. I am glad that the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary is as keen for this as I am.
If we are to stop the dry rot and do good work, we must do everything in our power to curb the extension of the City of Dublin. There is a vast amount of wealth and power there but while it is growing larger and larger in pomp and power the country is decaying and dry rot is setting in. We must arrest that and get a thrifty, comfortable set of people living on the land.
Mr. M. O'Reilly took the Chair.
The amount of grant available for each house depends on two things — the number of rooms in the proposed building, and the availability of piped water supply and sewerage. If the maximum amount of grant is available only to five-roomed houses, is it not evident that the qualifying amount of floor space is an all-important matter if the rooms are to be worth living in? If we are to keep in mind the importance of the piped water supply and the fact that you always associate a bathroom with a piped water supply, is it not evident that we must recognise that the idea of having a bathroom in each house was at the back of the mind of the drafters of this Bill? I would prefer that the bathroom should not count as one of the five rooms; that there should be five rooms independent of the bathroom. Consider 1,250 square feet of floor space and then take a bathroom out of that. If you have in mind houses, not only in the towns, but in the country, a house with five rooms and that amount of floor space is not a house where a family with sons and daughters can have separate apartments. I believe that the rules governing the floor space were drafted 20 years ago and the change in ideas in regard to housing has been so rapid within the past 20 years that that particular rule should be revised. I think —and I have discussed the matter with builders and engineers — that the minimum space to allow for five rooms and a bathroom is 1,500 square feet. I seriously suggest to the Minister that one of the first matters which he should undertake is to have the Bill amended so as to cater for 1,500 square feet of floor space.
When I read the Bill for the first time I, too, was worried about the £50 allowed for piped water and sewerage.
I had in mind to ask the Minister to allow the £50 where a private water supply was supplied, but I think that, according to the wording of the Bill, any man who pipes water into his house qualifies for a bigger grant. It might be well, however, if the Minister in his reply would tell us whether or not that is the manner in which the Act when passed would operate.
There is another matter also that he should make clear, a matter which will help to build a good few houses in rural districts. Anybody associated with utility societies knows that where a man works on a farm where the profits go to his father or mother, where he is not paid a weekly wage and where he has not insurance cards stamped in keeping with the National Health Act, he does not qualify under the existing Act for a housing grant. At a time when we deplore the flight from the land and are doing our level best to encourage people to remain on the land, is it not common sense to take into consideration the manner of life which we are trying to preserve, that is, the manner of life on the farms? Where a man has two sons, one of whom is to get the farm, the other works on that farm without wages but when he is of age to marry he gets a plot of land from his father on which a house is erected and into which he must bring his wife, but under existing legislation he will not qualify for a grant for that house unless and until he stamps insurance cards. We might as well be honest about this thing. There is nothing to prevent that man from providing insurance cards and from having them stamped by his father, but that is simply in order to comply with the rules governing the giving of those grants as interpreted by a Government Department. I suggest to the Minister that that is one particular aspect of this Bill which should be given his fullest consideration, especially when it is a matter that helps to erect more houses and keeps more of our people on the land.
I suggest also that as far as the grant for repairs goes, the raising of it to £80 from £40 is not sufficient. It should bear some relation to the amount available for a new house because an old house is very often, as far as the walls go, as substantial as any new house that will be erected. If an old house is substantially as good as a new house, in the opinion of the Department engineer who passes it, I think that a grant, having at least the same relationship to the new grants as the former reconstruction grants had to the older house construction grants, should be given. I consider that at least £120 should be the minimum to be given for the reconstruction of an old house.
In my constituency we had a great number of thatched houses up to practically recent times. Quite a number of people, with considerable effort, reconstructed those houses by raising half the buildings and slating them, the second half remaining thatched. They got £40 for the reconstruction and, remember, that after that reconstruction they had half a new house. However, when they applied for a second reconstruction grant which would given them a new house they were refused for the simple reason that there is no facility under any Act whereby they can get a second reconstruction grant. I suggest that the present Bill be so amended as to allow those people at least an extra £40, thereby bringing the amount expended for reconstruction on each house to the £80 level which is allowed under the new Bill and which I consider is inadequate by at least £40. I suggest that as the amount to be expended on reconstruction will be limited, the valuation of farmers be not considered. The number of people with the very big valuations who will want to reconstruct their houses will be comparatively small. As has been said here by quite a number of Deputies, the farm of a man with a valuation of £40 to £50 in some counties is not a large farm. The wisest course, as far as reconstruction goes, is to wipe the thing out altogether. Quite a number of people have been named here as being in a rather difficult position as far as house reconstruction goes. They are neither rich enough to erect houses on their own account nor, on the other hand, are they in a position to avail of the Acts which provide for labourers and tradesmen and people generally who work amongst the rural community. I think that the more widespread operation of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts will be the proper approach towards coming to the rescue of those people. Unfortunately those Acts are not availed of by quite a number of the local authorities.
The Minister would be well advised to revise the whole position in the light of present circumstances. A man now earning £300, £400 or £500 a year, if he has a wife and family, is not in a position to build a house in the way a man with even a smaller salary might have been able to do so ten or 15 years ago. The house in itself will be a guarantee and the man will have security of tenure. It will be something that, eventually, he or his children will own, or that he will be able to dispose of because, if he is an official, he might be transferred from the particular area in which he builds his house. The individuals whom this Act is meant to help are those who require help and have initiative in them. We all know that the number of people who can put their hands on the balance of the money apart from the grant is limited. There is an appreciable delay in the payment of those grants because of the small number of inspectors and the formalities which have to be complied with in order that the Act is administered properly. Under the old Acts the Department paid, and rightly so, part of the grant when the house was partially constructed. The balance of the grant was paid when the house was occupied. The most difficult period for the builder to get over is the period when he gets the slate and the timber from the merchant. I suggest, therefore, that the new grants be paid in four quarters so as to assist the man erecting his house to meet current expenses and so that he will always be in a position to acquire more and more of the material which will be required for the completion of his house. Only a limited amount of money is available and it strikes me that, with all the talk about the cities and the necessity for houses in them, most of that money is going to be eaten up by the cities.
I would ask the Minister to consider seriously the setting aside of a part of it for the erection of houses in the small towns and in the rural areas. Down the country we have at the back of our minds the idea that a good part of legislation caters for the cities. It has even been mentioned here by a number of speakers in connection with this £50 for the water that the Minister, in presenting the Bill as it is at the moment, is catering for the cities and the towns. With the idea prevailing in the country that only cities and towns are being catered for, is it any wonder that there is a growing desire on the part of people living in the country to go to the cities and to the towns? I ask the Minister to keep that suggestion in mind and to co-operate with the Minister for Industry and Commerce in the matter of the giving of building licences so that material may be available for the people in the country who set seriously about catering for those who want more housing facilities. I know of one particular parish in my constituency in which there are 30 houses with two families in each. I know also of quite a few where a young married man is living with his parents and his young wife is living with her parents. There are, also, cases in Kerry where there are as many as from six to 11 people living in two-roomed houses. I have taken note of a number of these cases and I think that the Minister would be well advised to look into the matter.
Two-roomed houses in Kerry?
Where are they?
I will give the Deputy the names and addresses.
