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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 19 Nov 1953

Vol. 143 No. 3

Committee on Finance. - Vote 38—Local Government (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.—(Deputy Sweetman.)

When I moved to report progress last night, I had to a certain extent dealt with the criticism of the rate at which we in Dublin were conducting our housing programme and I tried to show the House that whatever criticism had beenlevelled at the Minister and his Department in this connection, so far as Dublin was concerned, was completely unfounded. There is a difficulty in completing the requirements of housing in the City of Dublin. There are 18,000 houses still required but they cannot be built in one year. They can be provided only at a certain rate per year. I think members who try to find fault with the speed at which houses are being provided in the city, should consider what has to be done. Having acquired a site and made the preliminary development on it, while proceeding to erect houses we have also to provide schools and to see that there are sites for schools, churches and playgrounds. As Deputy Gallagher pointed out other amenities have to be considered, such as the provision of swimming baths etc. Then there is the matter of sewerage, street lighting and roads which can only be regulated in connection with traffic requirements for various forms of transport such as buses. Every scheme has to be examined in relation to all these requirements. Notwithstanding that heavy addition of services, we are building at a rate that cannot be exceeded so that as far as criticism of the Department and the Minister in connection with the Dublin housing programme is concerned, any reasonable person knowing what takes place, will have to agree that if there is to be any criticism on the grounds that we are not proceeding more quickly that criticism cannot be levelled at the Minister and his Department, who are pushing us all the time.

I heard Deputy O'Leary amongst others criticising the county manager system. We are expecting that there will be a measure introduced soon to restore more authority and power to local representatives and local authorities generally. To what extent that Bill will go I do not know, but I should like to say that in the City of Dublin where we have a city manager, whether because of instructions from the Minister and the Department or because of the city manager's good common sense, there is a spirit of co-operation between the public representatives and the city manager. Whilethe city manager has under the Act certain definitely defined reserved functions, nevertheless, because of the goodwill that exists between him and the representatives, he discusses with us matters over which he has full and complete authority and we discuss with him the functions over which we have full and complete authority.

I would be surprised that a city or county manager would try to interfere with the right of public representatives to spend money. If the local representatives think that certain expenditure is necessary in order to provide a new amenity or service or to extend an existing one, if these representatives are prepared to face the criticism of the Press and the public by having to increase the rates in order to meet the expenditure, I say it is their responsibility and that there is no use trying to blame the city or county manager.

There is one thing over which public representatives have full power, namely, the purse and the only authority which can interfere with them if they appear to be extravagant is the Minister who can say that a local authority have gone on a spending spree and that they will have to be curbed. During the year motions are put down to spend money on particular items and the manager will point out that the expenditure of that money will add to the amount which will have to be collected from the ratepayers. He will tell them to a fraction of a penny what the extra imposition will be. It then becomes a question for the representatives themselves whether they will carry out such a proposal in part or in whole or not at all.

I have served on a public authority for a great number of years and I have certainly a great respect for that part of the managerial system which takes away from public representatives the day-to-day problem of finding jobs for persons personally known to them, or political associates or persons brought to them by somebody they know. Under the present system there is an arrangement for the intake of workers and officials. The intake in the case of ordinary workers is carried out byarrangement with trade unions, and as far as that is concerned I think nobody has any fault to find with it. The workers have to be members of recognised trade unions which are in touch with the corporation and which negotiate and discuss the terms and conditions of the workers and whether workers shall be laid off or taken on. It is entirely a matter between the city manager, who acts for the ratepayers, and the local trade unions. As far as the officials are concerned, they are taken in by public competitive examination and it is the manager's duty to conform to the regulations laid down by the Department and the Minister for the intake of officials and to make arrangements with regard to their future welfare and promotion.

Whatever disagreements there may be in parts of the country between public representatives and county managers, if the representatives who disagree with county managers want to make the system inoperative by not coming to any agreement, they can do so and thus make things difficult. But, as I said, in the City of Dublin we have perfect co-operation between the public representatives and the city manager.

It has been suggested that the managerial system makes the manager a creature of the Department, that he does what he is told by the Minister or the Department. As far as Dublin is concerned, I can say that that does not apply. I can testify, and I am sure the Minister can testify, that when there are disagreements between the local council and the Department and deputations are sent to iron out matters, invariably and, as far as I know, without exception our city manager stands for the views held by his council and fights shoulder to shoulder with the representatives of his council against the decision of the Department if the representatives think that the decision is wrong.

He is a wise man.

He is, but probably he has wise colleagues in the shape of public representatives.

They are no better than the provincial representatives.

We are trying to make the best of the system as it exists and the only way we can do that is by co-operating with the man who is in the position and arrive at a compromise where that is necessary. There are occasions when we do feel that there is something to grouse about and we express that by unanimously adopting a motion in council. For instance, we feel that in regard to the intake of officials into local authorities, particularly in Dublin, in order that the best type of officials can be secured there must be some possibility of promotion for them; that all positions becoming vacant should be filled by promotion within the local authority, provided there are officials capable of filling the vacant positions.

I appeal to the Minister to consider that part of his regulations which on many occasions causes a great deal of discontent and disappointment. I refer to certain positions which the Minister may think are very important and which have to be filled through the Local Appointments Commissioners, very often interfering with the promotion of officials. I think Deputy Hickey and Deputy Everett will agree with me in regard to that. It is very important that that should be changed because only then will those coming into the service feel that at some time they can reach an important and well-paid position and that promotion will not be denied them after they reach a certain standard. I am only using that to show that there are occasions on which even the best-run local authority working on the best of terms with the Minister and the Department can come up against things on which there may be disagreement, but we should at least try to fight them out.

There is a big difference between local administration in the City of Dublin and local administration in a rural area. The requirements of a rural area are quite different from those of the City of Dublin. Things which appear to be most important in the rural areas, and probably are of great importance, can be of negligibleimportance in, say, the City of Dublin, and, of course, the opposite can also be true. There should not, in my opinion, be drawn up in the Department of Local Government a kind of general rule for local authorities, irrespective of whether they are metropolitan, urban or rural. I should like the Minister some day to study, and recognise, the fact that different situations confront the representatives on these different types of local authorities. All I want to say is that we in the City of Dublin believe that we are getting a fair deal, generally speaking—a 99. per cent. fair deal from the Minister and the Department. As regards the 1 per cent. that we are not getting, well, we are doing our best to fight for it and to secure what we want.

Some Deputies spoke about red tape. As far as Dublin City is concerned, the question of delays was brought to the notice of the Minister. I must say that since he investigated whatever instructions he had given, we are now getting in Dublin a very quick service. When matters of extreme urgency arise we have been getting a decision, whether favourable or otherwise, in the course of a few days. If it is not a matter of urgency, it may take a certain time, but we can always have it looked up and dealt with. I would say that applications, whatever kind they may be, from a local authority going to the Department should be dealt with as expeditiously as possible.

I have dealt with housing, with roads, with the special works committee and, generally, with the situation as it confronts us in the city. Some people talk about the numbers from the country who come up to live in the city. We, in the city, cannot assert ourselves as a local dictatorship or regard citizens of the Irish nation, who come to Dublin, as foreigners to be kept out. People from the country districts who come to live in Dublin and are resident here for two years acquire all the rights of other citizens and we have to meet their demands. We have to house them. We have to deal with them from the point of view of public assistance and we have to give them whatever amenities theyare entitled to as Irish citizens under the law. As far as the carrying out of works here in the city is concerned, we try, as far as possible, not to attract people to the city for a short period, people who would afterwards find themselves on the unemployment list. That is why we instruct our contractors who build our houses to engage persons who normally have been resident in the City of Dublin for two years and upwards.

On that basis, too, we try to house them, but we cannot be held responsible for the increased numbers of people who come to Dublin from other areas. Once they become residents of the city, we have to accept them as such, and deal with them as we deal with all other citizens. I hope that this Estimate will be passed, and that we will be able to get back to our respective local authorities to do our job as we have been doing it in the last few years.

This Vote is now a very important one for both the rural and the town dweller. There are many aspects of it and of local government that have already been covered by various speakers, but there are a few points which I should like to bring to the notice of the House and of the country generally. The striking thing about local government and this Vote is that in this year of 1953, when you add the total amount of rates collected from all over the country to the sum set forth in this Vote, you get the extraordinary total of £20,276,760. In other words, you get almost the equivalent of the total sum which it took to run this State in each of the years from 1928 to 1932. The average taxation of the country for central government in each of the five years prior to 1932 was £20,833,600. Therefore, we find that the cost of local government to-day, plus the amount of rates collected in every part of the country, almost equals what it cost to run the country in each of the five years I have mentioned.

In that situation, Government Deputies, Government Ministers and Opposition Deputies wonder why people are leaving the rural areas. I submit that one of the chief causeswhich are forcing them to leave the country is the weight of central taxation and of local rates—the fact that too much is being taken out of their earnings. Consequently, they are leaving the country districts. When one considers that, to-day, central Government taxation has reached the colossal figure of £101,000,000, and that the sum collected in rates in this year amounts to £15,700,000, how can any Government expect the people to exist, after having extracted these huge amounts out of their earnings?

The absentee landlord of the past never extracted from the people as much as this Government is extracting from them, and still the people are told that they should like it. We all admit that no one is better entitled to spend money than the individual who earns it. Government expenditure, no matter how good it may be, is never as advantageous to the nation as expenditure by the individual or by private enterprise.

I want, if I can, to impress on the people of the country as a whole the importance of this Vote, and to say that no political influence or no political thought should be given to any question other than how the people are to get the best value for the money which is being taken from them. I heard Deputy Briscoe say that things are going gallantly and lovely between the Dublin Corporation and the Department of Local Government, and that it is a comfort to them. It might be just as well if things did not go so well because then we might not have the eel-weir on O'Connell Bridge. If one of the smaller towns in the country attempted to put up a monstrosity like that in some area we would hear all about it. They would not be allowed to do it. There is a geranium bed for a while but before the winter is out it will be growing thistles and dandelions. That is something that we are now going to improve and we have a Deputy of this House getting up in the corporation and suggesting the spending of another bagatelle of £3,000, £4,000 or £5,000 to brighten it up. Let us hope that some fellow going home with a side-car at night will not take another piece off it.

It is not finally decided yet.

Let the Deputy get the cut-stone slabs. I did not mention the Deputy at all, but if the cap fits I suppose he will wear it.

I said that it was not decided yet. I am on your side in regard to O'Connell Bridge.

The big point is that the Minister in the Department who is paid a very substantial sum of the ratepayers' money sanctioned that.

We did not. We were not asked to do so.

He had nothing to do with it.

He sanctioned the imposition of the taxation to pay for it.

I did not.

Well, the Minister would be well engaged if he refused to sanction it.

And an experienced Deputy would be well engaged if he made up his facts a little better before he talks.

The Minister got highly indignant yesterday evening when I tendered him certain advice and I am entitled to get just as indignant now for his advice to me. Any advice I propose to give him will be given through you, Sir, and any statement I make will be to the Chair, in the hope that the Minister's ears will be open for it, and if I make any wrong statement I am perfectly sure the Minister will answer it through the Chair, which is the ordinary way. I know the Minister can get very truculent and he does not like people to say things he feels they should not say if they hurt him or affect him. He has been at all times very determined, to say the least of it, and I will leave him at that.

I comment on the fact that a boast was made here by a member of this House who is also a member of Dublin Corporation about how well theDublin Corporation was able to get on with the Minister and the Department. The Minister for Local Government in 99 per cent. of the cases gives way to the Dublin Corporation and in 1 per cent. they have to argue about it and do without it. That is not what every other local authority can say and I submit that it is a question of principle that a Minister should deal equally with all authorities and all people, and that there should not be the partisanship that Deputy Briscoe has announced as existing between the Department of Local Government and Dublin Corporation.

That brings me then to what I find very difficult to understand and that is the delay in the payment of housing grants whether for new houses or reconstructions. I wonder if the House realises that in a great number of cases all over the country the local shopkeepers and local contractors are really the bankers for the people who are reconstructing their houses and in some cases building new ones. They have to go ahead with the building and when in law they are entitled to get so much of the grant when so much of the work is done, they do not get it and it is only when representations are made—which I hold should not have to be made—that they get it. It may be argued that there are not enough inspectors or engineers but at a time when you have two systems of grants in operation, one a local authority grant and the other a central authority grant, and two sets of inspectors and officials dealing with the matter, surely, between them they should be able to give the necessary certificates to have the payments made and not have the contractor who is building or the business people who supply the materials left without the money. The Minister, I submit, should make a very serious effort to expedite all these payments because—believe it or not—money given quickly is often-times doubled in value but when the good, as they say in the country, is taken out of it, it becomes instead of a benefit almost a hardship.

That applies to various other things. I am not going to stress those on this Vote. I will get an opportunityon the appropriate Vote. But for new houses or reconstructions, I appeal to the Minister and to the Department to make every effort to make these payments rapidly. They should make the first payment as quickly as the inspector's note comes in or proof that half or the appropriate amount of work has been done.

Notwithstanding the size of the Vote, £4,576,760 this year for the Department of Local Government, the Local Authorities (Works) Act has been reduced to a thing of no use. It has been reduced by £250,000. I suppose it has been stated already, but I am not surprised at the Minister doing that because when he was in these benches and when that Act was going through he certainly did his best to nullify it and make it inoperative. Deputy Allen has said—and mind you he was careful not to condemn it—that very great work was done under it but that there had been a lot of very bad work also. I assert that under the Local Authorities Act there was a great deal of work done, in fact more than under any similar Act or expenditure that was embarked on by any Department, the Office of Public Works, the Land Commission or anybody else. I resent Deputy Allen's reflection upon the engineers and the people who put it into effect. In every case, in every county council, there was a rate showing what the grant was in the first and second years and what amounts the county councils or the local authorities were able to spend. They did not spend the whole lot of it. They only spent the stated amount and their defence for doing so was that they could only spend that amount for which a proper return would be got. More power to their elbows. They were as careful of the State funds as they would be of their own.

