The Housing Bill, which the Minister introduced this evening, is a modest measure, and I am sure the Minister himself would not describe is as more than a useful little Bill. It contains nothing spectacular, nothing revolutionary, and nothing that might be described as more than questionable. It is the sort of a Bill, tidying up a few odds and ends, which might be introduced pending the introduction of a more comprehensive and a better-considered measure. In that sense we are prepared to accept the Bill and to give it a Second Reading. We do, of course, reserve the right to put down amendments to deal with other deficiencies in the existing codes of legislation which could as readily be dealt with, we believe, in the measure as the specific matters with which it deals.
We hope, however, that the Bill now before the House is not intended to indicate the lines upon which the Government propose to tackle the housing problem in the future. On a Bill of such limited scope as this it would scarcely, I agree, be appropriate to open a general discussion on so complex and difficult a problem as that of housing. Apart from this, however, the schedule of business which the Dáil has adopted for the concluding stages of the session would probably preclude one from opening such a discussion at any length. To do so would obviously be contrary to the spirit of the agreement and would encroach unfairly on the time of the House.
There are, however, one or two broad aspects of the matter which, perhaps, I might touch, upon now. The first of these is that over the years our attack on this problem has consisted very largely of improvisations and variations upon, as musicians might say, two themes, the Labourers Act of 1883 and the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890. These Acts have been the joint foundations of our housing codes. Past housing measures have been based upon them, and the provisions of these codes have been extended and adapted to give a solution of sorts to the pressing housing problems of the day. The consequence, I think, now is that the very important provisions of principal Acts have been so strained that the whole statutory structure is in danger of collapsing. I regret, therefore, to note that the Minister would seem to suggest in his memorandum that nothing is likely to be done before 31st December, 1955, to review in its broad principles and in its general structure the legislation upon which the execution of our future housing programmes is going to depend.
The next development to which serious attention will have to be given is the fact that the financial burden imposed by our housing programmes has already attained proportions which were undreamed of when the basic measures to which I have referred were first enacted. Indeed, we have now come, I think, to the stage at which we may well ask ourselves, can the community continue to carry this burden in the proportions in which it has been allocated hitherto among the various interests involved? The local authorities are already crying out that they and the ratepayers whom they act for cannot continue to accept their present share of it, at least on the present scale. In the majority of cases, the tenants of new houses are proclaiming that they are in the same position, and the very fact that this year the Government find themselves unable to meet their obligations for housing grants out of the ordinary revenue of the year, is in itself a confession that the annual burden is becoming too much, even for the Government.
In these circumstances, surely it is urgent that the whole matter of tackling the housing question should be considered afresh, that legislative procedure, finances and methods of construction should be examined to see whether housing costs cannot be brought down? The central authority is giving very generous grants, and the local authorities are supplementing them, in some cases by direct subventions from the rates and in other cases indirectly by remissions of rates, yet I, for one, am very doubtful whether the full value, or anything approaching the full value of the grants in aid, either to the purchasers where the houses are built for private individuals, or to the tenants of new houses where they are built for local authorities, accrues to the members of the community who, as ratepayers and taxpayers, are providing them in such generous measure.
In my view it is time that this whole question was faced up to and closely investigated. It has been the fashion in this House for members of the Labour Party to attack Irish manufacturers and to stigmatise them, not merely as profiteers, but as criminals. The Tánaiste himself has given the lead in this matter, but I have not heard any member of the Labour Party, Tánaiste or otherwise, criticise the profits made by certain firms of builders' providers, and yet those profits appear to be colossal, certainly colossal if the standard taken be the rate of profit allowable in our manufacturing industries.
Another question mark that has been before my mind for a long time is as to whether the local authorities are the best instruments to employ for the solution of the housing problem, whether, indeed, the widespread dispersal of responsibility among so many bodies of dissimilar capacity and resources does not militate against the economic and expeditious solution of the problem. Beyond any question, I think it will have to be admitted that it certainly creates serious administrative difficulties arising out of the wide discrepancies in the rents charged in contiguous areas and of the different standards of maintenance and repair which obtain in them, as well as the almost insoluble financial difficulties arising out of the very great difficulty of shouldering the monetary burdens of housing programmes.
In saying what I have said on this matter, I must also emphasise that it must not be forgotten either that we were striving to improvise in the fashion I have suggested by the desperate need of our people for houses. After generations of neglect we found ourselves with a slum problem and a housing problem more acute and more appalling than any in Europe. Unfortunately, I have to say in justice to the Administration of which I was a member, and in rebuttal of the attacks which were made on that Administration in the course of the debate on the Estimate for Local Government, I have to say that, unfortunately, that first Administration which took over this part of the country from the British did not evince any great determination to deal with it. Indeed, their record in dealing with this great social evil can hardly be qualified by any other adjective than despicable.