I do not want the names and addresses.
I know where there is one house with a family living in one room.
I do not know any two-room houses in Kerry and I know it pretty well.
It is a good while since the Deputy left Kerry.
It is a good while.
When he returns to Kerry he does not travel through the country, as I do. I have collected my information going from parish to parish in South Kerry. I do not know as well as the Deputy may know that part of South Kerry where the Deputy was born but I am saying that in East Kerry what I say is absolutely correct and, if the Deputy consults the county medical officer of health and asks him how many applicants there are for each labourer's cottage which becomes vacant, it will bring home to him that there is a greater scarcity of houses in Kerry at the moment than probably there is in any other county in Ireland, including Dublin, and I will let Dublin City go in with the county.
I want to impress on the Minister that he should make a survey of the counties, keeping in mind the number of cottages which have been built for the past 15 years, and that he should encourage those councils that have been most lax in living up to their duty of providing labourers cottages to start now and to avail of the new grants when this Bill becomes law to provide houses, of which there is an extraordinary scarcity in parts of rural Ireland. I have in mind the county and the constituency that I represent. Judging by the number of people who have called on me and have written to me in connection with this new Bill, I am quite satisfied that the Bill will give the greatest fillip possible to the building of new houses. I wish the Minister 100 per cent. success in his efforts to solve the housing problem.
I think it is true to say that in no aspect of our life do the changed conditions since 1939 appear so strikingly as they do in relation to housing. Whether we examine the question from the point of view of the large number of applicants for houses, which has increased considerably since 1939, or whether we consider the problem from the point of view of the cost of houses, does not really matter. The fact is that conditions have changed out of all recogaition. The cost of material and labour for house construction of any kind, coupled with the scarcity of many commodities, has aggravated the housing problem. In addition, of course, the almost complete cessation of building during the emergency period has resulted in an accumulation of applicants for houses far greater than any experienced before.
The problem in Dublin and district is. I think, more acute than it ever was and merits consideration from a number of angles. No matter how rapidly houses of any type are provided, whether they are constructed by private builders or by private individuals, or by local authorities, the demand for them exceeds supply and, apparently, will continue to exceed any prospect of supply in future. So acute is the problem that it should be tackled from an entirely different angle. Efforts should be made to reduce the aggregation of individuals living in Dublin and district and drastic steps should be taken to decentralise in so far as possible industrial development.
Many Deputies have commented on the fact that the enormous growth of Dublin and district is a serious problem and operates to the detriment of the country. Any Deputy who represents Dublin City or County subscribes entirely to that view. Not merely is it operating to the detriment of the country, but it is affecting considerably the whole organisation and the whole problem, not merely of housing but of ancillary services in Dublin City and County.
The problem which the local authorities have to face has been considerably increased as a result of the increased influx of population to the Dublin area. The population figures published last year of the census in 1946 show that there is one-fifth of the entire populaof the country in Dublin district. That is not confined to Dublin City. It extends outside the city but, nevertheless, it shows how serious the problem is and how difficult it must be to attempt a solution of that problem. There is, of course, at the present time a serious shortage of houses of all types. The effect of the war has accentuated that in many ways and it is possible that for certain categories of houses the operation of the Rent Restrictions Act has also contributed, in forcing certain builders who would normally let these houses to sell them, as they find that with increased costs and increased burdens of all kinds, it is more profitable when they construct houses to put them on the market rather than make them available for letting.
To suggest, however, that because the Rent Restrictions Act operates in this way it should be repealed, ignores entirely the other aspect of the problem, namely, that a very large number of people in cities and towns would find themselves completely without any prospect of housing accommodation, and the immediate effect of decontrol would be to place those people on the public highway. It is, of course, recognised that the operations of the rent restrictions code should be accompanied by a control on the selling price of houses. I think that two commissions sat in England on this problem and considered it very fully and, so far as I am aware, little effort has been made so far to operate any such restrictions there. The operation of any restrictions on the selling price of houses inevitably leads to other problems, but taking the whole matter and weighing one drawback against another, I think public opinion generally is definitely in favour of the continuation of the rent restriction code, despite its disabilities.
I would like to refer to a couple of matters to which I think little attention has been paid in the past. A certain minimum standard requirement should be enforced. Since the end of the war, the Minister for Industry and Commerce has had a number of committees considering this problem and last year, under the Industrial Research and Standards Act, a certain consultative council was established to consider different aspects of the whole question. So far as one can gather, any general operation of any system of control or inspection whereby minimum standards would be made obligatory is to a considerable extent very slight and any inspection carried out is of a cursory nature and no definite minimum standards are demanded.
Having seen and examined a considerable number of houses erected both by private builders and by contractors for local authorities, I have been struck by the lack of proper workmanship and the generally bad standard of a number of these houses. I recently examined houses erected by the Dublin County Council in 1938. They are not yet ten years up and they are now in need of radical repairs. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that unless radical repairs are carried out, they will never last another ten years. When public money is voted and public grants are made available for any purpose, but in particular on a matter of this kind, it is our responsibility and the responsibility of the Department of Local Government to see that the workmanship and the materials used are the best available and that they comply with certain minimum specifications. Unless we insist on that and unless the local authorities are obliged to enforce these minimum standards, it is largely a waste of public money and the added cost to the Exchequer or the local authority, as the case may be, or possibly to the occupant, will increase considerably and add to a burden which at the present time is big enough, without these additions, which could be avoided.
I believe the Department of Local Government must enforce certain minimum standards or specifications and that these should apply both to private builders and to houses constructed for local authorities under contract. In many parts of County Dublin, houses at the present time are being erected without adequate water or sewerage service. It is, of course, a nice question to decide whether houses should be erected and these services added afterwards if they are not already available. It is a source of worry to a number of people who already live in districts where the services are barely adequate, to find that because permission is granted to builders or private individuals to build houses, the water or sewerage service available there is not adequate to carry the added burden of a number of new houses. In certain cases, the Dublin County Council refused permission to these applicants, but on appeal to the Department of Local Government they were granted permission. Where the engineers or the town planning authority refuses permission, only for the gravest reason should the Department of Local Government overrule that, particularly when it is based on technical knowledge and the advice of technical experts.
Other Deputies have referred to the question of the 1,250 square feet floor space. A great case can be made now for raising that limitation. When that 1,250 was decided on, our approach to many problems was very different from what it is to-day. In many houses bathrooms were then a novelty, but they are now commonly accepted in almost every house. Local authorities throughout the country are now inviting tenders from builders for cottages with bathrooms and if that is the case for houses erected by local authorities, surely it is reasonable that private builders or those seeking grants under this Bill should have a higher floor space than 1,250 square feet? Deputy Ua Donnchadha suggested that the floor space should be raised to 1,500 square feet. I think it should, and even higher. When we are dealing with the problem at all, and in particular when we are approaching it from the long-term point of view, we might as well plan for better houses and for houses with the most modern facilities. For that reason, I believe that the limitation of 1,250 square feet is entirely out of date and in no way complies with present conditions or requirements.