It is alleged here that good work was not got in return for the money spent; that I suppose can be said of every single activity of any Government Department. There are bound to be some failures and some miscalculations but, as far as I am aware, the work done was of immeasurable benefit to many sections of our people and, in particular, to the agricultural community.The agricultural community certainly derived benefit from it and surely they were entitled to that because no section of the community has been more heavily burdened than they have been. Remember, that the rates levied and collected from them have increased from £2,763,792 in 1926, 1927, 1928 and 1929 to £15,700,000 this year. When I remember the speeches made by the Taoiseach, then Leader of the Opposition here, and by Deputy Aiken I find it difficult to reconcile those speeches with the position to-day. They wept salt tears. They made the welkin ring because of the way in which the agricultural community was being robbed at a time when the rates levied and collected amounted to only £2,763,792. From that day to this Fianna Fáil has pressed more and more heavily upon the agricultural community. Yet, in this year of 1953 the Minister for Finance gets up here and says that taxation bears lightly on the land. How right I was in appealing to Deputy Corry then to get up in defence of the agricultural community. He can do that within his own Party. Now that Deputy Cogan has joined Deputy Corry, perhaps two advocates will be better than one. Let us hope that their influence with the Government will have the effect of making the Government consider the agricultural community in a more effective way than they have done since rates jumped from £2,763,792 to £15,700,000.

With regard to roads, it is very difficult to get a full return for the money spent on them because supervision is so very difficult. It is hard to make supervision effective and the traffic using the roads to-day is the kind that breaks down even the best constructed roads. I was glad to hear Deputy Allen say last night that the roads built in a certain way 30 years ago in Wexford were standing up well to the traffic. Again, might I remind the House that when these roads were being built 26 or 30 years ago nobody resented the expenditure more bitterly than the Fianna Fáil Deputies at that time? They condemned that expenditure with bell, book, and candle. Is it not a matter for congratulation that Deputy Allen says now that theseroads constructed 30 years ago were well done? Was it not a pity more was not expended on the roads 30 years ago? Had that been done the roads to-day would be able to stand up to the traffic using them. Those roads are a credit to any country and the design has proved a complete success in County Wexford and in some other counties, particularly in County Kildare between Kildare and Monasterevan. That money was money well spent because the foundations laid then are now able to carry the traffic. I know that the same type of road to-day would cost far more than it cost then.

On the question of traffic, the Minister in conjunction with the Civic Guards has a certain responsibility for traffic regulations and for traffic generally. I suggest the time has come when a positive code of signs and signals must be established for the guidance and direction of motorists generally. At the moment no set of signs or signals is compulsory. I suggest that when the new driving licences are being printed they should have set out on the backs of them a series of "do's" and "don'ts" for the guidance of motorists generally. Specific instructions should be given in relation to white markings and zebra crossings. There is nothing so exasperating than to have a driver cutting right across in front of one's mudguards when he is turning to his right. That is done. In one case there is a "winking willie" signal; in another the signal is an arm stuck out on the top and in another the signal is down in the middle near the dashboard. There is no regularity and there is no proper control over these signs and signals. It is the Minister who has responsibility for that particular type of control.

In relation to bridges, we have long been awaiting in this city the construction of a subway, almost as long as other people have been waiting for the construction of a tunnel between England and France. I suggest the time has come when a subway should be erected under the Liffey and a few more bridges built across it. I am perturbed at the suggestion that thebridge at Banagher should be locked. I have been told that these swivel bridges have not been used for a considerable time. That is not the fault of the people who would wish to use the Shannon, and the day these bridges are locked navigation will cease. We all hope to develop a tourist trade and I, for one, hope to see the Shannon play as important a part in that trade as do the rivers and lakes in other well-known continental resorts. I hope to see the Shannon utilised by tourists and for holiday purposes generally. I hold that the swivel bridges should be left at Banagher and Athlone so that navigation can continue right up to Lough Allen.

There is no great danger of anything being done at an early date, but as a Deputy representing the constituency, I appeal to the Minister to see to it that the swivel-type bridge will be retained at Athlone so that the amenities of the Shannon will not be interfered with and so as to allow of development at a future date.

It has been argued that the housing problem has been nearly solved. I am astounded that that argument should be propounded. If the population of the country drops to 2,000,000, we may accept the statement that the housing problem is very nearly solved. Is that the intention of the Government? Is it the outlook of Fianna Fáil that there is to be no increase in the population? The big objective is to increase the population and to build more houses.

I have asserted, and will keep on reiterating, that one of the ways by which people can be kept in rural Ireland is to provide the amenities of the city in the country, such as water, sewerage and other amenities. When the stage is reached that the house costs too much—and it has been reached as a result of the increased cost of money—the householder is unable to live. I pointed out already that when more than one day's income or wages is taken from the wage-earner as rent for the house in which he lives, that man is left without the means of subsistence. The maximum rent should be one day's wagesout of the week's wages, taking the week as seven days. One-seventh of the week's wages is accepted as the standard rent. The rent should never be higher than that; it should be less.

It is an old principle that one-tenth of the week's wages is enough to take from a man for rent.

One-seventh is too high. It should not exceed it. A wage earner who earns £5 10s. or £6 a week and has to pay 26/-, 27/- or 28/- a week in rent is broke before he starts. There is a millstone around his neck. The result of building houses the rents of which are too high for the people for whom they are intended is emigration to some place where they can get more for their labour.

This is a very important Estimate. A great deal of time could be spent dealing with its many aspects. It is difficult to cover all the points one would like to stress. One feels that there are so many sections doing the same thing that it is nearly impossible to make headway. In addition to all these various sections there are the town planning authorities who, most fantastically, impose prohibitions in respect of building and reconstruction. As a case in point, the owner of a large business premises attempted to put on a new roof. The town planning authorities said he could not do so. There was neither sense nor reason in that. Of course, on appeal, the Minister gave permission to re-roof the premises, but during the month that that decision was pending, the premises were open to wind and weather, rain and storm. I would ask the Minister to see to it that decisions on appeals of that type should be regarded as urgent and that speed should be the essence of the matter.

I appeal to local authorities and the Minister to continue the direct labour system in house-building. I am satisfied that the direct labour system, organised as it has been in a great number of cases, can build better and cheaper than contractors can build under the most favourable circumstances.

I shall not pursue the reference that has been made to architects' costs andlegal fees. They do not appear to be unduly high.

I appeal to the Government and to the Minister to see that rates are kept at as low a figure as possible, to see to it that there is no waste in the Department or in local authorities so that the amount spent by local authorities and by the Department will be more in keeping with the people's purse than has been the case for the past 15 or 16 years.

One would imagine, listening to Deputy Briscoe, that an Estimate for Dublin Corporation was before the House. No Deputy reflected on the members of the Dublin Corporation or of the public boards. Deputies appreciate the work being performed by these people and by the members of public boards throughout the country for the benefit of their constituents. Deputy Briscoe suggested that Dublin was in an exceptional position, that everything was lovely in the City of Dublin, that there were no complaints, that housing was proceeding, that everything was satisfactory and that that was due to the fact that there was co-operation. It is most extraordinary, therefore, that Dublin is in need of 21,000 houses. Notwithstanding the financial position of the corporation, there were over 1,500 skilled men unemployed on the 17th October. If there was such co-operation as Deputy Briscoe implied, why could not a large proportion of those skilled men be employed in building houses?

Deputy Briscoe referred to the co-operation of the county manager. We would expect nothing else from the gentleman who occupies that position. As one who criticised the principle of having county managers, may I say, from my experience in the last two or three years, that the managers have consulted the public representatives on all occasions and have even taken their advice in matters that were reserved functions? While I have disagreed with him once or twice and could not agree with him 100 per cent. I found the county manager for Wicklow an excellent official. I have often wondered how he is able to carry onhis work, with four hospitals and sanatoria and looking after three large urban councils, but I have never known him to be absent from one meeting of either corporation, urban council, hospitals or county council. It is physically impossible for one man to carry on the work that is expected of him under that system. We have no grievance against the Department and found them very helpful in their advice. While we did disagree with them sometimes it was an honest disagreement and we would have a conference and settle the disagreement. That is as it should be, to have members honestly disagreeing, and the Department itself sees that they are doing it for no other motive but an honest disagreement.

I would appeal to the Minister on the question of the main roads. We are making racing tracks of these roads as far as Wicklow is concerned, and we find that the engineers have the power and sanction to cut down trees indiscriminately on the excuse that they are interfering with the roads. Where a few feet—ten or 12— might be all that was necessary to take over to ease a bend we find them taking over 100 feet for the sake of cutting down trees and leaving about 70 or 80 feet there where all the soil is turned up on one side to divert the road in another direction. I would ask the Minister that before any sanction would be given to engineers to have trees felled they should first obtain the sanction of the county manager.

We were pioneers in direct labour in my country over 30 years ago. We find that notwithstanding our organisation and our machinery we are not able to provide houses at present which we would like for the people for the reason that if we built houses at a cost of £1,100 or £1,150 the tenants might not be in a position to pay. I would ask the Minister if he is prepared to look up the files and see where we looked for an extra grant for the public bodies to compensate them for the increased rate of interest. Then we will get back to the position we were in of providing houses for people, whereas we find we have over 4,000 fewer houseserected in 1953 than we had in 1951 although there is a greater need for housing now. We have heard about the roads, but the position is going to be serious for the erection of houses. My experience is that public representatives of all Parties give co-operation and their sole concern is to give the best service they can and to economise as far as possible. They do not agree to spend a rate unless they are going to have value in return for it. Now we are faced with the position where we are going to continue with direct labour to meet commitments for a housing scheme but the Minister's new proposal will mean an additional £13,000 on County Wicklow alone. I ask the Minister to consider that problem. Even though you might give the wealthy landowner an additional benefit for the few men he employed, personally I believe it will not compensate the council for the number of men who will be employed. I only mention it now because we will have an opportunity on the Bill to explain the position.

I would ask the Minister if he would see his way to deal with that situation, as I am sure that, like anybody occupying his position, he is equally anxious that we will be able to provide houses for the people who need them most and that they will be able to get them at rents that they can pay. The Minister must satisfy himself from the returns that with the new rate of interest you have not the same demands from public bodies that you had some years ago, because public bodies, recognising their responsibilities, know that there is no use in erecting houses and asking the tenants to pay for them when they have only £4 a week or £4 5s. and some of them may have only casual work for 20 weeks out of the 52. A problem then faces the public bodies for the period that they are unemployed, and they may have to give a subsidy by home assistance to supplement their unemployment assistance to enable them to pay the rent. That is not as it should be. There is not, as Deputy Briscoe suggested, a slackness on the part of the public bodies. He suggested thatthey were not taking an interest. It is because they are taking a keen interest and realise their responsibilities that they see the problem facing them. They are hoping that some scheme will be arranged by the Government to meet the increased cost of housing at the present time, apart from the increased rate of interest.

These are a few points I put up to the Minister. I had no intention of getting up only that Deputy Briscoe took upon himself to suggest that Dublin was the only place that was giving co-operation to the Local Government Department. We have no criticism to offer, because I think that Department is the one Department more in touch with the people of the country than any other, while the public representatives may disagree with some of their decisions sometimes.

I want to warn the Minister on the question of town planning. The committee of the council of which I am a member were very keen about these temporary shacks in our seaside places put up just for a short time, for two months, by business people in Dublin which become an eyesore in the area, with no sanitation. But we found that when the council carried out a regulation under town planning and refused sanction, whatever happened the Minister sanctioned permission to some of those people, as the shacks were only temporary. Our experience as public representatives of all Parties is that those temporary shacks become permanent and become a danger to health and an eyesore in the areas.

You will find public representatives who are not very keen to put the Town Planning Act in full operation, but where you find 21 members sitting around a table and agreeing, after hearing the reports from the engineer and the medical officer of health, that the erection of these particular wooden structures for a time would be a menace to public health, I cannot understand why a decision is arrived at by the Minister or his Department giving sanction to the individuals to have temporary shacks erected. Having seen that happen, the council of which I am a member say: "We will take no further interest. We will let you putup the shack if you like and it is the Government's responsibility whatever happens." I want to warn the Minister now that that is the position of affairs.

I ask him not to give the engineers power to cut down trees indiscriminately and wholesale, where they like, without getting the approval of the county manager.

It is a pleasure to me to join with my old friend and colleague, Deputy Everett, in the tribute which he has paid to the county manager for Wicklow. I do not think that there is in all Ireland a more competent official or one who has given more conscientious service to local administration. We could join in that tribute also the engineer for Wicklow who, I think, has been the pioneer in the system of direct labour for the erection of cottages. I am one of those who believe that it is a good thing to give workers, skilled and unskilled, an opportunity of working directly under the engineering staff of the county council for the erection of their own houses and the houses of their fellow-workers. I do not hold that the contractor should be eliminated. I think there is room in every county for fair and just competition between the contractor and the system of direct labour. Through that competition we can hope to achieve the highest measure of efficiency and the most economic system of work.

There has been in this debate a considerable amount of discussion in regard to the relative merits of the work done under the Local Authorities (Works) Act and the employment given on the roads by the county council. A good many members commented upon the fact that there has been a progressive reduction in the amounts allocated under the Local Authorities (Works) Act over the past four or five years. This year there is a reduction of £250,000. There was a reduction during the last year of the previous Government of over £500,000, so that, as far as one side of the House is concerned as against the other, the policy has been from the very outset to reduce the allocation under the Local Authorities (Works) Act steadily each year.

I suppose that is understandable toa certain extent because the very large sum of money made available in the first year was provided to a certain extent to counteract an even more drastic reduction in the grants for roads. It was indicated at the time that the work was of a temporary nature and would be completed in the course of a few years. It has continued on to the present. A certain amount of good work has been done. There has been, of course, as is inevitable in a new idea of this kind, a considerable amount of inefficient work also.

If we examine this question fairly, either from the point of view of providing employment or of carrying out drainage, we will see that the position is tending in the right direction. The total amount provided by way of grants from the Department of Local Government to county councils for roads and work under the Local Authorities (Works) Act is greater than that provided in the last year of the administration of the previous Government. Therefore, there is no substance in the contention that the reduction in the grant under the Local Authorities (Works) Act means a reduction in employment. It means, perhaps, a transfer from work that is specified under the Local Authorities (Works) Act to ordinary construction work on the county roads.

In this connection, it will be recognised that county roads play a very important part in the lives of the ordinary country people. We hear the unhappy phrase about the flight from the land. If there is one thing more calculated to promote a flight from the land it is that people have to tramp a mile or two on a bad laneway in order to reach the road and then, perhaps, three or four miles on a bad road to reach the more important main road and thus get to the nearest town or village. I think that is one of the things that drive young people away from rural life. Young people do not like the idea of having to cycle or walk along a long stretch of bad road in order to get to the nearest town to do their shopping, get to the cinema, dance hall or any other place of amusement.

I think it is important that our energies should be directed to ensuring that the roadways of this country, particularly those roads that reach into the remote rural areas, are brought up to a decent high standard of construction. In advocating that, I am not advocating any letting down or any decline in essential drainage work. I believe that drainage work must be undertaken in an arterial way, in a planned way. It must be undertaken not on a county basis or an area basis but on a catchment area basis because that is the only way that effective drainage work can be carried out. Rivers and drains have no respect whatever for county boundaries. They cross and re-cross county boundaries at various places. For that reason the whole work of drainage should be undertaken not by the county council but by an appropriate national or regional drainage authority. That is the line I would like the Government to follow using the most up-to-date machinery for drainage purposes. They should be concerned not merely with relief schemes but with getting the water away in the most efficient and effective way possible to the sea and large rivers.

Arterial drainage is not the responsibility of the Minister.

I am suggesting that drainage will gradually pass out of the Minister's hands and that he will concentrate his attention on the two main tasks which lie within his scope— housing and the construction of decent roads. I am suggesting that the county engineers should direct all their attention to the problem of keeping the roads up to a decent standard. As a layman who does not profess to know anything about the engineering side of road-making, I have been suggesting for a long time that the cost of road construction is altogether too high. I made that suggestion in the course of debates in this House and I made it at meetings of the county council of which I am a member.

I must confess that I was rather amazed when, at a recent meeting ofthe county council of which I am a member, the county engineer announced that by the introduction of a new system of road construction it would be possible to reduce the cost of road construction from £2,500 per mile, which is about the average, down to £1,500 and thus secure a saving of £1,000 per mile on road construction. That can be done by using a bulldozer to level the road and applying a mixed coat of tarmacadam. I understand that some further experiments would have to be carried out in regard to the making of roads under that system but that when they are complete, if they are as successful as the county engineer expects, they will bring about a saving of £1,000 per mile, a reduction from £2,500 to £1,500. That is a 40 per cent. reduction and it is a very substantial figure when we realise the number of million pounds that are required for road construction. I hope that if such a change can be brought about we will be able to achieve a higher standard and more rapid progress in road making at a lower cost.

I look forward very hopefully to this development and I think it was long overdue. I have always felt that the whole process of road-making in this country was crude, inefficient and out-of-date. That may have been due to a variety of circumstances over which perhaps neither the county managers nor the county engineers had any control. However, it certainly seemed to me that we had developed a system of road construction which was utterly inefficient.

To make roads efficiently we require modern machinery. Not alone do we require modern machinery, but we must ensure at all times that that machinery is used to the very fullest extent and to the very best advantage. The old system of applying tar to the roads placed those engaged in their construction completely at the mercy of the weather. Tar could not be employed unless the sun was shining —and we all know that the sun does not shine every day of the week in this country—with the result that there were always long periods of broken time. The utilisation of modern machinery on the roads does not imply for onemoment any reduction in the number of men employed. It means, in effect, that the men employed will be employed to better advantage and that a greater mileage of work will be done as a result of the utilisation of up-to-date machinery.

In a debate like this, I do not think that there is much need or much reason for dispute as between one side of the House and the other. In a debate such as this there is more need for constructive suggestions and advice. In this regard, I would like to offer at least one suggestion which has always occurred to me as being feasible but which has never been put into operation. As we all know, a very substantial proportion of the money spent on ordinary road maintenance is spent on employing men not to keep the roads in repair but to keep the grass margins trimmed and neat. These men are not employed on road-making; they are employed on a kind of landscape gardening. The grass margins have to be trimmed, cuttings have to be made in them from time to time, and weeds and other roots that grow on these margins have to be removed. That type of work goes on almost all the year round, and I think it is sheer waste of human labour. If the county engineers had the power and the instructions to do it, they could use a bulldozer to remove those high grass margins altogether and bring them down to the level of the roads so that no cutting and very little trimming would be required. The water would then naturally clear off the road surface.

I have often felt that these grass margins which represent a considerable acreage of land and which are owned by the State and utilised for the growing of weeds, dirt, and so on, should be utilised in another way entirely. If they were levelled down completely they would form a margin of safety in the first place for road traffic. The roads, particularly ordinary county roads, would not require to be excessively wide provided at each side there was a level grass margin on which, in cases of emergency, the motorist could swerve in order to avoid danger. At the present time they are death-traps because if a motorist tries to swerve in on the grass margin in order toavoid a large lorry or other vehicle that is taking the centre of the road, he finds himself driven into a cutting and his car perhaps wrecked; or as would happen in other cases where the grass margin is higher than the road, he would be deflected back against the oncoming traffic.

In addition to making these grass margins safe for traffic and adding to the safety of the roads, I would suggest that good quality grass be sown on them. The Minister for Local Government could tell the Minister for Agriculture that he has many acres of agricultural land at the margin of the road and he should show how that could be utilised. The grass could be cut from time to time and sold to the farmers for making silage and sold to the grassmeal manufacturers. In that way some small profit would derive from this land which is at present completely waste.

Apart from that, the whole appearance of the countryside would be completely changed. Travellers coming to the country would see not the rough earthen fences with heaps of dirt and weeds but neat roads with tidy grass margins at each side. The suggestion was made some time ago by somebody in this country that trees should be planted along the fences at the side of the roads. I would not suggest that trees should be planted on the grass margins because there again I think they would constitute a danger to traffic in an emergency if the motorist had to leave the surface of the road. However, they could be planted along the fences on the farmer's land. If they were tended at frequent intervals and properly trimmed they would not constitute any injury to the farmer's land or work nor would they be a danger to traffic.

There has been a suggestion that poplar trees would be the most suitable, as they mature quickly and provide raw materials for the wood pulping industry engaged in the manufacture of wallboard and cardboard. What appears to be the small portion of land allocated to the Minister and to county councils should be utilised to the very best advantage, to set a headline for the rest of thecommunity, showing that the State realises that the land is our most valuable asset and that not one square inch of it will be wasted. I put that suggestion to the Minister and it ought to be considered by his Department and by local authorities.

One county carried out an experiment by planting fruit trees on the grass margin on the side of the road. While I admire the progressive outlook of the county council and county manager, I do not think it was the best or most efficient way to use the grass margin. Those trees, planted close to the surface of the road, would add to the danger to traffic. Whether they are fruit trees or commercial trees for ordinary timber, they should be planted back from the frontage of the road, so as to leave as wide as possible a margin for traffic.

I do not think there is any sense in wasting time in the House, disputing as members of the Opposition have been doing for a long time about the relative progress of housing under two Governments. We know the number of houses built over the last year was greater than at any time since the war. No Government wants to claim any particular credit for that. The houses are provided, in the main, by the local authorities and if they have done good work over the last couple of years more power to them. Let them keep on doing it until the housing problem is fully and finally solved. Some members of the Opposition said that the high rate of housing during the last few years was due to the high rate of development by the inter-Party Government. The same could be said of whatever housing was done during the inter-Party régime, inasmuch as there was development during the time of the previous Government. That will continue as long as there are changes of Government. That work continues from one Administration to another. All we ask is that it continue until it is finally completed.

There are considerable delays in carrying housing schemes through from the time the site is mapped out until the houses are completed. I am particularlyconcerned about rural housing as there is need for a great number of additional houses throughout the length and breadth of rural Ireland. From the date that a sites committee obtains the site until the houses are finished, there are endless delays which exasperate everyone—the prospective tenants, the people selling the land to the county council and the members of the county council themselves. I do not know why it should take so long. The Minister should investigate it and ask county councils what is holding up work of this kind. I know of sites acquired over two years ago on which the work of building has not commenced yet and I think there is no need for that delay. The delays are attributed to the architect, to the engineer, to the Department or someone else. I suppose there is a certain amount of preliminary work, mapping and planning, but it should not take so long. That has been going on all the time, but in recent times there has been a drive by successive Governments to get the housing programme completed as quickly as possible. Notwithstanding that, there are long delays from the time the site is acquired until the houses are built.

The Minister should undertake to impress on the officials of his Department and of local authorities that there should not be this delay, that the work is urgent, that people are waiting for the houses and workers are waiting for the work on the building. It is said that in a short time we will have completed the housing programme for the people, but we should not be complacent or satisfied until we have it completed. It is a terribly humiliating thing for married people with families to be waiting for years for a house, to be living with relatives or in a house not fit to accommodate a growing family.

I would also suggest that provision be made for single people and for old couples without families. To a certain extent these people are neglected. Houses of the present type are too large for them: a house with four or five rooms is not essential for one person. We know that we had the Battle of Baltinglass in which an old and agedlady made a fight on the ground that she had a prescriptive right to a house that was built, and she secured it.

With the help of Freemasons and yourself.

I do not see how Baltinglass arises on the Estimate for Local Government.

The Deputy will not secure re-election, anyhow. There will be a decent Fianna Fáil man in instead.

I am dealing with the provision of a house for a single lady. She secured it, not through the intervention of any of the people to which Deputy Everett referred, but on merit, inasmuch as the house had been built for her, since she was the specific individual for whom the house was built.

What became of Sheridan, your great chairman? The Guards are very anxious to know where he is.

The point I want to make, if Deputy Everett will permit me——

He was only a brigadier.

He would not be in the Molly Maguires?

——is that a three or four or five-roomed house is too large for one person.

Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present.

I was pointing out the desirability of providing a housing scheme for aged persons—single persons and persons without families. In the main, we have directed our housing efforts towards the provision of houses for the worker and his family. That is essential. In addition to that work, we must bear in mind that the other types of persons to whom I have referred are also entitled to accommodation. In this connection I think something could be done by way of preserving some houses which are at present under consideration fordemolition purposes on the grounds that they are unsuitable for the accommodation of workers' families or that they are too small. In most towns and villages you will find houses of that type which would be very suitable for housing the persons for whom I plead and which could be put into good condition with a certain amount of renovation. These houses could be converted into very suitable dwellings for single people, aged people and people who have no families. I think that that is work which should be undertaken.

We have been carrying out a building programme on a very large scale for the past 20 years but, at the same time, we have been demolishing the older types of houses very rapidly. A good proportion of such old houses in our towns and villages could, with a little renovation, be converted into homes not for workers or for people with families but for older people without families. I think that that is a development which should be undertaken. I do not think it is desirable to spend large sums of money on the building of county homes or institutions of that kind for the housing of such people. In the main, I think elderly people prefer to live in a small little house of their own provided the house is conveniently situated to shops, the post office and the church. If these houses were provided, it would not be necessary to spend large sums of money on the erection of new county homes. As I have said, people prefer to live their own lives in their own little homes, no matter how small they are, rather than in big institutions. We have made great advances in medicine in modern times and we may confidently expect that in the future we shall have less and less chronic invalids. More and more elderly people will be able to resist the various ailments that, in the past, have slowed down people of their age. Therefore, this is a very real and immediate problem.

There has been some discussion in the course of this debate in regard to the operation of the grant for the relief of rates on agricultural land. Deputy Everett suggested that thegrant was greatly reduced for the County Wicklow. I think Deputy Everett was inaccurate in the figures which he gave the House. I am convinced that when the figure is worked out, it will be found that the amount of relief given in rates on agricultural land this year will be equal to that given in other years. The only difference will be that under the new scheme the maximum relief is given to those who provide the maximum amount of employment. I am surprised that Deputy Everett would be against that proposal. I think it is a good principle.

It could not be any worse, no matter what you would agree on. You are in your Party.

It is a good principle to give the maximum amount of relief to the ratepayer who employes the largest amount of workers on his holding. I have gone into the figures and I find that a man with a valuation of £100 who employs three men will come off much better under the new system than he did under the old system. He will actually gain money. It will be increased, as compared with other years.

The Deputy is, no doubt, aware that he will get an opportunity of discussing this when the revised Estimate comes before the House.

I am merely answering the point made by Deputy Everett. I want to point out that the farmer who gives a reasonable amount of employment will not suffer any loss. Apparently there are Deputies on the Opposition Benches who think that a man should not employ workers on his farm. Those Deputies are welcome to that view but I am convinced that it is an erroneous point of view. I believe that, if the State is to come in to assist the agricultural ratepayers, the State should give the maximum amount of assistance to the man who gives the maximum amount of employment. I think that any honest Deputy will agree with that point of view.

There is need for the Governmentto consider some of the powers that are entrusted to them under, I think, the last Local Government Act which provides for the recognition of local councils. I believe that, in dealing with the problem of improving the amenities of rural Ireland and the problem of providing employment, it is very desirable that the State should have in each parish a local or parish council which would work out schemes for employment within the parish. It would not entail very much to assist these local councils inasmuch as the local council would provide employment for workers who are at present unemployed. In that way, the grant to the local council would represent a saving on unemployment assistance and unemployment benefit. In my view, an immense amount of valuable work could be done in local areas by men who are at present unemployed if there were an energetic local body there to plan out the work and get it undertaken. It is terrible to see an unemployed workman cycling perhaps four, five or six miles to the local labour exchange or to the Gárda station to sign on for assistance. Sometimes, such a man has to cycle along roads that are in a deplorable condition for the want of repairs. Why should that continue? Why should an unemployed man have to cycle or walk along such roads when he could be usefully employed in repairing them? I think that the co-operation of all the people in the local rural areas is required in this connection.

I do not confine it altogether to local rural areas, either. There are urban and city areas in which work is available which urgently requires to be done. In the rural areas there are bad roads and there are a number of amenities which could be provided out of the money at present being spent on unemployment relief and unemployment assistance. In the cities there are derelict sites which were referred to here during the debate and on the clearing up of which work could be provided. All that would tend to make the country better and more attractive to live in and, at the same time, would give the man who is temporarily unemployed a feeling of self-respect and afeeling of contributing something useful to the community in exchange for whatever money he receives from the State.

It is a long time since the Act was enacted which provides for the recognition of these local authorities. County councils in general and ratepayers to a certain extent were not too enthusiastic about setting up local bodies of this kind, inasmuch as they thought they would be inclined to make demands upon the ratepayers and on the finances of the county councils, but I think that, if the scheme were properly operated, the amount they would demand would be very little, while the contribution they would make would be very substantial. I suggest that the Government should consider the desirability of setting up these bodies.

I do not think it desirable on an Estimate of this kind to bring in local matters, but there is one matter in County Wicklow which may have been overlooked because the township concerned is far removed from the centre of administration. I refer to the lighting of Dunlavin. For some reason or other, the county council have refused to provide lighting, except at a charge which is excessive, with the result that over 25 workers' houses in the village have been left completely without electric light over the past ten years. A continuous agitation to secure the amenity of electric lighting for these houses has been carried on, without success. The county council apparently claim that the charge they are imposing is not excessive, but, by every standard, it is far beyond the cost entailed in the installation of lighting in these houses. Any citizen would object to being overcharged for the wiring of his house for lighting purposes, but how could anyone stand over the overcharging of working people for the lighting of their houses? The proposition of the county council is that a charge of 9d. per week be imposed for all time on these cottages to cover the capital cost of installing electric light, and, if anybody with a mathematical mind wishes to work that out, he will find that it runs intoan enormous charge. I think it is a matter the Minister should inquire into.