It is questionable whether, with all the added cost of materials and other incidentals, the grants proposed in this Bill are adequate. It is never popular to suggest increased expenditure, but if there is one thing which people in this country would welcome or support to the very limit, it is increased expenditure on housing. While I do not want at this stage to become controversial, there are many items under which public moneys are at the present time being spent where savings could be made without any serious drawback to the interests of the people or of the country generally. Those savings could be made available in order to increase the housing grants, whether it be by raising the actual amount of the grant or the grant in respect of floor space.
The only other point is the operative date on which grants will become payable. I cannot understand why this Bill was not introduced two years ago. The war is over now for about two and a half years. If one considers the number of houses that have been constructed since then it must be admitted, I think, that the number of houses built privately has been relatively larger than the number erected by local authorities. If we are to overcome the acute shortage of houses, the grants should be payable at least from the 1st January, 1947, and preferably from the 1st January, 1946. This Housing Bill was due at the end of the war. For some unknown reason it has not made its appearance until now, and I suppose if a general election were not in the offing, we would not have seen it even now. In view of the conditions which prevail, and the fact that a measure of this kind is already overdue, the operative date I suggest should be put back to the beginning of this year, and more properly I would say to the beginning of 1946.
Did I understand the Deputy to say that the number of private houses built in the last couple of years has exceeded the number built by local authorities?
Yes, relatively.
I welcome the Bill, and I do so on behalf of a considerable number of citizens, particularly those who availed of the facilities provided under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. I am glad the Minister has acceded to the request that was made to him by numerous Deputies when the Estimate for his Department was going through the House last May by increasing the ceiling for advances under this measure. I still think that he would have been well advised if he had given 100 per cent increase. There is the new disease that is spreading throughout the length and breadth of the land which is known as "more". There are demands for more and more money for everything, but there is no question of where it is to come from. We have to make up our minds that the all-important problem of housing our people is going to cost money, and that that money can only come out of the pool in which there is a definite amount.
I think the Minister would be well advised to give a No. 1 priority to house-building — I mean over all other sections of the building trade — because I feel there is a very considerable amount of luxury building taking place that could well afford to wait for the next few years. If that were done, it would give those of us who are members of local public bodies an opportunity of grappling with the all-important problem of providing houses for the people. As a matter of fact, I am a member of two local authorities and both have to deal with this housing question. We meet the claimants for houses day after day, and we know how acute this problem is. I cannot see for the life of me how we are going to house the people of the country unless there is some determined effort made to deal with the problem.
I would suggest that the Minister for Local Government, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Finance should come together and try to solve the problem of housing costs. Since this debate started I have been listening to the speeches made by other members of the House, and I was surprised to find that no Deputy dealt with the cost of house building. I have here before me some figures which bring out in striking contrast the cost of house building. In 1937 we were able to build a house for £290. The same type of house to-day is costing us £1,200. Every member of the House is well aware that, in the intervening period, there has not been a 300 per cent. increase in the cost of labour or in the cost of any material which goes into the construction of a house with the possible exception of timber.
The figures given by the Deputy do not represent a 300 per cent. increase. What is the value of money?
We are not now discussing the value of money. We are discussing the price of materials that go to construct a house. I am talking of the actual cost. Apart from being a public representative, I have done some house building myself. I wonder if this problem could be faced by making a national appeal to all the interests concerned? I would start with the labourer and the artisan, the builders' supplier, the contractor and the Department itself. If something is not done in that direction I am afraid that we simply cannot house the people.
I have here some figures which, I think will convince the Minister that this is a problem which no local authority can continue to deal with, not even the Dublin Corporation with all its wealth. We in Drogheda at the present time have a scheme of 30 houses. The all-in cost is £1,100 each. We are getting a grant of £300 from the Transition Development Fund. That brings the figure down to £805 to which is to be added a sum of £234 from other sources, which brings the net cost to £571. The basic rent of that house will be 12/- per week. Rates will represent 2/7 per week, so that the total will be 14/7 per week. Where is the working man who would be able to pay a rent of 14/7 a week? I know the Minister will ask me, what contribution is the local authority making to this problem. My answer is that in this particular case our contribution is approximately 2/- per week per house. That is the position in a provincial town with a population of 16,000 people. It also has to be considered that we have in hands the preparation of a scheme for the building of some 250 houses. When all these figures are totted up, they will give the Minister, I am sure, some insight into the financial burdens which are facing local bodies so far as housing is concerned. For the reasons that I have put forward, I suggest that something should be done to investigate the cost of materials, and the cost of labour, making, of course, a fair allowance for the contractor's profits. Nobody could expect a man to work for nothing. I would not expect any man to do that, and certainly not a building contractor. I feel from experience that the poorest amongst us are the people who must bear this burden in the long run. It is the people on the small incomes who must meet these rents, in the vast majority of cases, at all events.
Section 26 sets out:
A housing authority (being the council of a county borough or the council of the borough of Dún Laoghaire) may and, if required by the Minister, shall provide reserved houses for occupation by persons of a particular class.
I presume the particular class referred to are newly-married couples and I seriously suggest to the Minister that that section should be amended so as to make it apply to all towns having a population of 12,000 or over. In towns like Drogheda and Dundalk, there are very large number of young people employed in the new industries set up by the much-despised Fianna Fáil Government who simply cannot get housing accommodation. It is not their fault. When a scheme of houses is completed, naturally the people with the larger families living in the worst conditions get preference. There may be a shift around when some of the old houses become vacant, but up to the present the landlord was not permitted to relet. Under this Bill, there is a hope that we will be able to repair some of these older houses which may then possibly accommodate some of the younger people. I suggest that towns of 12,000 population and over should have the same facilities in this respect as the county boroughs or borough of Dún Laoghaire. It is a problem which cannot be easily got over, but I know its seriousness because I am very often approached by young married people who want to know what they are to do, and it is deplorable that, when young people marry, they must stay with their respective parents. Unless we get the same privileges under this section as county boroughs and the borough of Dún Laoghaire, I can see no hope of solving that problem.
I hope the public bodies throughout the country will give this new measure a fair trial and will get all the benefits they possibly can from it for the people whom they represent. I am very glad that, generally speaking, the Bill has received a warm welcome from all sides of the House, with the exception of the Leader of the Opposition, who tabled an amendment designed to postpone the Bill for six months. He said that, in six months' time, there would be a Government in office which would do something else with it. I have no hesitation in saying that, if Deputy Mulcahy is to be at the head of that Government, it is not for six months it will be delayed but rather six years, and his plea then will be, as it was in the past: "We must wait until prices come down." I hope that is not going to happen.
With regard to Deputy Dillon's sarcasm and his criticism of the Fianna Fáil utility societies, as he described them, the fact is that our housing programme over the last 15 years is nothing short of a red rag to a bull in Deputy Dillon's case. That is his trouble. We have made such a success of our housing policy that it gives rise to envy and jealousy rather than honest criticism on Deputy Dillon's part.
I give a very hearty welcome to this measure and I do not even suggest that it is overdue. It may be overdue in relation to the number of persons awaiting houses but, in the other sense, the purely economic sense, it is timely enough, when one has regard to the financial resources of the country. The Minister will, I think, readily agree with me when I say that the facilities provided by the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act, which, according to the First Schedule of this Bill, is to be repealed, were very welcome at the time. It was a very welcome sign of the times that people banded themselves together, people who, because of the lack of a proper or comprehensive definition of the word "working-class", were precluded from occupying the houses built by local authorities and which were let at fairly reasonable rents. Under that Act, public utility societies built a number of houses and I think it will be conceded that not alone did these societies satisfy a want in the matter of houses but, in addition, their action was of a character-building type.