In the history of this country, have we many instances of such "fluthering" incompetence as has been given by the present Minister in the conduct whereunder the demand notes of local authorities were cancelled at his behest because he announced his intention of raising the charge on the land of Ireland by £300,000? Having made that pious decision and sought to implement it, his intention was put in issue in the by-elections in Wicklow and East Cork, whereupon he recoiled from his own position like a scalded cat and the Bill which was envisaged in his own notice to the county councils is redrafted. Now the county councils will have to withdraw their warrants again because they are again wrong, although they have been prepared in accordance with the direction of the Minister and sent out by administrative action.

He was asked in this House when he sent out the first Order by what authority he did so, and he said: "By the authority of the retrospective Bill which I will ask the House to pass." When the retrospective Bill is produced in this House, it bears no relation to the injunction contained in the Minister's directive. Why? The reason is that, having put forth his hand to rob the farmers of £300,000, he got his fingers burned—burned by the salutary publicity of Wicklow and East Cork, and burned by the timidity of his own colleagues who clamoured around him to point out that he could not get away with this steal, that the people would not let him. Now we are presented with a Bill which, by an elaborate piece of abracadabra, will, I believe, restore the bulk of the £300,000 which, at the behest of the Minister for Finance, he was trying to steal from the land of Ireland.

There is no Bill of the kind before the House.

No, Sir; but there are two executive Orders of this "fluthering" Minister——

The Deputy should not anticipate the debate on that measure.

I want to dwell at length on the "fluthering", floundering incompetence of this poor tyro who was sacked from Upper Merrion Street and decanted into the Custom House because the farmers rose in revolution at the thought of having to endure him for another term of office.

Personalities should not be indulged in.

I am not talking about anybody but the Minister for Local Government and ex-Minister for Agriculture.

Yes. It must be an interesting experience in the public life of this country to have constituted oneself a servant of the farmers and to have had them, with a unanimous voice, eject one from the Department of Agriculture to move down to the Custom House.

That is not relevant on this Estimate.

I do not know why it is not. Is he not the Minister for Local Government? I am talking about him.

We are discussing the Estimate.

I am talking about the Minister.

About the Department?

I am not; I am talking about Deputy P.J. Smith, the present Minister for Local Government, and recalling the fact that he was kicked out of the Department of Agriculture, and that, having got into the Department of Local Government——

This has no bearing on the Estimate. The Deputy must relate his remarks to the Estimate.

I am relating them to the fact that he is now Minister for Local Government, and that, having got into that Department, his first essay was to rob the farmers of £300,000 and, by heavens, they nailed him again just in time. When is this Minister going to make up his mind that he will not be allowed to walk on the farmers? He could not drive tractors through their ditches; he could not break down their gates; and now he is learning that he cannot rob them, under the rose, of £300,000, and get away with it. It is certainly time he gave up trying to prosecute this vendetta against the farmers of this country. It will not come off, and every time he tries that hereafter, we shall nail his hand to the table before he gets the cash. I venture to prophesy that every time we do that, he will be off like a scalded cat, just as he has fled on this occasion. The man has fled out of the House and I do not blame him. If I were in his place, I would fly out of the country. I have never seen any man in Irish public life so humiliatingly repudiated by those whom he held himself out to serve.

You were kicked out yourself, you know.

In Wicklow, breathe not his name.

Deputy Everett has said a mouthful. I hope the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will appreciate my endless forbearance.

Now we come to the next performance of this astonishing ex-Minister for Agriculture and present Minister for Local Government, which shows the "fluthering" chaos that obtains in this crumbling Government of Fianna Fáil. The Minister for Industry and Commerce makes an administrative Order permitting the farmers of this country to carry milk belonging to a neighbour to the creamery for reward in order to relieve the acute transport problem in rural Ireland, to expedite the agricultural industry to raise its level of efficiency and to spare the small farmer the necessity of wasting half a day hanging about a creamery waiting fortheir milk cans. Socrates from the Custom House then immediately intervenes and he raises the tax on the tractor, the use of which his colleague has authorised for the conveyance of milk, from £6 10s. to £36 10s. He sits below in the Custom House twiddling his thumbs but he and his colleagues can never be accused hereafter of having any solicitude for the farming community of this country.

Is there any parallel for "fluthering" incompetence such as that? Why should the incumbent in the Custom House say to the Minister for Industry and Commerce: "Do not license them to carry their neighbour's milk; let them hire C.I.E. to carry it or let their neighbours carry it themselves"? The other specimen now in the Department of Agriculture gets the Minister for Industry and Commerce to issue an Order waiving the provisions of the Road Transport Act in order to facilitate the conveyance of milk by lorry. Solon in the Custom House then comes into the fray and puts a tax of £36 per annum on any tractor that ventures to do what the Minister for Agriculture asks the Minister for Industry and Commerce to license it to do. That is the most harmonious band I ever heard of in government in my life. It is perfectly clear that not one of the three has the faintest notion of what the other fellow was doing. Everyone was waiting to do his own bit and the result is that they have got the harness and the reins all twisted up.

Men have gone out with orders permitting them to carry their neighbour's milk to the creamery, at the earnest behest of those who were concerned for the efficiency of the agricultural industry. They are now being summoned for bringing that milk to the creamery. They say: "But your Minister for Industry and Commerce licensed us to carry the milk," only to be told: "There is a nigger in the wood-pile. That was all right last year and the year before and in 1950 and 1949 but the boy in the Custom House has put a tax of £36 a year on your tractor. Have you paid it?" The fellow says: "No, one is not supposed to pay it if one is using a tractor on the road to carry agriculturalproduce.""Aha, there is a snag there; you can carry your own agricultural produce on the road for the £6 10s. licence, but if you carry your neighbour's agricultural produce for reward under the licence you have got from the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that is where we have got you; unless you pay £36 to the boy in the Custom House you are for it." Dozens of men in County Monaghan who have been carrying milk regularly to the creamery for the last four years have been brought before the District Court in Carrickmacross, Castle-blayney and Monaghan and have been fined.

They came to me and asked me why they were summoned. They have been doing it for the past four years under a licence originally issued at my request by Deputy Morrissey when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce and the licence was renewed every year by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the present Tánaiste, since Fianna Fáil came into office. These small farmers have been summoned and fined because of the penal tax imposed by the man who transmigrated himself from Upper Merrion Street to the Custom House. He has been switched from Merrion Street and he has clambered in the back window of the Custom House and now he avails of every chance he gets to put a blister on the unfortunate farmers whom he was once supposed to serve. Are you not ashamed of the "fluthering" that he and his colleagues are carrying on?

God knows, this is a queer country. I am always told that one of the regrettable features of life in this country is that the people do not save enough. I think saving is a good thing but it is not a good thing in itself. Saving is good, not for the love of money, for the love of money is the root of all evil. Saving is good in so far as the objective for which a man saves is good and what better objective can a man have for saving than to buy his own house? What better savings bank or money-box can a man who has money get, than a house for his wife and family? When we were in office we passed legislation in thisHouse to break down the inexplicable and incomprehensible reluctance of county managers throughout Ireland to make the full facilities of the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act available to our people. We passed an Act here at the instance of Deputy Keyes, who was then Minister for Local Government, the purpose of which was to provide that any man earning wages, with a prospect of being able to pay a weekly rent, and who was able to put down £100, would be afforded facilities forthwith under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act to build a house for himself and his family and to pay for it on terms he could afford over the following 30 or 40 years.

We insisted that money for that purpose should be advanced at 3¾ per cent. If you look at the figures for applications under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act for 1947 and the following year two astonishing features emerge. One is that the number of applications doubled, trebled and quadrupled. There was a rush from all over the country. What were these men rushing to do? They were not rushing to get something for nothing; they were rushing to bind themselves, through an inescapable obligation for the next 30 years, to save every week part of their weekly earnings. That was the only crime they committed against the community, that in order to get houses for their wives and families they put upon themselves this inescapable covenant, that they would forgo the additional purchasing power they otherwise would have if they elected to have a municipal house and pay rent for it.

The second remarkable development was that, whereas heretofore 90 per cent. of the applications under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act came from an area around Limerick, Cork and Dublin, within two years of our Government taking office there was not a single county in the 26 counties of the Irish Republic from which there were not coming thousands of applications, and what was eternally to the credit of Deputy Michael Keyes as Minister for Local Government was that, far from checkingor obstructing, everything he could do to expedite the granting of these applications and the initiating of the building of a house was done. I want to say here and now, and this is a matter on which I have thought for a long time, that I believe that money should be advanced to responsible citizens of our community under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act at the bare minimum rate of interest which would cover the administration charges of the loan and, if that is 2 per cent. or 2¼ per cent., I am prepared to defend in any community that it should be made available at that rate.

Consider what has happened. When we were in office—and I beg the House to listen to this and to think on it, because it is a shocking thing—the average fellow that borrowed money to build the kind of house that a person who would borrow under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act would build, when he got a loan during our period of office found, when his house was built and he got the grant to which he was entitled and the loan was paid over to the contractor who built the house for him, or whoever was entitled to it, that he had to pay a weekly rent of 22/- for the period of the loan to redeem the house. Now a neighbour who goes to build an identical house on the next site to the site on which the first man built and seeks a Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act loan to finance the operation through the same local authority and gets the same grant, will have to pay 34/- per week for the same term as the neighbour beside him who is only paying 22/-. Why? Is it because building materials have got dearer? No, they have got cheaper. Is it because building costs have gone up? No. Is it because the cost of land has gone up? No. Why has one man to pay 12/- per week more for his house than the fellow who built his house three years ago? Because the rates of interest have gone up. Why? Because that incompetent, irresponsible little playboy, the Minister for Finance, has published abroad before the world that the credit of this country is worse and less acceptable than the credit of a banana republic.

That does not arise.

It does.

The Minister for Finance's Estimate is not before the House. We are discussing the actions and administration of the Minister for Local Government and the Deputy should control himself.

Does the Chair not know that we are dealing with the rates of interest chargeable and approved of by the Minister for Local Government for a Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act loan?

The Minister for Local Government is not responsible for financial policy. We are not discussing financial policy.

I say that to charge these rates for loans for the purpose of building a house under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act is an outrage. I say that the Minister for Local Government who would degrade himself by becoming the instrument of that outrage on our people is dead to all sense of duty. Is there a Deputy here who believes that a man should be fined, not 12/- per year, not 12/-per month, but 12/- a week for 30 years for no greater crime than that he wants to save, not for the purpose of having a good time, not for the purpose of cutting a dash, not for the purpose of dissipating it upon some luxury in the bye and bye, but because he wants to build a house out of his earnings in which to rear a family?

Are we all mad? What am I to say to a friend of mine in this city who stops me in the street and says: "I am a married man and have a child of three years and a child of one year. We are all living in one tenement room. I can well afford to pay rent for a house and I am ready to pay rent. I have saved £100 and I will deposit that with anybody who doubts my capacity to pay rent as a security that my rent will be promptly paid every Saturday night. I cannot get a good night's sleep at present because rats have got into the house and twiceI have had to get up in the night to chase the rats off the baby's cradle. I cannot get a house from the Dublin Corporation. When I go to the housing authorities in Dublin they tell me that they cannot even consider my case because they are at present dealing with people living six or seven in one room and they will not have dealt with them until 18 months or two years have passed by, but they will put my name on the list. There is no use craving and begging and tendering money because there is no place to put me." Then he says: "I read in the newspapers that the Government are going to spend £9,000,000 on rebuilding Dublin Castle and reconstructing the Naas Road. Would you explain to me, if they can spend £9,000,000 on Dublin Castle and the Naas Road why they cannot build enough houses to provide for people living four in one room?"

Are we all daft? When I said to that fellow: "What about getting a loan under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act to build your own house?" he said: "Do you know what it would cost? If I were to build a house now it would cost me nearly £2 per week and no man with a young family can bind himself to pay £2 per week when he is earning only £7 per week. But I can pay rent." But for the conduct of the little silly-billy who raised money at 5 per cent. and the incompetent colleagues who let him do it, that chap ought to be able to build a house and pay for it at the rate of 25/- or 26/- per week. But no, this Oireachtas tells him: "Stay in your tenement room. We will attend to you in about two years' time and give you a municipal house."

Again I ask this House, are we all daft? What is money for? Why do we suddenly decide to treat money as if it were a china egg which you would put into a hen's nest, not in the hope of getting the hen to hatch it, but in the belief that you will persuade the hen to lay another egg? The only use money has is to get for those who have it the things they have to have.

Does anyone challenge the proposition that a man with a growingfamily, an industrious man with work to do and wages to earn, should have a house? I do not think there is a Deputy on either side of the House who would not subscribe heartily and enthusiastically to the principle that we should do all we can to help that man.

Why do we not do it? What paralysis is upon us? We could reduce the cost to the man who wants to build his own house in this country to-morrow morning from approximately 34/-a week to something in the neighbourhood of £1 if we would do it. Do not forget this, that in respect of every such house built we would have saved the municipality and the Treasury approximately £500 per house. What kind of madness is there on us if we will not do it? What appals me is that Deputies who hear what I am saying in their hearts know it is true; but there is some kind of a horrible lethargy which descends upon them and says: "Ah, well, I suppose that is true but sure what can we do?" Get up and say that we want that done; let it be done and it can be done, and do not believe anybody who tells you that there is some mysterious force in operation which makes it impossible.

Remember that a Tory Government in Great Britain said, before the 1939 war, that it could not do the housing, that it would be too costly and that it could not get the money. Hitler fired one shot across the Polish frontier and in ten minutes a resolution was taken to spend £6,000,000,000 or £12,000,000,000—not on houses, not on hospitals, not on things that would be valuable, on things that would be value for the money spent on them, but on shells and on mines and on ships that were going to go to sea to be sunk. At the end of six years, the £6,000,000,000 had been spent and for it there was nothing except victory— God bless the mark!—victory. But they could not find the money to build houses.

Is it not humiliating that we who did not spend one penny on guns or drums or on battle, are so meanspirited in this country—we have becomesuch adorers at the shrine of the golden calf—that we are shivering in our breeches for fear we would spend money too rashly on houses?

Are the members of the Fianna Fáil Party not ashamed of themselves? Are they not a poor lot? Let me tell them this. It was a proud thing to be a member of a Government and to find that the Parties supporting it did not suffer themselves to be blinded by fraud. Those who supported our Government did not believe that it was magnificent to spend £6,000,000,000 on explosives but reckless criminality to spend £1,000,000 on houses, and we spent it. I am often amused when I hear these poor little men who succeeded us wailing about the commitments that we left after us. First, they said they were debts. We nailed their hand to the table there, and showed that was a falsehood. "Well," they said, "perhaps they were not debts but they were commitments." Yes, they were commitments—millions and millions and millions.