The Minister will agree with me again when I say that the ambition of many of these people, sometimes called the white-collar fraternity or white-collar workers, was to own a house of their own. That is a very laudable ambition and these people showed a very good public spirit and, in my view, are amongst the best in our community. They have some little stake in the country because of their interests and efforts. People with fixed incomes are to-day the least able to bear many of the financial burdens placed upon them.
The last Deputy who spoke mentioned the increased cost of building, with particular reference to building materials. I do not propose to deal with the prices of these materials, because I am not too well versed in the building trade, but I have had contracts with people in the trade, honest people, who tell me that the cost, even to-day, of building a house, due almost entirely to the high cost of materials, is prohibitive. Anybody who takes up the papers will see reports of the meetings of various public bodies who, in many cases have not even got tenders for works advertised, all going to show that builders and builders' providers are not the racketeers or the profiteers that people seem to think.
I should like the Minister to tell us what is meant by Section 17 (1) which speaks of grants in respect of the erection of houses "for occupation by a person of the working classes or an agricultural labourer." The type of person I refer to is the person who engaged in building through the medium of a public utility society, and I should like to see that kind of effort encouraged rather than discouraged, as it may be to some extent under this Bill. I think the Minister had some doubt in his mind as to the building of these houses by private enterprise.
Now I am an individualist. I do not believe for a moment that the local authorities could build at a cheaper rate. Reference has been made to some houses in County Dublin which were built about ten years ago and which are now almost about to collapse if they are not immediately attended to. These houses will be the subject of very expensive repairs. Somebody must have blundered there. They either had an inefficient clerk of works, or there was some swindle somewhere, when houses built for a public authority such a short time ago are now tumbling down. We have that on the authority of the Dublin representatives. I feel that if these houses were constructed by one of the builders here in Dublin there would be a public outcry. We know, of course, that in the building trade, as in every other trade, there are unscrupulous people. I am sure that the Minister and the local authorities will see to it that any houses erected under the present scheme will be supervised by a competent clerk of works or an engineer who will see to it that the materials provided for in the Estimate will be put into the buildings.
We have heard a good deal here about the flight from the land. We have been told that the people in the rural areas have not received adequate treatment in the matter of housing comparable to that of the cities and towns. Deputy Ua Donnchadha must know as well as I do that one reason for that is because of the drift from the rural areas into the towns. Cork City suffers in the same way as does Dublin. If these people were properly housed it might help to stop the drift from the land but I feel myself that some Deputies fail to realise the amount of money devoted by way of subsidy to agriculture, and so on, which flows into the rural areas. One need only examine the Estimates to discover that. The rural areas are very heavily subsidised indeed.
My main concern is to learn the approximate date upon which it is proposed to start the building of these houses, or the approximate date upon which it is proposed to advertise for tenders. I do not suppose that the Minister can give us exact information on that point but he can give us some approximate date as to the time when we may hope to see building commence.
In introducing this Bill, the Minister informed us that it was his intention to bring in differental rents in these housing schemes. That system has been in operation in Cork City for a number of years. I think Cork was the pioneer in that respect. At the time it was initiated I felt it was a very courageous experiment but I also felt that it might create a lot of nosey parkers spying on one another. However, I discovered that my suspicions in that respect were completely unfounded. When I made inquiry in the proper quarter I was told that the scheme had been remarkably successful. The amount of arrears outstanding is very low. Taken all round it has worked out very satisfactorily. I trust the same experiment will be equally successful in Dublin and elsewhere.
As the Minister is aware, a number of persons built houses under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. At the end of a certain period they discovered that they would not be able to buy out their ground rents. I would like the Minister to give us some indication of his views on this matter. Is it possible that the local authorities who purchased the land would be enabled to sell the ground rents at the end of a specified period? Many tenants feel that they would like to call not only the house their own but also the land on which it is built.
An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.
There is just one point I would like to make. I think it is a great hardship that people in the rural areas who started building operations three or six months prior to the 1st November are eligible only for the smaller grant. The fact they only commenced operations six months prior to the 1st November was due to scarcity of building materials. I think the Minister should make it retrospective for six or 12 months before that date, particularly in regard to the rural areas.
I merely want to mention the case of the purchased cottages vested in the tenants, particularly under the older scheme. I think that these should qualify for reconstruction grants. Many of the tenants of labourers' cottages are reluctant to purchase because of the fact that after the first letting responsibility devolves upon them for the repair of these houses. I think it would be an advantage to the local authorities as well as to the tenants to become the owners of their own houses in the first instance by stimulating the operation of the Cottage Purchase Acts while making them responsible for their own homes. Generally, it takes the full rent value of the cottages to execute the repairs plus the added difficulty of getting skilled operatives to do the work owing to the quantity of building construction on hands. I welcome the Bill because it will facilitate those of our citizens who wish to become owners of their own houses. I think those who have shown initiative by carrying on building in the last two difficult years should have their efforts recognised by being given grants in the same way as those who have had houses built for letting.
Another provision that I welcome in this measure is the facility given for the employment of direct labour by local authorities. I think there should be a special building section under every local authority. The speculative builders to-day are getting such high prices for their houses that they are able to pay their operatives even more than the trade union allows, thereby attracting skilled tradesmen to their schemes. Again, every effort must be made to attract our own skilled operatives back again from across the water. Many of them are coming home at the present time because they have found that in most cases the rates are as advantageous as those beyond the Irish Sea.
I think also that the building of houses should stand on its own financial foundations and that the subsidising of housing schemes from rating sources ought to be again examined. While I would not take the control of building or anything like that from the local authorities and put it into the hands of a semi-Government Department, I think it would be a wise thing to examine the scheme to see that such financial backing as is necessary would be put at the disposal of these authorities by the Government. The Minister has promised a White Paper dealing with the whole matter in the near future and then the Dáil will have a better chance of examining these particular aspects of this most important problem.
This Bill will possibly increase the number of houses that will be built in the future and I think everyone will wecome the terms contained in it. Personally, I think it should act as a fillip to the building of houses. I should, however, like to issue this warning to the House, that, just as Rome was not built in a day, we should not expect as a result of this Bill that thousands of houses will be built overnight. That will take time and money. I say that because of various suggestions made, owing to the scarcity or alleged scarcity of skilled labour, that people who are outside the industry should be brought into it in order to be in a position to proceed much more quickly with the erection of houses. I should like to sound a warning note on that. We will be very lucky if we can formulate a continuous programme for the next five or six years. If we can build a certain number of houses each year, I think we will be doing very well.
On the other hand, if we take advantage of the boom in the building industry and take thousands into that industry who have not been in it before and never were connected with it, what will happen when this boom comes to an end, as it must come to an end? I do not think that it would be good policy to bring a lot of people into the building industry who have not been in it previously. I think this scarcity of labour has been magnified to a large extent. We all recognise that builders are not philanthropists and that when they take a contract it is up to them to get the work finished as soon as possible. Each builder will be out to get the largest number of men possible on a particular contract. At times, owing to the amount of work in hands, it may be difficult to find men. At the same time, there may be several men who are looking for employment. It is very hard to reconcile the two things. I put that down to the fact that everybody wants to get the work done at the same time. We will have to have patience and, no matter what money is advanced by this Government or any other Government, the provision of houses for the working classes will take time.
There are one or two matters I should like to refer to. One is the proposal for the differentiation of rents. I think that is a very good provision to have inserted in the Bill — that we should give the various councils the option of a sliding scale, so to speak, so far as the rent of houses is concerned. Undoubtedly, this experiment has worked fairly successfully in Cork and in many cities in England. There is no use in denying that we come across certain people who were previously housed in what one would call a slum house whose weekly earnings are as great if not greater than the earnings of people who lived in a tolerably good house and who do not come under the 66? per cent. provision. It would be a good thing if this question of the differentiation of rents was looked at from the Christian point of view. If a man has a weekly income which enables him to pay a few shillings extra in rent, he should not have any grudge if, by doing so, he is helping some other man who is not in such a favourable position. I think that is a very good power to give to the local authorities, if they desire to put such a scheme into operation. My idea as to the ability to pay rent is this. A bun even at a 1d. is dear if a man has not got the 1d. and it is cheap at a 1/- if the man has the 1/-. The same thing applies to rents.
Large numbers of people at present are prepared to pay a fairly decent rent if they can get a house. I do not see any reason why these people should not be allowed to rent a house. We are too fond of talking about people who cannot afford to pay rent, or who have not the will to pay any rent at all, and thus keeping back the provision of houses for men who are prepared to pay. We cannot have our loaf and eat it. We cannot have very high wages and expect to get cheap houses. Some Deputies are creating an awkward situation by saying that things can be done which they know cannot be done. A house which could be built ten or 12 years ago for £350 now costs £1,100 or £1,200. There is no use in talking about the rents that obtained at that time and having the same rents to-day. I should not like to see any man paying a farthing more than he is in a position to pay. But we must face the position as it stands and bear in mind the resources of the country; that we have to distribute justice all over and be fair to every section of the people.
One or two Deputies referred to the question of labourers cottages. That is a very ticklish question. Deputies would be surprised to know that tenants who have purchased their cottages are not so soft when they come to sell them. They require the highest amount they can get. They make sure that they will get all they can. That is one of the things I do not want to dwell upon. I welcome this Bill but I should like to say that it will take time to put all its provisions into operation. In the course of a few years, when materials are available, I hope that there will be a sufficient number of houses to meet all the needs of the people. That, of course, will depend to a large extent on the supply of materials. At the moment it is not a question of money but a question of supplies. So far as cement is concerned, if you were willing to pay £5 for a bag of cement you would hardly get it unless you had a priority claim. That should convince Deputies that everything in the garden is not lovely.
In fact in the Dundalk area, in the Drogheda area and all over the country, there are roads up for the last three or six months ready for concreting but a bag of cement cannot be procured to finish these roads. That should bring home to all concerned that the progress that will be made in regard to the provision of housing in the immediate future depends to a very large extent on the supply of materials at hand. It is fortunate that during the last year we have been in a position to import large quantities of timber suitable for the building of houses. That was one of the great difficulties in the past and I am glad to know, judging by a circular sent out by the Minister, that supplies of timber will be sufficient to meet most, if not all, of the needs.
Put it this way — supplies of timber at the moment are plentiful and, therefore, local authorities should lay in a stock.
As I say, I welcome this Bill but I say again that the future will depend on the co-operation given by the people concerned. If I might make a plea, without singling out any particular section, I would say to those people engaged in the building industry — I am not going to mention anyone in particular — that they should bear in mind that it is not all millionaires who will occupy these houses, that some of the people who will occupy them are in poor circumstances. A recognition of that fact alone should impress on those people that at least during the next 12 months public bodies and those who intend to build houses should be assured at least that the cost will not go any higher than it is at present. I make that suggestion in the hope that the costs so far as building houses are concerned will be kept stationary, at least during the next 12 months, so that this old country of ours, which has suffered very much during the last 20 years through various causes, will get a chance to recuperate so that we may be in a position again to provide for all the needs of our people in regard to housing.
Apart altogether from the observations which were made as to the merits or demerits of this measure, which I am glad to say the House as a whole, irrespective of Party, welcomes, there were one or two Deputies whose speeches suggested that a vast quantity of materials, which should be used for the construction of houses, was being diverted to less desirable and unessential purposes. I should like to say at the outset that there is no foundation whatsoever for that suggestion. It is true that we are building other things as well as houses in the State, but, in erecting these buildings, we are not using any of the materials which are in short supply and which are essential for the construction of houses.
First of all, there are no new luxury cinemas being constructed or no new luxury entertainment centres, and there never have been what have been described grandiloquently as luxury hotels per se built in this country. What have been described as luxury hotels by those who have been critics of the Government are old, unused, uninhabited mansions which otherwise might have crumbled to decay, which were unsuitable for any other purpose —largely because of their situation and their design — and which have been taken over to house people after the manner and in accordance with the purpose for which these houses were first constructed. It was considered by the Minister responsible, and by the organisation which has been set up under an Act of the Oireachtas, that it was better to take these over and to utilise them profitably for the benefit of the people of this country, particularly for the benefit of the primary producers of this country, than to allow them to continue vacant, closed, disused and, as I have said, crumbling to decay.
These hotels are, in fact, among our best shop windows, our best and most profitable selling agencies for these primary products of our land, which we have in surplus supply. I remember—and I am an old Sinn Féiner, unlike a great many of our critics— when Arthur Griffith used to condemn the cattle trade of this country because it was the least profitable way in which we might turn to our advantage the natural increase of our flocks and herds. He pointed out how unprofitable it was that we should sell our beef, as he used to say, on the hoof, exporting all the by-products and all the offals and giving to other people the labour and the employment that arose when live stock was converted into an edible commodity. Here in these old mansions, which have been described for propaganda purposes as luxury hotels, we are selling our beef, not in that least profitable way which Arthur Griffith criticised and condemned — on the hoof — but we are selling it and serving it on the table. In doing so, we are reserving and retaining in this country all the by-products that are associated with the live-stock industry — the hides, the bones and everything that comes from the cow except its low and everything that comes from the sheep except its bleat. In addition to that, we are giving to our own people all the employment that arises from killing the beast, from cooking and from serving the meat. We are doing all this, let me repeat, without encroaching in any way upon the supply of materials that are so essential and are so urgently needed to supply our own people with houses. What I have said in regard to these so-called luxury hotels applies likewise to the cinemas and other places of public entertainment, some of which may have been reconstructed or remodelled, but none of which upon any considerable scale, have been built as new projects since the emergency arose.
Are you sure of that?
Certainly. The only one I know of belongs to an organisation with which the Deputy has, shall we say, a fraternal association; the only luxury ballroom I know of in this city that has been built during the period of the emergency is what is known as the Four Provinces Ballroom. It is a ballroom belonging to a trade union, the Irish Union of Bakers, and it is managed by a trade union as a profitable commercial concern.
It is not a new building; it was an old church.