We believed in the future of this country. We planned to develop the resources of this country. We planned to see that there would be houses for everybody, to see that the poorest creature in this country would get the same treatment in a hospital or in a home as the wealthiest would get. Were we wrong? Which of these commitments has Fianna Fáil repudiated and on which of them has Fianna Fáil dared to go back? Not one, because they were good commitments compared with, when we took office, the stack of daft commitments that we got. We brought them into Dáil Éireann and tore them up; we threw them on the floor in the presence of the people, and said they were daft commitments, and that there was going to be no flying for high-heeled ladies in Constellation planes to the United States while our people were living four and more to a room in tenements in Dublin. We said that we would build the houses first, and that if the high-heeled ladies wanted to fly that we were not going to consider getting craft in which to fly them. We tore them up, and said: "These are the commitments ofthe Fianna Fáil Government and we repudiate them."

We found a model in Government Buildings which cost £1,500 to make, a model of the £9,000,000 scheme to rebuild Dublin Castle.

The Minister has no responsibility for that.

For what?

For the rebuilding of Dublin Castle. It arises on another Estimate.

Is he not a member of the Government?

Surely, the Deputy knows that the whole of Government policy cannot be discussed on this Estimate.

But, surely, he has responsibility for the whole of the building industry.

The Deputy is now discussing another scheme which arises on a separate Vote.

Why must the citizens of this city live four in a room, with rats on the baby's cradle, if the Government of which he is a member are going to spend £9,000,000 on a project to rebuild Dublin Castle? That was a commitment from Fianna Fáil to us that we tore up, and we damn nearly brought in the model to tear it up, too.

That does not arise on this Estimate and cannot be discussed on it.

The chassis factory was torn up, too.

You are not going to get any bed or board in the chassis factory. I am looking for a safe place for the baby's cradle.

If you had your way there would not be many houses standing in Ireland during the last war.

Fianna Fáil believe in building houses.

You built 14 cottages in 14 years.

What did you do? You were a member of the county council.

We built 2,000 houses in two years.

The 2,000 houses were ready for you when you went in.

Deputies will agree, I think, that, after the experience we had here from 4.30 to 5 o'clock, the debate has, at least, become lively. You know that the first step in reform is to stir the sinner's conscience; when you hear him protest, "Not me", there is hope. The next thing you will see him do is sidling off on Saturday night. If you do not watch him too closely, he will slip in by the side door and no one will want to eavesdrop on his confession when he makes it. And his penance can be undertaken not even by walking the stations of Lough Derg; he need go no further than the Lobby.

You believe you will rise again. I am sorry for knocking you off your track.

I appreciate the Deputy's interventions. They are usually interesting, sometimes constructive and on this occasion they fill me with hope that I will see him reform his past.

I was reading in the Official Report recently interventions by Deputy Cafferky and my fellow townsman, Deputy Flanagan. I read with edification all the agreeable things that Deputy Flanagan had to say about his neighbour. If I may offer a word of advice to Deputy Flanagan, there is a pretty good convention in public life that if you want to have a quarrel with another Deputy, it is always good to choose somebody who is not your nextdoor neighbour. It is a convention that you may hit people pretty hard in this House and forget about it outside the House, but if you start looking over your neighbour's back-yard wall and telling him what you thinkabout him it is not so easy to remember that those polite exchanges in Dáil Éireann were meant to be forgotten in your own back yard. However, we all have to learn by experience and I offer that little lesson in charity to Deputy Flanagan.

He and Deputy Cafferky were talking about the difficulty of carrying the work that had been done on Lough Gara to completion by clearing the Breedogue and Lung rivers. Both of them seem to have overlooked the fact that when the Local Authorities (Works) Act was being introduced by the late Deputy Murphy, he said he looked forward to local authorities collaborating closely with the Minister for Agriculture so that the land rehabilitation scheme and the Local Authorities (Works) Act could be made to interlock and thus get additional value out of both of them. If you want a perfect example of where that worked to perfection, look at Kildare where the county manager and the chairman of the county council habitually consulted officials of the Department of Agriculture and asked them: What is your programme in Kildare going to be over the next 12 months? Then, when proposals were put forward by county councillors, they were able to say: That will fit in with what you are doing in the land rehabilitation project. We want to combine our efforts with yours. We will be helping you and you will be helping us and together we can get £110 worth out of each £100 we spend.

No rational man can doubt that when Tinnecarra rock was removed by the Board of Works, as the agent for the Department of Agriculture, that it was anticipated that Roscommon County Council would clear both of the rivers flowing into Lough Gara because above Lough Gara right up to the source of these rivers they are running through bog. You could pick the moolach out of the Breedogue river and out of the Lung river with a tablespoon. It is a soft peat bog. The drainage problem which no local authority could contemplate tackling lay below Lough Gara and there was no use in dealing with the Breedogueor the Lung rivers until the rock was cleared. We cleared the rock in 1951-52 and now we are told the local authority has no money to do the rest of the work and Deputy Flanagan is "deludhered" into the belief that there is no means of doing that work. Of course there is not, because the Fianna Fáil Party is withdrawing money from the Local Authorities (Works) Act, but they should not blame me for failing to anicipate that the Irish people would be guilty of the supreme folly of reinstating the Fianna Fáil Party and the four bluebells as the Government of this country.

There is no reason whatever why the very valuable work which was done at Tinnecarra Rock should not be fully availed of if the Local Authorities (Works) Act money were available now to scoop the mud and slush out of the bed of the Lung and Breedogue rivers and give the people the benefit of the scheme in those areas to which Deputies Cafferky and Flanagan referred. I suggest to these two Deputies that they apply themselves to that aspect of the problem instead of spending their time pot-walloping neighbours. If they want to find a solution to the problems of those whom they represent, they might find a means of achieving the purpose they have in view.

I am not going to give instances of similar situations all over the country but this House can well understand that when you suspend the Local Authorities (Works) Act by reducing its funds to virtually nothing, I do not deny you struck a heavy blow at the immediate effectiveness of the land rehabilitation project. Our idea was that by having the two schemes operating together, we got £110 value out of every £100 we spent by co-ordinating the two plans. It is quite a different cup of tea when one half of the major design has been sterilised by a silly device conceived in a small and jealous mind of substituting for the productive work the Local Authorities (Works) Act was doing large expenditure on roads which did not add one penny to the funds available for the employment of men in rural Ireland but which simply transferred the men off the land and its improvement on to the roads.And in what capacity? Now, we were proud of the land project, proud that we equipped the men working on the land with the most modern machinery that could be bought for money anywhere in the world, and that we brought fellows home from the Suez Canal and the North African desert to work this machinery at home and to teach unskilled workers that we recruited in rural Ireland not to go on indefinitely with the pick and shovel but to become highly-skilled operatives of complicated machinery so that they would graduate to the standard of living and the status of skilled operatives.

What is the attitude to road building when the Fianna Fáil Party come into office? Do they concern themselves to equip road workers with standards of machinery and equipment to enable them to rise to the status of skilled workers? Not at all. It is not 12 months ago since I saw a man not 25 years of age sitting on a bit of straw somewhere in Laois-Offaly wearing a pair of wire glasses and breaking stones with a hammer. That is true. I think that is wrong. I think that to be paying a man £4 a week to sit on the roadside breaking stones with a hammer is an affront to any man's dignity at this time other than an old age pensioner or someone you want to keep employed.

Is the Minister responsible for that?

I think so. One of a number of items which we left to the Minister when we left office was a design to reconstitute the whole system of road-making in Ireland, grouping the road-making authorities into five or six groups, equipping each group with the most up-to-date and effective machinery for the making of roads for the purpose of ensuring that those who work on road construction and road repair work throughout the country would have the status of skilled workers and a reward commensurate therewith. Was not that a good idea? Was it not a desirable thing to change road work from a blind-alley occupation into a calling where a mancoming in on the ground floor could work himself up into the position of a highly skilled operative earning as much at that work as he would in any other skilled occupation? Was that a good idea or a bad idea? That was one of the commitments we left to the Minister. He has not had the courage to come in here and tear it up and scatter it on the floor.

None of my officials ever saw it.

I could not say that. I was not Minister for Local Government, but I have discussed it with the officials of that Department and I know they knew about it. Perhaps the Minister would ask them again now. Sure, the poor fellow does not know what is going on in the Custom House at all. I am trying to restrain myself from recalling incidents in his past, instances well-known to Deputy Giles and to me.

I am doing the same.

Verb. Sap.

When the Deputy gets a bad thought like that, just pass me the password.

I know no passwords but I know a watchword for the decent people in County Cavan and it is "Do not desert your comrades in the dock". Now, chew on that! Let us talk about water supplies and roads. I want to direct the attention of the House to the fact that under the land project we provided that the people who wanted to bring water into their houses would be given a 50 per cent. grant. In a large part of rural Ireland the position is that the available source of water is at a very great distance from the homes of the people. If we intend to bring in rural electrification, and I think we should, at a very substantial capital charge surely local authorities could be induced by the Minister to collaborate with the land project and, where under the land project there are applications from 20 or a dozen farmers for grants to connect themselves up to the nearest available water supply and there is noconvenient natural water supply adjacent, surely the local authority could bring water to a central place equally accessible to those 12 or 20 farms from whence it could be carried into the individual houses under the authority and with the assistance of the land rehabilitation scheme. I think that is a sensible plan. I believe it is a practicable plan and I believe that if he would discuss that with his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, ways and means could be devised for giving effect to it without any serious difficulty.

I want to direct the Minister's attention to the deplorable delays in paying housing grants. I suggest to him that 90 per cent. of the delays are due not to the Department of Local Government but to the inefficiency with which the so-called public utility societies are operated. I do not know what useful purpose these public utility societies are serving in rural Ireland except a belated attempt to breathe life into the dying Fianna Fáil cumainn. Under the present law, if a person makes an application for a housing grant through a public utility society he gets somewhat more than he would if he makes his application direct to the Department. I suggest that differentiation should be wiped out. I have not the slightest doubt that if the public utility societies are short-circuited the grants will be paid more promptly. So far as County Monaghan is concerned, every single case of a delayed housing grant that I have investigated has been due to some non-feasance or misfeasance on the part of the particular public utility society. I do not say they are doing anything criminal or wrong but there is a bleary inefficiency in the paying of the grant to the grantee. The applicant is forced to go through the society because he knows that if he goes direct he will get substantially less.

I cannot but think that a little forethought on the part of county managers would spare a great many road workers the present long journeys they have to travel by bicycle and on foot to get to their work. I get complaints that men living in Carrickmacrossget road work in Castleblayney, while men living in Castleblayney are put on road work at Carrickmacross. Where that anomaly exists it should not be beyond the genius of the county manager to swap the men around. I believe it has something to do with gangers. Gangers have favourites and they want this man on the gang but they do not want the other man. It is a bit hard to expect men to travel 14 miles a day because a ganger likes one man but does not like another man. I hope the Minister will look into that at his leisure and require some steps to be taken.

Where requests are made to the Minister for the rehabiliation of county homes I exhort the Minister before sanctioning the expenditure of huge sums of money on these loathsome old barracks to impress on the local authorities the desirability of providing parochial homes. There is no gloomier tragedy in rural Ireland than to see a highly intelligent old person who has become infirm and is no longer able to move about condemned to enter one of these gloomy institutions.

Would not the Deputy think that would be more relevant on Social Welfare?

I could not say.

I think it is relevant to Social Welfare.

Does the Minister sanction grants for the repair of county homes?

Not that I know of.

It can be raised on the Estimate for Social Welfare or Health.

There has been a change since we first began discussing these matters. Now, when I was a child we used to go swimming in Tara Street Baths on Monday, sometimes on Tuesday, but by Wednesday one could not see the bottom of the bath and so, on Wednesday, one went up to the Iveagh Baths because they changed the water there on Wednesday morning. One did one's swimming there on Wednesday and Thursday. Then onFriday one went back to Tara Street and, if they were not in good humour, the water was like pea soup and one gave up swimming for the rest of the week; but if they were in good humour and the water had got too bad, they changed it on Thursday night. I learned to swim in the Tara Street Baths and the Iveagh Baths. The Iveagh Baths are much better than the municipal baths. During the war these baths were taken over for the examination of the migrants.

I remember, when we were in office, I agitated for years to get the Iveagh Baths reopened and I think my colleagues, both of whom were Ministers for Local Government in succession, Deputies Murphy and Keyes, one after the other agitated energetically to get the local authority in Dublin to reopen the Iveagh Baths. You would think you were trying to break down the gates of the Sacred City of Mecca. It could not be done; it would cost too much; the liability would be too great; if it were undertaken it would take years to achieve it. But, hopping and trotting, they got the Iveagh Baths reopened at last.

Every Deputy who knows the City of Dublin realises that there is probably no city of its size in the world in which more inadequate provision is made for swimming facilities than is made in the City of Dublin.

Would the Deputy not think that that is a matter for Dublin Corporation?

If it is a matter for the Dublin Corporation, the Dublin Corporation ought to get down on all fours and crawl into the first hole they can find. I am 51 years of age and I first bathed in the Tara Street Baths 45 years ago and we still have the Tara Street Baths and we only recently recovered the Iveagh Baths. If this is the responsibility of the Dublin Corporation, where is the hole for the Dublin Corporation to crawl into?

If you were a member of the Dublin Corporation we could discuss that. We do discuss it.

If that is all you have achieved for the last 45 years, smallwonder we have not got anything better from the corporation.

There is more sea-swimming around Dublin than in any other city of its size in the world.

Are not we free to differ? If Deputy Cowan thinks that is sufficient, that is an understandable point of view. If Deputy Cowan thinks that if they want to go swimming they can go swimming in the sea, that is all right, that is his point of view and he is entitled to have that point of view.

We are not in the same position as Birmingham, for instance.

If the truth were told, I was a citizen of this city long before the city ever heard of Deputy Cowan. I was gone out of the city before Deputy Cowan came into it, but that is another day's work. This is my modest proposal: there is a good rule in logic that where there is a proximate explanation it is illogical to look for a remote explanation. It is a good rule in pragmatic politics that where there is a ready solution to hand you should not refuse to avail of it because you have grandiose plans that some day will be given effect to. When I walk down the canal from the month of May to the month of October, I see half the children of the city swimming in the canal because, being common-sensible children, when they see a canal they peel off their duds and jump in, because they say: "What we want is some place to swim and there is water in the canal and, therefore, as two and two make four, if you want to swim and there is water in the canal, and there is no one to stop you, take off your duds and get into the canal." But, unfortunately, the condition of the canal is gravely unhygienic. It would not tax the ingenuity of the city engineer and the whole bag of tricks above in the City Hall to clean the canal from Crumlin down to Ringsend.