An old church with a very new front. It amuses me, as the Minister responsible for the housing of the working classes, to read, week after week in the Irish People, articles condemning me because I am alleged to have permitted luxury building in the City of Dublin, and to see there side by side with the editorials of the Irish People a quarter page, sometimes two columns, of advertisements for the Four Provinces Ballroom, owned and managed by a trade union, by the Irish Bakers' trade union.
It is a damn shame, is it not?
No, I do not think so because, after all, I am not as puritanical as Deputy Davin is. I think that from a social point of view it is a very good thing that we should have properly constructed and properly managed places of public resort to which people can go for amusement, recreation and relaxation. I think— and I am not a pussyfoot — that it is very desirable that the young people of to-day, unlike the young people of a generation or two ago, should have some alternative to the public house and, therefore, I do not think the country loses very much if we do provide them with decent and comfortable places of resort to which they may go in the evenings.
I am not one of those who have criticised the people who go to these places of amusement and public resort, provided they are properly conducted and properly laid out and managed, so that no abuse will arise. That has been my attitude, but that is not the attitude of the new puritans who go around either in red coats or pink ties and who have suddenly developed the Cromwellian idea that there is something immoral and improper in dancing and amusement and general public conviviality.
I was proceeding to point out this, that so far as these places of public entertainment and resort are concerned, they do not use in any great measure, in any significant measure, any of the essential materials which are required for the building of houses. Picture houses and dance halls in the City of Dublin are built of concrete and steel. Public by-laws will not permit timber to be used for ordinary constructional purposes in the building or the erection of cinemas or of dance halls and we do not use steel in any considerable way in the erection of houses. In fact, unless in certain exceptional cases, we do not use it at all. We do not use cast iron seats and we do not use any of the other appliances or accessories which you find in places of public amusement, so that so far as this so-called luxury building is concerned, it does not in any way encroach upon the supplies of materials which are available for the erection of ordinary dwelling-houses.
That is the first point I want to get home. The next point is this, that in so far as there has been any reconstruction of places of entertainment in the City of Dublin or elsewhere, this reconstruction in most cases has been carried out in order that these places may be made safer and more secure and free from risk for the ordinary people, the patrons who frequent them. The third point I want to make is that the amount of reconstruction which has been carried out on these places of public entertainment has been comparatively little; that they, in fact, so far as all classes of building materials are concerned, have used very little. The building licences which have been issued for recreation buildings, including dance halls and cinemas and so on, are only 1.9 per cent. of licences to a total value of £12,330,000 which have been issued for the last 11 or 12 months, while the number of licences issued for house-building amounted to 50.2 per cent. of the total building and construction licences issued over the period. To this we might add the 14.8 per cent. issued in respect of new factories, so that there is no substance in the sort of criticism which we heard here from some Deputies in the debate on this Bill, and certainly no substance in the criticisms we hear so commonly outside, that essential materials required for house-building are being diverted to other less essential and less desirable purposes.
The fact of the matter is that the requirements of public authorities and the house-building industry generally are given first priority over every other type of constructional activity and, of course, in that regard we have to remember this, that when we come to consider the control of any activity and when we come to try to make any sort of plan in relation to any industry, any undertaking, or any section of the community, the plan must be a balanced one and we must have due advertence to the fact that every element in the community, including the people who find their livelihood in the service of their fellow citizens whether as hotel workers, as amusement workers or as builders or manufacturers catering for those trades, has a right to live in this country the same as everybody else. We cannot, by closing down on their legitimate activities, deprive them of their livelihood, cause them to be disemployed, and drive them, perhaps, out of the country to another country where they will find a ready demand for their services. It would be indeed a short-sighted policy if, to cater for one section of the community we were to beggar other people and cast out of employment good citizens, law-abiding citizens, industrious citizens, who are making their livelihood in a perfectly legitimate way catering for the pleasures as well as the needs of their fellow citizens.
These, Sir, are some aspects of the problem which I would like those who have been making such a catch-cry of this rather tendentious phrase "luxury buildings" to turn over in their own minds, because when they talk of that, I hope that those who hear them will consider what they are going to say to the waiters, chambermaids, waitresses, boots and all the other people who find employment in Irish hotels, what they are going to say to the electricians, usherettes, operators and all the other people engaged in the cinema industry who find their livelihood in catering for the amusements and pleasures of the people in a perfectly legitimate way. Let those people who are talking in this way and who are creating public prejudice remember that these are all enterprising people who want to make their wares more attractive to the public and that the critics of the Government are saying to them: "Shut down and turn your employees out of a job". I know very well that a number of trade unions in the City of Dublin have no sympathy with the gentlemen who are making slick political propaganda out of that catch-cry.
Sir, in the course of the debate I was very considerably intrigued to find that the sober critics of the Opposition Benches who have criticised this Government because they have been spending too much money and who have cried out that we have imposed too heavy burdens on the people were almost unanimous, indeed were unanimous, with the exception of Deputy Coburn, in demanding that we should give greater grants for everything to everybody in this Bill. The generous grants which have been given are not considered sufficient by the members of the Opposition. Deputies Hughes, Blowick, Byrne and the rest tell us that we are not giving enough. They will tell us that now when we are conferring real and substantial benefits on the people, but when the bill is presented at the end of March and people are called upon to raise the funds by the next Budget to pay for it, then, of course, the cry will go up from the Opposition Benches about these squandermaniacs who are in control of the Government. The very gentlemen who have been pressing us to spend more money yesterday evening and to-night will be the first to condemn us because more money will have been spent and more funds will have to be found, because of the generous assistance given in this Bill to private individuals to build houses for themselves. Then we will not hear any demands to raise the grants. The gentlemen who are Phillip drunk to-night will be Phillip sober then.
You will not be over there then; you will be over here on this side.
You will not be here at all then. I do not know where I will be and neither does the Deputy. I am certain when the people are given the choice between us and those people who blow hot and cold, who say one thing to-day and another to-morrow, who get up in the House and slander all round them and then run away from it outside, the people will realise that they now have a Government composed of men of character and reputation and they are not going to select any alternative that will be offered to them at the next general election.
What does "slander" mean to you? Look up Chamber's dictionary.
The meaning of slander to me is very much more pregnant and very much clearer than it ever has been to the Deputy. I do not want, Sir, to go back and remind the Deputy of what he said about other people including myself under the shadow and shelter of this House. I was merely pointing out that the very people who have been complaining about the alleged inadequacy of these grants are the people who are going to condemn us when we have to raise the money to provide those grants.
In the course of the debate, the suggestion was made that, because in our system of grants we were differentiating between houses with a piped water supply and sewerage and houses which lacked these facilities, we were in some way discouraging the installation of piped water and sewerage facilities, by giving larger grants to houses equipped with these very facilities. Now, Sir, that only indicates the sort of warped mentality which characterises most of the members of the Opposition. I should have thought that the plain significance of the fact that we were giving £50 more to people who propose to equip their house with piped water and sewerage facilities is that we were at least encouraging the installation of those amenities which are now regarded as ordinary facilities.
The phraseology of the measure states, where piped water supply and sewerage facilities are available, and not where a person proposes to put them in.