Is this relevant?

Clearly the canal is not relevant.

On a point of order. We discussed this in the Dublin Corporation.

Is this a point of order?

It is a very queer one.

There are many viewpoints in regard to this matter.

I think this is simply a scramble for an alibi.

Am I going to be interrupted in making the point of order?

Point of order, my foot.

The Deputy is entitled to make a point of order.

Is he entitled to make a point of alibi?

It is my duty to say whether it is a point of order or not. The Deputy should allow me.

The question as to whether the Dublin Corporation is making available adequate facilities for swimming or not is entirely one for the Dublin Corporation and not for the Minister. I submit that, in those circumstances, the references are not relevant. We can provide all the baths we want to provide but we need not do it.

That has nothing to do with a point of order. The Dublin Corporation comes under the control of the Department of Local Government and of the State. I take it the Deputy is relevant in referring to the swimming facilities afforded.

There is something in the Estimate about grants for swimming pools.

I said earlier that it was a very good sign when you saw guilty consciences beginning to stir and protesting: "Not me, not me."

I object to that. Deputy Dillon has no idea of what my views in regard to this matter are, whether I am for or against.

Deputy Cowan should not be so sensitive.

Who will blame him? If I had a conscience like Deputy Cowan's I would be a great deal more sensitive.

Deputy Cowan's conscience is not on the Estimate.

We are afflicted with his conscience, which is making him jump up and down like a jack-in-the-box.

Deputy Dillon on the Estimate.

Yes, when I can get Deputy Cowan's conscience out of my way—not an easy job.

I hope I will be able to restrain myself until you are finished and do not intervene.

I do not give a fiddlede-dee whether you do or not. The proposal I have submitted is a modest kind of proposal. I am not suggesting for a single moment that I consider the rehabilitation of the canal is likely to provide ideal permanent swimming facilities for the citizens of Dublin but, if the children are going to swim in the canal whether we like it or not— and that they are certainly going to do, more power to their elbows—we have two courses open if the conditions in the canal are unhygienic. One is to line the canal with Civic Guards from the city boundary to Ringsend to prevent the children going into the canal and the other is to go into the canal ourselves and remove the unhygienic element in the canal and its contents so that the children may hereafter plunge into it and disport themselves without danger to their health.

Come—is that a revolutionary or irresponsible proposal? I think it is modest. I think it is common-sensible and, above all, it would put the unemployed of the City of Dublin at work on the canal instead of sending them down to the Dodder.

Did you see the picture in the paper of the glorious work provided by the Government to deal with the unemployment problem in Dublin and afellow with a smile on him from ear to ear and a broom in his hand and wearing a pair of thigh boots, cleaning the Dodder? Did you see him?

I see 400 men on the work for the last six months.

It is like a concept that would come out of the mind of Deputy Cowan. In Deputy Cowan's judgment, if you come across a man who is unemployed in this country, degrade him to the position of a burden on his neighbours, make him feel that he depends on Peadar Cowan for the right to live.

The Deputy should deal with the Estimate.

That is what I am dealing with, Sir. I do not believe that if we want to provide work for an unemployed man we should make it the kind of work that will make him come hat in hand to Deputy Peadar Cowan to crave for the right to live in his own city. But I would be proud to give that man an opportunity proudly to work for well-earned wages providing an amenity for his own children in his own city, not on an extravagant scale, but just going down to provide that where his children swim will not be luxurious, will not be extravagant, but that it will not put their health in mortal danger. Would not any man be proud of having work from Dublin Corporation on that assignment? Would not any man feel himself degraded to be offered Deputy Peadar Cowan's yard-brush to clean the Dodder? There is something loathsome in the mind that traffics in your neighbour's misfortune and glories to have him in your grip. There are decent elements in this country who do not see in the unemployment of their neighbours an opportunity to buy their votes.

A very foul mind.

The truth about the Deputy must always smell a little. It is not my fault. The truth is the truth, and be it bitter or sweet it will be spoken here. These suggestions I have made to the Minister are of a kindthat, I think, might with profit be considered and acted upon——

Did Deputy Alderman Alfred Byrne hear the foulmouthed slanderer?

Mr. A. Byrne

I did not hear the words. I did not hear what he said. What was the slander?

I believe it might redound to the advantage of the country if those modest proposals I have put forward were acted upon. I do not very much hope that they will. I believe that Deputy Cowan and the Party which will not have him will continue their policy of availing of their neighbour's distress to attempt to purchase votes with public funds.

Deputy Byrne agrees with that description?

I think they will fail, and I think that those who imagine that our people, however great their distress, can be so corrupted will be disappointed. I deplore the fact that where there is desirable work that urgently wants doing, that where there are neighbours of ours standing idle, willing to do the work, that where there is abundant credit available to our community to finance the raw material necessary to get the work done, that we should prefer to buy them a yard-brush to clean the Dodder rather than to build houses for their neighbours, swimming pools for their children, the kind of amenities that make the distinction between destitution and a decent standard of life.

The Minister for Local Government and Public Health, or the Minister for Local Government, as he now is, is one of the Ministers of the Government who can do much to raise the standard of living of our people. Is there any Deputy in this House with the temerity to pretend that what that Minister has done since he came into office has contributed to that end? Will they look at the figures of employment in the building industry? Will they look at the decline in the number of Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act loans that have been granted for the last two years? Will they look at the obligation under which he finds himselfto provide, not schemes for reform, but relief works on an unprecedented scale and for an unpredictable time? Was ever such a change wrought on the face of the economic life of any country? Three years ago a labour shortage, so much work in hand that there were not hands in Ireland sufficient to reach upon it. To-day what is the difference, and why the change? I invite the Deputies who care to listen to the explanation Deputy Cowan will offer and to look at the Minister who depends for his survival on Deputy Cowan's vote.

There are one or two matters which I want to raise on this Estimate. They concern, I think, some of the most important features of the Department. Not only in the discussion on the Estimate but in discussions on wider aspects of Government policy for some time past there has been a constant complaint that there is a noticeable slowing down in the building of houses not merely by private builders but by local authorities as well. It is well known to anybody who takes the trouble to examine the situation that the sag in private building has been brought about almost entirely by reason of the high interest charges which are now demanded by local authorities for loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act and by similarly increased interest charges where the money is advanced by insurance companies or by building societies. This contributing factor— in fact the single contributing factor— to the fall in house building so far as private houses are concerned arises directly out of the Government's policy of making money dearer. A direct consequence of that policy, initiated in last year's loan, continued in this year's loan, has been to cause a considerable falling off in the amount of private house building not merely in the City of Dublin but in every town and city throughout the country. One has only to look at housing estates around this city. You will see there that sites have been developed, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago. Large numbers of houses were being erected on those sites. To-dayone is lucky if he sees a single house going up at a time. Any private builder you talk to will tell you that private building has ceased to pay, that the overheads are enormous, that there are difficulties in selling a house, and a considerable number of private house builders have gone out of erecting houses. Some of them are trying to maintain a livelihood and to maintain themselves in business by going into repair work or into contract work, but not an inconsiderable number of them have appeared in courts, being unable to meet their obligations because of their inability to sell houses in consequence of the sudden drop in the demand for private houses by private persons in consequence of the increased interest charges.

When you look at the situation so far as local authorities are concerned the position becomes really serious. Not only is there an admitted fall in the number of houses being built by local authorities, but the employment of workers on local authority housing schemes has sagged very considerably over the past two years. According to figures supplied by the Department itself there were 11,400 workers employed on local authority housing schemes in August, 1951. By August, 1953, the number had fallen to 7,300. I venture to say that if current figures are supplied it will be found that the number now employed is considerably less than that which was employed in August, 1953.

A parliamentary question directed to the Minister for Local Government yesterday by Deputy Kyne as to the number of men employed on local authority housing in urban areas other than the Dublin County Borough elicited the information that at the end of 1951 there were 4,600 persons employed on urban housing schemes. In September, 1953, two years afterwards, the number had dropped to 1,800. In other words, about 60 per cent. of the workers employed on housing schemes undertaken by urban authorities were laid off in the short space of two years. I can quite conceive—I want to be fair in this matter —that, where you have built houses in a particular area and satisfied theimmediate local need, you cannot go on building houses in that particular area. Consequently, perhaps, local authorities in these areas are not making the contribution to house building that was made two years ago, but the fact remains that we still need very many thousands of houses. In a situation in which thousands of houses are needed, where families are rotting in filthy tenements and rainsoaked mud cabins in various parts of the country, it is nothing short of national waste from an economic and health point of view that we should permit people to live in such pestilential dens while we have large numbers of building trade workers idle and large numbers of people desiring to build houses. Yet, we apparently cannot marry the need for houses to the availability of skilled labour in order to provide that essential social need.

I think it is a serious situation that building, which provides such substantial employment of a remunerative kind for male adult labour, should show such a serious trend. All the indications are that employment in the building trade is falling. In fact, the real figures as to the extent of the unemployment in the building trade are concealed by emigration. If the Minister and any member of the Government Party chose to test the matter they can call on the building trade unions. Every single one of them will testify to the fact that during the past two years a substantial number of building trade workers, many of whom were brought over to this country by the inter-Party Government at a time when there was not a single unemployed craftsman in the country, have been compelled to pack their bags and go back to Britain to find there the work which they cannot now get here.

Look at the figures. When we are comparing the figures now with those of two years ago, let us remember that these figures which are now being quoted are figures which do not take cognisance of the substantial emigration amongst building trade workers in the past two years. In reply to a question put to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for SocialWelfare by Deputy Desmond on the 27th October as to the number of building trade workers registered as unemployed in October, 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1953, Deputy Desmond got this information. In October, 1950, there were 555, of whom more than half were painters alone and, therefore, not normally house-building operatives as such. The figure increased in October, 1951, to 585. In October, 1952, it jumped to 1,250, and in October, 1953, to 1,555. In other words, in October, 1950, there were, in round figures, 500 building trade workers unemployed. As I said, half of them were painters. By 1953 that figure had jumped to 1,555.

That is a serious situation. Any Minister concerned with promoting house building or with providing employment for additional hands ought to be concerned with figures such as those. I want to ask the Minister one simple question. I do not ask it in any sense of Party rancour or political partisanship. What in his view is the cause of the sag in house building by the local authorities and by private builders, and what does he think is the outlook for building trade workers who are idle to-day? They are emigrating in substantial numbers and will be forced to emigrate in still more substantial numbers unless they can see some evidence that there will be a reversal of the engine in so far as house building is concerned and that they will get opportunities for work in their own country.

We have to-day appalling housing problems in this city and in the City of Cork. We have housing problems in many of the towns and rural areas throughout the country. The story told by Deputy Dillon of the man and his wife living in the City of Dublin in a rat-infested tenement is true of many other parts of the city. Many Deputies who have occasion from time to time to interview persons seeking houses in Dublin have been compelled to tell them frankly that the Dublin Corporation, notwithstanding all the houses that have been built by it, is still only in a position to deal with applications in respect of people who are living in a density of six to one room.

So long as you have such a conditionas that existing in a country which escaped the ravages of two wars, a country where there is still a large number of building trade workers idle, a country which has per head of its population, more sterling assets than any other country in the world outside the United States of America, it is nothing short of a challenge to our own capacity to govern ourselves that people should be living in these rat-infested tenements when all the factors to eradicate that condition of affairs are present if only we have the courage and the competence to use the powers that within us lie.

Various suggestions have been made. I do not propose to come down on one side or another on this question. I prefer to deal with facts instead of fiction. There is a rumour that a whisper has been passed round to county managers to soft-pedal on housing programmes; that the local authorities have been told to go easy beause of the capital debt incurred in respect of house building. I do not know whether any such indication was conveyed to county managers or city managers. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe that any such indication would be conveyed to them.

You are perfectly right.

But the fact remains that there is a sag in house building by the local authorities. There seems to be less enthusiasm among county managers to go ahead with building schemes. There seems to be a kind of feeling that local authorities should now back-pedal in the field of house building. If what the Minister says represents the correct position and what I suspect is the correct position that local authorities have not been told to slow down on house building, then I think the Minister ought to avail of the debate on this Estimate to say that it is his desire and the desire of the Government that local authorities should brace themselves for the completion of the housing drive so as to eradicate the slums and rainsoaked mud cabins and properly rehouse our people in the minimum space of time.

I am one of those who believe that housing our people ought not to be a political issue. We should so gear up our housing programme as a matter of conscience and social duty that we would reach the stage at which housing would not be an issue in any future general election. I still hope and still think it would be possible to attain that situation so that we can recognise that no matter what Government is in office this is a social duty in which we should all participate in providing decent houses for our people to live in.

In discussions with well-meaning citizens who are interested in the provision of houses with the utmost expedition, I cannot help feeling that there is some indication that house building should be back-pedalled. I hope the Minister will avail of this opportunity to tell the local authorities that they should go ahead with house building with the same expedition as before and that every possible facility will be given to them for the purpose of enabling them to complete their housing programme in the minimum space of time.

I have seen some recent references to house-building costs, to what the solicitor takes, what the architect takes and what the engineer takes out of house building. I do not think this is just the occasion for a discussion of that kind, but I have seen some new, self-appointed house-building experts come into this controversy and suggest that one of the ways in which we could cheapen house building would be by depreciating our present housing standards. One Deputy, I think, suggested that instead of building houses with slates you ought to use tar and felt. That was one of the contributions which he thought could be made to cheapening house building in Ireland.

Who wants to live in an Ireland in which, notwithstanding all the extravagance we can see in the hotels and in the big streets of this city, we are going to accommodate ordinary working-class people in houses roofed with tar and felt? I hope the Minister will set his face against any proposal to depreciate our housing standards. I hope he will not waste two seconds considering the kind of suggestion or suggestionswhich emanate from the minds that think houses with felt and tar are good enough for working-class people. To do that will only create new slums in the future. Houses of that kind will create no civic pride or no civic responsibility in our people. They will be regarded as just shelters, not homes, and they will carry with them all the detestation of those people who know that the tar roof and the felt roof specially selected for workers, represents the badge of their poverty in the social system which they did not create, but which they cannot get rid of.

I hope the Minister will stand not for lower standards of house building, but will create higher standards, that no matter what elements of cost in building have to be cut, the standard of our house building will not be cut. If we were even to contemplate, as just a temporary measure, a slightly cheaper house, we would pay very substantially in higher costs of repairs, in an earlier new drive to eradicate the new slums we would put up and we would only blunt the sense of pride and sense of citizenship which must be developed, and is developed in the mind and heart of every citizen who is properly housed in a system of society in which he has some pride. If we attempt for one moment to depreciate our housing standards, we are storing up new slums for ourselves and new ruins. The local authorities who would adopt these methods of housing would be building up for themselves an appalling legacy of repairs in the future.

One matter to which I would like to call the Minister's attention on this Estimate is that of derelict sites and what I have to say is not new in this field. Every Deputy has gone through the country and has admired new housing schemes and his heart has been gladdened at the fact that our housing developments are proceeding to such an extent that we can now take pride in these new housing estates. However, he has not gone very far through the town or city until he sees a collection of gaunt ruins, condemned houses from which the people have been evacuated into thenew housing schemes. Many of these towns where the houses are condemned look worse to-day than before the houses were condemned. I have seen them in my own constituency and in other constituencies around the country, roofless structures, windows sometimes open and frames gone, sometimes built up with blocks, horrible shambles, something you might expect in a war-battered area. These shambles have been there for years. They are as permanent in appearance as the new houses and there is apparently no intention of demolishing them completely and rebuilding on the old sites.

I can see at once that you cannot rebuild on every site on which you have demolished houses, but quite a considerable number of them are suitable for rebuilding; or perhaps they are suitable for some other purpose, for letting for shops or something else. The local authorities ought to have their attention specially directed to the necessity, in the interests of clean towns and cities, of clearing out these derelict structures, rebuilding on them or utilising them for some other purpose or letting them to somebody who will put on them much better structures than the ramshackle buildings which repose there at the moment.

I do not think that serious difficulty would be experienced in rebuilding on many of those sites. To do so would improve many towns whose appearances to-day are spoiled entirely by the presence of these gaunt, unoccupied ruins. In my view, they operate to offset a great deal of improvement to towns and cities which follows in the wake of the inauguration of new building schemes.

Another activity of this Department is the administration of the Local Authorities (Works) Act. Here, again, I cannot congratulate the Minister on the situation which we have reached. In 1950-51, £1,750,000 was made available to local authorities for grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. In 1951-52, it was £1,200,000. In 1953, that figure had been cut to half, and was only £650,000 in the current year. It has been cut again, and is now only £400,000. The grants, whichamounted to £1,750,000 in 1950-51, have been reduced now to £400,000 or less than £500,000. I can only express dismay at the reduction in these grants. If there was any one Act that conferred substantial benefits on the people living in rural Ireland, it was that Act. Under it, rivers and streams have been drained which for almost a generation have been a source of flooding and a source of local and national loss.

One incident comes back to my mind as I speak. On a Sunday morning in 1948, I was standing outside the church at Levitstown, in South Kildare, and behind me were flooded lands which resembled a kind of Holland in Ireland. As I surveyed that land there was water as far as the naked eye could see from the bank on which I was standing. Subsequently, under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, the local authority undertook drainage work in the area. I was there three months ago. All the flooding which was there in 1948 had completely disappeared. There was corn growing on the land and luscious grass. If that Act had never been put into operation, if grants had never been made under it, that place to-day would be the same lake as it has been for the last quarter of a century. No one in the area who has seen the work being done there would have any hesitation in paying tribute to the magnificent work executed not merely there but in other places all over the country by grants under that Act. It is a great pity those grants have been reduced.

I do not think you do the same nationally good work merely by increasing road grants. From the national point of view, work on the land which will yield crops and produce in the long run is nationally more beneficial than work on the roads.

You can never grow a head of cabbage on the road or a blade of corn, but by draining land you can improve the land and provide employment. Furthermore, the improvement of the land pays dividends in the first year and in every year. Where we have so much land rendered useless by defective drainage, there is an enormouscase to be made—in this country of ours, with the contour and the configuration it has—for spending money on drainage works and thus helping not only to arrest the continued inroads of water but to reverse that process and bring back into production land which is now useless. It is not possible to over-emphasise the value of drainage work. It pays dividends not merely immediately but to posterity.

The employment position under the Local Authorities (Works) Act tells its own appalling story of the shortsightedness in cutting these grants. The average number of men employed on works under this Act in 1952-53 was only 1,800 as compared with 4,700 in 1951-52. In March, 1950, there were as many as 13,800 so employed. Any Deputy will recall the really magnificient work done by those grants in the drainage work which they made possible. The very fact that the number of people employed under those grants has fallen from 13,800 in March, 1950, to as low as 1,800 in 1952-53, is an indication not only of the serious sag in that useful and valuable type of employment but also of the measure of shortsightedness of the Government in this respect—a shortsightedness which should be corrected at the earliest possible moment.

Every Deputy knows—and the unemployment figures confirm the fact—that there is very serious unemployment in the rural areas. If I were asked to-morrow what was the best scheme for employing unemployed men in rural areas, I would say there is no more fruitful scheme than drainage work undertaken by local authorities under this Act. Not only do you do valuable work by draining the land, but you employ men in rural areas where often there is no other work available for them in the autumn and winter. Furthermore, because of the character of our countryside, you can diffuse that work over a very wide area. Therefore, there is much to be said for it. It is an extremely shortsighted policy on the part of the Department and the Government to switch workers off that nationally valuable work at a time when so many thousands of our people are unemployed in the rural areas.

I have an example of the shortsightedness of this policy in my own constituency. Deputy Harris and Deputy Sweetman are familiar with it. Bord na Móna in County Kildare in the last couple of weeks have paid off hundreds of local workers employed on turf development schemes. Next week another 100 will be knocked off in one area and the following week another 120 in another area. Within a couple of weeks a few hundred additional local workers will be paid off. These are not people who migrate to the camps; they are local workers taken on by Bord na Móna every year, and some of them have been in that employment for many years. Hundreds of local workers have already been laid off by Bord na Móna, which takes the attitude that it cannot keep them employed and must turn 300 or 400 loose on the roads. All this occurs five weeks before Christmas, when the Department of Local Government and the Board of Works are trying to provide for people who would otherwise be idle at present. That is the contribution of Bord na Móna to the national economy—to fire out 400 or 500 workers in these two areas alone in County Kildare, five weeks before Christmas.

What are they going to do? These workers will sign at the local employment exchange where, if a man has a wife and two children, he will get 50/-, if he has sufficient stamps to his credit. He can try to live on that 50/- from now until Christmas or even to February, until Bord na Móna starts to recruit workers. In the very same areas in County Kildare, the local authority has submitted drainage schemes to the Department of Local Government and has asked for grants to carry them out. The Department has slashed the grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act and will not give grants to enable these schemes to be carried out. For the next three months the disemployed workers from Bord na Móna can go to the employment exchange and get 50/- a week to maintain themselves and their families during their period of enforced idleness. If the Department would make further grants available under this Act, those men could be doing valuabledrainage work in the area at £4 12s. 6d. a week. I put it to anyone with any modicum of sense or responsibility: Is it better to have men employed for six days a week at the local rate of wages, £4 12s. 6d., paid by the county council, doing a full week's useful work, or have those men going to the employment exchange and getting 50/- a week for doing nothing? Common sense suggests that the man who is compelled to go to the labour exchange and try to live on 50/- per week would a thousand times sooner be employed on a drainage scheme at £4 12s. 6d. per week, which is the local county council rate. I do not say it is a good rate or a satisfactory rate, but it is the local rate—the rate approved by the Department of Local Government. Is it not better, therefore, that instead of having these hundreds of workers engaged in processional marches to the local employment exchange, the Department should recognise that from every angle it is a thousand times better to give more money for grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act and to put these unemployed men into employment than to pay them more than half their weekly wage for doing nothing?

I cannot understand why the Department should be so niggardly with grants under that Act or why it is perfectly content to do nothing in a situation of that kind. Would the Minister do that in his own household affairs, on his own farm or in any business in which he has responsibility? It seems the economics of a madhouse to me. Yet that is what will happen unless the Department step in now and make grants available for the undertaking of useful drainage schemes which can be carried out in these particular areas. I see no insuperable difficulty in making these grants available. I would ask the Minister to say, when he is replying, that if it is brought to his notice that serious unemployment is developing in the way in which I have described, or if there is serious unemployment in any area —notwithstanding the grants already notified under the Local Authorities (Works) Act—supplementary grants will be made available to enable employmentunder that Act to be given instead of compelling men to subsist on what they get from the labour exchange for doing nothing. Every one of those men who are forced to go to the labour exchange would much prefer to be working for a regular weekly wage and especially would they sooner be at work now, with the festive season of Christmas just at hand.

I do not raise these points in any contentious or political spirit. I raise them because in my view they are matters of vital importance to the whole nation, no matter what Government may be in power. I hope the Minister will treat the points I have made seriously and not from the angle that we are all participating in a political debate.

It is with some hesitation that I intervene in this debate at all. It is unfortunate that we had from the second last speaker, Deputy Dillon, one of his characteristic speeches in this House. It is very seldom that Deputy Dillon comes into the House. It is very seldom that he graces this Chamber except when he comes in here to debase and foul the debate. When Deputy Dillon comes in here he appears like a dog suffering from rabies—anxious to bite and snap at anybody he can. He seems to have one intention only and that is to slander the Deputies who may be opposed to him politically. I do not intend to follow Deputy Dillon on these lines but I want to say a few words in defence of the workers of Dublin who were very basely attacked and slandered here this evening by Deputy Dillon.

Like other local authorities and like other public men, we in the Dublin Corporation were worried about an increase in unemployment some time ago. Dublin Corporation took active steps to endeavour to do what they could to provide employment for a considerable body of men who were unemployed. We set up a works committee. That works committee is a committee consisting of a small number of councillors and aldermen. It is non-political. It represents eachParty in the corporation. There are members of the Fine Gael Party on it, members of the Fianna Fáil Party and Independent Deputies like Deputy Alderman Byrne and myself. We have all been actuated with one object only and that is to try and get constructive works going that would provide decent employment for a long period for the workers of Dublin. We interviewed the Minister for Local Government. We saw the officials of the Department of Local Government. We have received co-operation from the Government and from the Department in regard to the work that we are doing.

In the schemes that we have already provided, we have been enabled to give continuous work to 400 men who were idle in the City of Dublin. We brought hope into the homes and into the families of those 400 workers. Our idea and our ambition is to increase those schemes of construction works so that we will be able to employ 1,200 workers. We have set up a special organisation scheme. There are some differences of view between ourselves and the Department of Local Government as to the correct method of dealing with that problem. We are at the moment engaged in discussions and in negotiations in that matter. We believe that the solution to the problem which we have submitted to the Department is the correct solution. The Minister has met us very well, exceptionally well, and I would ask him to take our advice as to how this scheme of public works should be operated in the City of Dublin. We believe that, if our plans are adopted, it will be possible to provide the constructive works, to maintain the employment of the workers we have employed at the moment and to treble that employment in the shortest possible space of time.

We have the men working. There were jobs of work that were necessary to be done. All the householders and citizens adjoining the Tolka were asking that that river be cleaned. Deputy Alderman Byrne was continuous in his references to the unsightly state of the River Tolka. One of the schemes of work that we provided for these men was the cleaning of the River Tolka.I did not see it, but apparently a photograph appeared in one of the papers. That enabled Deputy Dillon to come in here this evening and to cast ridicule on the Dublin Corporation and on the workers who were employed in the improvement of our parks, in making footpaths, in river cleaning and in other necessary works. The citizens of Dublin appreciate the valuable work we are getting done under the aegis of this particular works committee. Not one of us has any say in the employment of these men. Every man employed on these works is employed from the labour exchange. The corporation officials go down to the labour exchange and select the men there: we have nothing to do with it. All we know is that 400 men are employed and that it is our ambition to increase that number to 1,200.

As I know him, the Dublin worker is not the type of man who wants to go with his hat in his hand to any Deputy, councillor or alderman for the purpose of obtaining work. I respect him for his independence and his assertion of the right he has asserted on many occasions to find work for himself here in his own city and in his own country. As I say, there are members of every Party on that committee. The leader of the Labour Party in the corporation is a member of that committee and is actively associated with all the work going on, and those references of Deputy Dillon this evening directed against me could in the same way be directed against Deputy Byrne, Deputy Larkin, Deputy Doyle, Deputy Briscoe or Deputy McCann, who are members of that public works committee. It is unfortunate that this Dáil should be subjected to that type of language by Deputy Dillon or anybody else.

If we are enabled to go ahead with the works we have in mind, our target is the expenditure of approximately £1,200,000 per year, not just on relief schemes for a few weeks at Christmas, but on constructive work that will give continuous employment. That is our target and our objective and, as I say, in a very short time, we have made a very good start. I thank the Minister and the Department for the co-operation they have given us, but I wantthe Minister and the Department to agree to accept the recommendation of those members of the Dublin Corporation who are giving all the time they are giving—and they are giving a lot of time to this work—and who are all experienced in one way or another in the business of the city, because, if it is accepted, I believe that the most valuable work will be done for the city by this public works committee. I would not have intervened in the debate, as I have said, in reference to that matter, were it not for the foul things that were said here by Deputy Dillon.

I want to draw the Minister's attention now to a special problem, a problem with which other Dublin Deputies, and particularly those who are members of the Dublin Corporation, are concerned. I want to add my voice to theirs in relation to this problem of density. One of our great troubles in Dublin is that the local government regulations relating to density are undoubtedly excellent where you have only a small number of houses to build in a town, but constitute a very serious problem in Dublin. Dublin has recently been extended by the addition of some thousands of acres and our housing programme, if it is continued as planned at the moment, will eat up all these thousands of acres in a few years. We have a position in which we are taking families from the centre of the city and sending them miles out into the outskirts which places additional expense in bus fares on them. It puts on them very many other disabilities. The old Dublin was organised over the centuries in a particular way, and in every district we had the local schools, the local churches and the local parish facilities. Under our system of sending people miles into the outskirts, we create a problem in relation to the building of schools out there and depopulating, if I may use the word, schools in the centre of the city. We create the problem also of building new churches on the outskirts and leaving parish priests without congregations in the middle of the city.

These are substantial and seriousproblems, and we in the corporation have come to the conclusion that there is a limit to the distance Dublin can be spread out from its centre. We think we will have to deal with some of the housing problem now by the building of more flats in suitable areas in the city and that we will have to build our flats higher than the four storeys or so that we have at the moment. In continental cities, it is quite a common thing to see 14-storey flats.

You want skyscrapers?

It would not be a bad idea at all.

I do not know what the Deputy means by that interruption.

I thought you might be anxious to follow American ideas.

I do not know what the Deputy means by that interruption.

It is not an interruption.