But a person can make them available. Is there anything in the Schedule or in this Bill or in any administrative decision which a Minister has given here in respect of any housing Act which would prevent a person from putting in a septic tank, providing himself with piped water supply from a well and equipping himself with a storage tank? Deputy Sheldon perhaps, probably like some other Deputy may be misled. If there is any doubt in the mind of any Deputy as to what our intention is in that regard we shall clear it up on the Committee Stage with a suitable amendment. The purpose, in fact, of this differentiation is to encourage people to provide themselves so far as they can with the proper sewerage facilities. Not only that. We know that in many places such provision as they may make in present circumstances is likely to be a temporary expedient. They must have a source of water supply close to hand. They must utilise it in the best way possible and they must adopt the expedient of a septic tank as a substitute for a water-borne sewerage system. Deputies should not forget that we people work to a plan and work to a design. We do not go along improvising from one day to another, just trying to think out some sort of cheap stunt that will appeal to the popular imagination at a particular time: We have already set up a technical committee consisting of persons who are technically qualified, in association with persons who have experience of administration, to investigate the practical problems involved in the provision of a piped water supply for the rural areas in this country. As a corollary to that and in association with it we have also set up another committee which is investigating the feasibility of disposing of our local sewage in a particular way.
In anticipation that something fruitful will emerge as a result of these committees we are, naturally, endeavouring to direct the attention of those who are going to build houses in rural areas to the necessity for equipping them with a piped water supply and proper sanitary arrangements. I hope that those Deputies who have spoken critically about this differentiation will recast their opinions in that matter and will realise that, contrary to their contention that we are discouraging the rural community from providing their houses with these essential arrangements, we are going very largely out of our way to encourage them to do so.
We now come to the question of the size of the grants. There have been many complaints that the proposed reconstruction grants are not adequate. There have been other complaints that we have not met the need of every person who feels that he wants a modern, up-to-date house. I suggest that, after all, we ought to look at this problem in a rational way, as rational people. The origin of the Housing Acts was for the purpose of providing houses for the homeless. It is just as much the personal obligation of an individual to provide himself with a house as it is in the case of food and clothing. He should not expect his neighbours to build a better house for him than they can afford to live in themselves. Therefore, in relation to these matters, some curb must be put upon those who would demand extravagant expenditure in regard to the provision of houses. We cannot all afford to live in mansions. We have got to suit our housing accommodation to our own purses and, when the community is providing housing accommodation for some sections of the population, then the cost of the accommodation has to be conditioned by the general resources of the community. There is not a bottomless purse out of which we can draw. We have to have regard to the conditions under which the vast mass of people in this country have to live and have to provide themselves with houses.
When I was introducing this Bill I pointed out that we had something over 600,000 houses in this country and that since 1932 we have built or reconstructed 140,000 of them. That is to say, about 23 per cent. of the total number of houses in this country at the present day have been built or reconstructed under the régime of this Government and they have been built or reconstructed very largely at the expense of the taxpayers of this country. But there is a limit to what the taxpayers can, in justice, be asked to pay. We cannot go on heaping amenity after amenity upon that one section of the population for whom these Housing Acts were intended. We have got to remember the people who have to buy houses for themselves at the ordinary economic prices, or to rent houses for themselves at the ordinary economic rents. We have also to remember that, while we are taxing men in order to reduce the rents for others, they have to provide out of their own resources for their own needs. Therefore we must, as I have said, look at this not from the point of view of trying to secure a little public favour, not from the point of view of catering for the demands of only one section of the people, but as men who have to hold the balance fairly and evenly between all sections of the community—between those people who pay and get no benefit as well as those who are going to secure advantages under this Act. I think that having due regard to all the demands that are being made on the taxpayers of this country at the present moment, upon the producers of this country at the present moment, the scale of grants envisaged in this Bill is as generous as it would be reasonable to ask for.
That leads me to the question of the retrospective grants. I will concede at once that there may be very hard cases, arising from the fact that the limiting date in this Bill in regard to the occupation of houses is the 1st of November. But, push that date back, and you are not going to get rid of hard cases. Make it the 1st July and you will have some person who began to build his house in the middle of June. Make it the 1st April and there will be somebody who began to build in the middle of March. Make it the first day of this year and you will have some person who began to build last year. Go back to last year, and you will have some person who began in 1945. Where are you to stop once you depart from this simple principle that when people began to build their houses under the existing code they did not expect any more than the existing code would allow them to get and you did not induce them to start building by promising them larger grants? They were content to build. I am not going to deny that many of them have been driven to build by hard necessity but, whether they were coerced to build by hard necessity or whether they built under much less compulsion, at any rate, when they started to build they knew what they were going to get under the existing housing code and, therefore, we have been guilty of no breach of faith in regard to them. Before we come to consider this question of making the Bill apply retrospectively to houses that were built before the actual acceptance of the principle of the Bill by this Dáil, we should have to consider at what logical point we should draw a line once we depart from the date that has been fixed in this Bill.
That is something that I have not heard any Deputy who has asked that the limiting date should be pushed back address himself to. We cannot deal with this question arbitrarily. If I am going to have some other date than the 1st November of this year, then I must find some reason why I should take that date rather than some earlier date and some reason which will justify me standing upon that date prior to the 1st November rather than upon a date still earlier. I confess that, though, as I have said, I have a great deal of sympathy for the man who began to build his house, if you like, a little bit prematurely from the point of view of this Bill, but not at all prematurely from the point of view of his own personal need, I find it very difficult to see how I am going to depart from the date which has been put into this Bill. However, that, perhaps, is a matter which may require some further consideration.
Then, again, we had critics of this Bill who condemned it because we were said to be imposing too narrow a restriction upon the floor area. As I pointed out in introducing the Bill, our housing ambitions are being thwarted by reason of the fact that there is an acute shortage of materials and of labour. We are launching a programme which will embrace no less than 100,000 houses and, if we are returned to complete that programme, then the Fianna Fáil Government will have built or reconstructed over 250,000 houses during the periods that it has been in office. We are at the moment envisaging the construction of 100,000 houses and we cannot get materials and we cannot get labour at the present time which will enable us to build, or to have built, under these Acts more than between 3,000 and 4,000 houses per annum. If we are going to enlarge the size of the houses which we are building by increasing the floor space, what are we going to do? We are going to have larger houses and more comfortable houses, certainly, for the people who are going to be lucky enough to get them, but we are going to build very much fewer houses and we are going to condemn people who are already in grevious need of a house to continue to live in their present uncomfortable, undesirable and unsocial conditions. I think we would not be justified, for the sake of benefiting the 10,000 or 20,000 people who might be lucky enough to get in early and to get houses, under this Bill, in reducing the number of houses which will be available to the other 80,000 who are clamouring for them at the present moment. Therefore, I cannot see how in equity or how on any ground of social justice we would be justified in expanding or increasing the floor area which we are insisting will be the maximum floor area within which a house must be built if it is going to qualify for this grant. At least I say this: I cannot see that we would be justified in expanding it in any significant way.
Personally, I have a great deal of sympathy for those people who say we should not restrict the floor area to its present value, that we should allow people to build houses of perhaps 1,500 or 1,600 square feet and still qualify for the grant. I have a great deal of sympathy with that view — a great deal —but, on the other hand, I have to have regard to the fact that the larger the standard house we build the fewer houses we will be able to provide for the people in this period of scarcity and of shortage and, therefore, notwithstanding the sympathy which I have for those who will want a larger house, I must say that, in present circumstances, I think the limit which we have fixed on the floor area of the house is a generous one and one which ought to be received with general satisfaction.
The proposal contained in the Bill that the corporations of the county boroughs and the borough of Dun Laoghaire should be required to provide a certain number of houses for reserved classes of applicants has been generally welcomed in principle by Deputies but, of course, there have been one or two Deputies who, rather than give a welcome to any innovation or any new development upon the part of the Fianna Fáil Government, have been concerned to try to distort and to misrepresent to the people what the intention is. As I pointed out in my opening statement, newly-married couples have found in the City of Dublin, in present housing conditions, great difficulty in finding separate houses and separate housing accommodation for themselves. That is nothing new. I remember when I was married that we had precisely that problem to contend with. I am sure I was not unique in that respect and I am sure it has been the universal experience of people who got married since 1918 and had to live here in the city.
The problem has become more acute by reason of the fact that, in latter years, the marriage rate has gone up and, despite all the lamentations which we hear about the depressed condition of the people of this country, about unemployment, the difficulty of living here and the high cost of living, more marriages have taken place in Dublin over recent years per thousand of the population than there have been, I think, for over fifty years. So far as the marriage rate is concerned, it certainly contradicts and controverts all the sort of propaganda we have had to listen to over the past twelve months or so. Because of this fact that the marriage rate has increased, naturally, newly married people are finding it even more difficult than before to secure houses.
This has been giving me a great deal of concern for a very long period and ultimately I came to the conclusion that, after all, it was primarily the duty of the local community at least to facilitate its own renewal and its own maintenance, and that the local authorities in these large cities where the problem is most acute and most extensive should be required to provide housing accommodation for those who are newly married and who are likely to find difficulty in securing it for themselves. In doing that, I had to consider the resources of the local authorities on the one hand and the availability of building supplies on the other hand, and as a background to all this the acute housing shortage in our large communities. I had to realise that, if we were going to build houses and reserve them for newly married couples, the building materials would only be made available for those houses at the expense of those who had large families, who had been longer married, who were already ill-housed and living under unsanitary and undesirable conditions.
As well as that, I took into account the fact that we were going to cater for young people who were going to establish a home for themselves. I wanted the homes to be as up-to-date and as modern as they possibly could, so that the young housewife would start off under the most favourable conditions, that she would be presented with a modern up-to-date house, easy to run and easy to live in, comfortable for her husband and her children. It was not intended that they should continue to live there for the remainder of their days. The houses would have to be economical in size, so as to reduce as far as possible the demand upon the limited supplies of materials available. They had to be limited in size because they were going to be built, some of them entirely at the expense of the local authority, which would have to charge an economic rent for them, and some of them subsidised by the Government but which, nevertheless, would carry rents higher than those which we might expect the heads of large and growing families or adolescent families to pay.
Therefore, we decided that the houses, while being modern and up-to-date and in every way desirable, should be limited as to their bedroom accommodation — that, in fact, only two bedrooms would be provided. Now, two bedrooms are quite sufficient for a young married couple starting off in life, as they do not have to segregate their children according to sex and they can continue to live in them very comfortably and very happily for a limited number of years. Therefore, because other people would be getting married as the years pass and would be wanting houses, and since we can provide only a limited number of houses in any one year, we had to decide that the initial tenancy would be for a limited period, but not for a short period, and the limit which we have notionally fixed — and it may be extended or it may have to be curtailed slightly — is five years. Now, if we provide newly married couples with good modern houses and give them, if they are satisfactory tenants, a five-year tenancy, surely in that five years they can look out for a larger house as their children are growing up and their families becoming larger?
I do not think there is anything in the point which has been made here by some Deputies who insinuated that we were going to take those people in at the beginning of one year and turn them out at the beginning of the next. Such a proposal, of course, was far from our minds. We have to remember that while there will be from 2,000 to 2,500 people getting married and looking for these houses, in any one year, in every year fresh people will come along looking for them. In the City of Dublin, so far as our present building capacity goes, we cannot build any more than 300 of them. We had to have regard to that factor and, therefore, we will have to say to the prospective tenants: "We will give you your chance and a fair start in married life, by providing you with a good house and we will give you five years within which you can get another and larger one." We are also imposing on the corporation the obligation of providing in their normal housing programme a sufficiency of houses at the end of five years, into which these young married people can be transferred and where they can settle down to make a permanent home if they so desire.
As I have said at the beginning, this is entirely an experimental approach to what is a very serious problem. I hope that the experiment will justify itself. I hope that the corporation of the City of Dublin — which has passed many resolutions demanding that special accommodation be provided for newly married people — will take up this proposal with enthusiasm and sincerity and will help, at any rate, to solve this very pressing and acute problem. If the experiment justifies itself in the larger boroughs, we shall have no hesitation whatever in applying it to other urban areas. Remember, in that connection, that this proposal is very different from the other proposals in this Bill, because this proposal requires the local authority to provide the houses. The other Housing Acts and this Housing Bill give grants to provide houses, but the local authorities will get grants here only in respect of houses which I may describe as class B houses, houses intended for industrious people, who notwithstanding their industry and constant employment, nevertheless could not afford to pay the economic rent which a house of the type I have envisaged and have in mind would carry.
The only other matter that I want to deal with is one that was raised by Deputy Byrne and Deputy de Valera. They referred to the possibility that regulations made under sub-section (1), paragraph (e) of Section 25 might be used to set aside the effect of the judgment in the case of Boland v. the Dublin Corporation. The Deputies have suggested an intention which never occurred to me. I do not propose to interfere with the decision of the court in that matter. The decision, as the Deputy must know, was based on the failure of the corporation to stipulate in the least that the house should be sold only to a person belonging to what are commonly described as the working classes which, in fact, all of us might be said to belong to. I have no intention of using the power which I have to make regulations to effect a legal decision on any question.
Deputy Anthony seemed to criticise me because I proposed to facilitate local authorities who endeavour, in existing circumstances, to carry out housing schemes by direct labour, and seemed to suggest that, in some way, I was reflecting on the efficiency of private enterprise. Well, I am not. I am a believer in private enterprise, but I must face facts, and I have been compelled to conclude that, in present circumstances, the private house-building industry is not able, and has not the capacity, to meet the demands which have been and will be made upon it. Therefore, because we cannot have the local authorities calling for tenders, and calling in vain, in order to get ahead with housing projects which are absolutely essential, I have decided that the only thing to do is to cut the Gordian knot and allow local authorities to go ahead and, where they decide to do it, carry out their schemes by direct labour. I will certainly look on their progress with a very critical eye. I will look on it with a critical eye and a searching eye but at the same time without bias, and if the experiment in that regard justifies itself we may go even further than I contemplate at present. But it is as well for those who are engaged as private undertakers in the building industry to realise that henceforward so far as local authority schemes are concerned they are not going to have the field entirely to themselves: that they will have to go in now and compete with local authorities in certain cases.
Question put and agreed to.
Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 3rd December, 1947.