In these cities, one can see flats of 14 storeys, wherein people live very happily and with many amenities and facilities which they have not got in Dublin. The Department will have to consider, with the Dublin Corporation, this question of density, because the regulations relating to density really prohibit to a large extent plans for flats which our city engineers would like to send up to the Department. When we have spread out into the country and built our little cottages with front and back gardens, we find that quite a number of our people do not want these front and back gardens, but we are compelled to have them by these density rules and provisions which have been laid down by the Department and which have been in operation for many years. I am supporting the application of the Dublin Corporation that this matter should be considered.

I had the honour this year to be selected as a representative of Dublin Corporation and sent to a town planningschool in Bristol. There were there representatives of some local authorities from this country, together with quite a number from the Six Counties, from Britain, Scotland and Wales, as well as from continental and British Commonwealth countries.

This problem of density was discussed there and I remember one very important discussion which was led by the permanent engineering head of the Department of Local Government, or what corresponds to it in England. When he had finished, a person in the hall asked leave to speak. He did not announce his name at the time, but it transpired that he was a representative of the Department of Agriculture. His complaint on behalf of the Department of Agriculture—not only his complaint but his recommendation—was that city engineering authorities should realise that there is a limit to the amount of good agricultural land which can be used for housing, because it is on the land of the country that the country lives.

We have to face the problem that excellent land suitable for agriculture in the vicinity of the City of Dublin is being used up in this lazy spread of cottages around the city. I certainly benefited considerably from my experience at that school during that week and I regret very much that the Department of Local Government was not represented at that school. I think it would have been very desirable if representatives, particularly technical representatives, of the Department of Local Government attended that school and heard technical experts from the many other States in the world who were dealing with all these problems of density of spread.

We started out in Dublin to build thousands of houses, and in the last four or five years we have built about 2,500 houses per year. We have not fallen down on the job. We are continuing with the job but it is being held up for reasons which I shall mention in a moment. When an engineer has a big area of country to deal with and has to plan for the building of 2,000 houses, it is no trouble to him; he just runs a few coloured lines through the plan and the scheme canproceed. But if he were concerned with the big problem of trying to put more people to live within a restricted area, then his ingenuity would be tested. The system that has been pursued up to the present is what is known as the lazy system, of just spreading the city out all over the surrounding areas.

When we in the corporation had to build houses quickly, perhaps there was some excuse for the lazy planning that went on, but we have now reached a stage where the available land is being exhausted and consequently I want to impress on the Minister the necessity for the Dublin Corporation and his Department to co-operate in regard to this matter of density—the erection of an increased number of higher flats and putting more people to live within a particular area. If we build these high flats we have got to put lifts in them. We have got to provide, perhaps, central heating which, of course, should be provided in flats in any city in the year 1953. Modern methods of disposing of refuse should also be provided. There should be available for the people there, electric washing machines so that they can wash their clothes in a particular place, and perhaps there should also be a drying room. This is the 1953 age of civilisation and we should provide civilised amenities for our people. I hope that in the new discussions that will take place we in the corporation will be given freedom to plan the city in the way we think it should be planned as regards the erection of houses.

So far as the Dublin Corporation is concerned, we have met with no obstacle from the Department in regard to the building of houses. When we were in a bit of a bottle-neck last year or the year before, we were helped out in every way by the Department, who cut the procedure known as red tape, and cut it so effectively that we were able to go ahead with our plans. We find in Dublin this year, however, that when we have given out hundreds of thousands of pounds in contracts to contractors, once the contractors get the work they will "dander" along. They will not employ the number of men they should employ. We couldhave, perhaps, a 50 per cent. increase in the number of building workers employed in the city to-morrow if we forced the people who have got contracts to employ the number of men they should have on the job. At our housing meetings we get in special returns every fortnight. In fact, the housing committee, or one of its subcommittees, meets every week. We watch the matter very carefully. Our trouble is that although there is a date provided in the contracts by which the job must be finished, unfortunately there is no proper provision in the contract whereby the contractor would be obliged to employ the reasonable number of men that our city engineers should see would be employed on the job.

Although, as I say, we have hundreds of thousand of pounds laid out in these contracts, when one goes out to see some of the schemes, one sees very few men working on them. In fact, it would remind one of the conditions which prevailed in the ranches we had in the country some years ago when the whole place was run by a man and a dog. You see big contracts being carried out by a couple of men. I think some steps should be taken to remedy that condition of affairs because from the employment point of view it is of vital importance. The difficulty arises in the first instance from the fact that the Minister, the Department of Local Government and the Government are all out on this idea of private enterprise. Private enterprise may be all right in its own way but it is that system that has put us in the position that we must give contracts based on private enterprise, as things stand at the moment. The result is that when a man gets a contract in competition under that system of private enterprise, he will not employ the number of men he should. Apart from the necessity of providing houses for the people, one of the problems that has to be faced to provide employment is to get the housing programme going. We are up against that difficulty in the Dublin Corporation. In the building of houses by our local authorities, I would much prefer to see some housing board established by the Government.

Mr. A. Byrne

A Housing Minister.

A housing board, anyway, that would take over this whole business of building local authority houses in Dublin and elsewhere. In these circumstances we could give decent employment to the people and we could ensure that the right number of men were being employed on jobs and that we would not have this hand-to-mouth experience that we have in regard to some of our contractors. I do not say, from certain experience I have, that the direct labour schemes are the best either, unfortunately, but I do think that all this local authority housing work should be carried out by a housing board established by the Minister with power to do the works that are necessary and to cut out all this nonsense about tenders and alleged competition.

Another problem that I see in the City of Dublin is that of houses that are beginning to get old. In the city we have a number of such houses and they require substantial repairs, perhaps the putting on of a roof, work that would cost £300, £400 or more depending on the size of the house. I think facilities might be provided for people who own these houses to carry out now the repairs that would be necessary to give a life of perhaps another 100 years to these particular houses. I should like to see grants given to people to encourage them to do that work now and in proper cases I should like to see facilities provided for them under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. I know it is difficult to advocate that on this Estimate but I do feel that it is something that would enable valuable work to be done in the city.

I agree with Deputy Norton and other Deputies who talked about derelict sites. These sites, of course, may be acquired by the local authorities. But if the sites are owned by the local authorities, then the local authorities should use them in some way to the advantage of the community and certainly should not leave them there as festering eyesores all through the country. Where such sites are leftwith buildings on them belonging to private individuals, the local authorities should have power to acquire them, or there should be some provision whereby higher rates would be paid on that type of place than on one which has a decent building on it.

I should like to see a lot of these derelict sites converted into open spaces, into little playgrounds or gardens. Every one of our towns or villages could do with a little bit of brightening up and the Minister should encourage, through county managers, some competition between the counties to get rid of these eyesores in the quickest possible time. It is not fashionable to mention Russia in this House, but in Russia they have a system of competitions between local authorities for the purpose of blotting out the type of eyesore which has been mentioned.

Who told you that?

I am glad there is no question of any reduction in the number of houses being built. I am glad to know, from my experience as a member of the Dublin Corporation, that there is no question of money being denied to us for any work that we want to do. If there are not as many skilled workers employed on building in Dublin at the moment, part of the responsibility lies on the private contractors who have taken contracts from the Dublin Corporation. But I do think that for some time at least we want an intense drive in the construction of the houses we need and the local halls that we need. Valuable work can be done by the Department of Local Government in the encouragement of the building of local halls all over the country, in the provision of playing facilities, parks, handball alleys, and other recreational facilities.

And swimming baths.

Deputy Gallagher has mentioned swimming baths. I think it was these swimming baths in Tara Street which Deputy Dillon mentioned that he used to swim in on a Friday morning that gave him his opportunitywhen speaking this evening. There are two problems in regard to swimming baths. Anyone who has read and kept himself abreast of the Labour Party propaganda in England when they were endeavouring to obtain control of the local authorities will realise that one of the things they were always anxious about was the provision of swimming baths. Obviously, in a city like Birmingham, hundreds of miles from the sea, they had to provide some kind of artificial swimming pools. The same problem does not arise in Dublin, although the same ideas are very often expressed in Dublin.

We have around the coast, a few miles from any part of Dublin, the grandest open-sea facilities in the world for bathing and swimming. I would like to see in parts of the city of Dublin a number of small swimming pools where children could be taught how to swim. If certain people interested in swimming competitions want to spend a half million or one million pounds in constructing a swimming pool, certainly I agree that both the Government and the corporation should help them in every way they can. But I do think that a substantial part of the initiative ought to come from the people interested in that sport, just as the people who play football and hurling provide their own stadium facilities. Athletes and boxers provide their own stadium facilities; those who play rugby and soccer provide their own facilities for both national and international matches. So that this problem of swimming pools is a big one which is being extensively discussed in Dublin.

The cleaning of the canals to allow children to swim in them has been mentioned. It was brought up by Senator O'Higgins at the Dublin Corporation and was pressed by him. The new works committee, which was abused by Deputy Dillon this evening, are in fact doing that kind of work to provide swimming facilities in the canals and in the rivers which run through the city of Dublin. When Deputy Dillon mentioned that matter, I asked the Chair whether it was inorder because I felt that when a matter is entirely one for the Dublin Corporation the Minister cannot compel the corporation to do things; he can encourage them to do things, but not compel them. To my surprise, the Chair stated that Deputy Dillon was perfectly relevant and, when the Chair rules that, whether he is relevant or not, he is relevant.

The Dublin Corporation have been discussing this question of swimming pools and trying to do something reasonable in regard to it. Since we started our enormous house-building programme, we have provided bathrooms in every house. These community swimming pools, where the water may be changed daily or three times a week, where you have antiseptics put into the water to keep it clean, are not the sort of things that I personally would like. Personally, I would not care to swim in a pool where hundreds of other people, and possibly thousands, in a couple of days, have been swimming and which have a pea-soup colour. My reading about swimming pools in America and elsewhere suggests that it is possible to pick up quite a number of diseases in these places. If we are to have swimming baths, they will have to be provided under the strictest medical supervision and every assurance will have to be given to people who use them that they will not be any danger to the health of the community.

We have debated this matter in the Dublin Corporation. We have two schools, one which wants enormous swimming baths costing £250,000 or £500,000 and the other which wants to provide small ones where children could be taught to swim in hygienic conditions which would exclude all possibility of their getting any disease through using the water which had been used by other people. The Dublin Corporation, I am sure, will come to a proper conclusion on this matter. It is not the simple, easy matter which Deputy Dillon made it out to be but, of course, it was a useful peg on which to hang all his abuse.

I am glad that Deputy Dillon's speech got under the skin of Deputy Cowan and has spurredhim to his feet. We are told that at last we have got a planner for the City of Dublin. He can plan to perfection. The only thing he will want is a Santa Claus, with a sack of gold, to put his plans into operation. The unfortunate taxpayers will not be able to bear the burden of all this planning. Country Deputies and county councillors are faced with many of the problems which have been discussed here. Many of these problems have remained unsolved over the last 20 years. It is only right that the Minister should know of them so that he may spur on his Department to greater energy on behalf of the people.

I would like to be able to congratulate the Minister, if I could, on any phase of local government activity since he got into power, but unfortunately I cannot do so. I see the same old dead hand that was there five or six years ago coming back again. I see the screw being tightened, an increase in the rates and less housing grants. I see many hateful things that were there in the past coming back again. I certainly cannot congratulate the Minister on being nothing more than a tool for the Minister for Finance. I am sorry to see a young energetic man from the country, who knows the trials and tribulations of the poorer sections of the people, not pressing on things as a young Minister should. It is a public disgrace to see him sitting there allowing the dead hand of the Department of Finance to throttle his Department which, more than any other Department, is concerned with the lives of the Irish people, especially those in rural areas.

We are back again to the same old idea of making road work the main source of giving employment in the country areas. The Local Authorities (Works) Act, which was passed by the previous Government, was in full operation when this Government took over. They put the dead hand on it, and now it is almost blotted out. That Act gave almost full employment to our people on the drainage of land. It provided good money for men near their own home.

We are back again at the spending of millions of pounds making skating rinks of our main roads for the big financiers and the wealthy people who travel over them in their big cars. At the same time, we are taking away from our people in the country the amenities they are entitled to. I am satisfied, as regards many of those road schemes, that millions of pounds have been squandered on them. There is an enormous waste of manpower and money on them. Some Government will have to do something about that. I see roads being made and remade and remade again every four or five years. I see tens of thousands of pounds being poured into the same surface, and not a word about it. It is time such expenditure was stopped. I think that the main roads are good enough for many years to come. The people have not all that money to spend on them. Instead of spending so much money on the main roads something should be done to repair and put into good condition the ordinary roads used by the people who live in the country.

Our county managers and engineers are glad when they see the huge grants made available for the main roads. They can then go ahead with their streamlined work. They are planning year after year. Their plans in many cases cut through the farmer's land, but that means nothing to those engineers when they want to straighten a main road. A farmer came to me a short time ago and told me they were going to cut through his 60-acre farm in order to carry out their plans for a new road. He said they were leaving his house and his stables on one side of the road and his farm on the other. This work is to be done on the main Dublin-Galway road. He told me that he would require at least two men morning and evening for several hours to try and get his stock and implements across the road because every two minutes the high-powered cars are travelling along that road.

I think it is an outrageous thing to cut through any farmer's holding. I went down to see the place. I could see no sharp turn on the road. The cutting away of a few hundred yardsof a ditch, and the erection of a fence with concrete poles, would have made that part of the road a good road for the next 100 years. That, of course, would not suit the planners. They must cut through the 60-acre farm. The owner of the farm is a good progressive tillage farmer, the kind of man we want in this country. They may give him a little compensation for what they are taking from him and maybe will bring him to the High Court before they give him anything. That kind of thing is going too far. What we want is to have more money spent on the by-roads and secondary roads where it is needed. I know roads which are not eight feet wide and they are carrying heavy traffic, huge vehicles and high-powered cars. There is hardly a penny being spent on them because they are used mainly by farmers. If those roads were widened to 12 or 14 feet, and strengthened in the way they should be, plenty of good employment would be provided for those who need it. I see money being spent on the Navan-Dublin road, and in my opinion it is a public disgrace. It amounts to making roads almost with gold when one considers the depth of the stuff that is going into it, and the amount of time that is taken in putting it in. In doing that work they had to cut through the field of a local farmer. He had built a new bungalow, and asked the ganger in charge to throw some of the material they were removing into a hole near the bungalow. The ganger would not do that, but had the material carted a distance of five miles in council lorries.

That involved the taxpayers in an enormous expense. The ganger would not give a cubic yard of material to fill up the hole. That is an example of the high handed way in which they are carrying on, and it is time that it was cut out. After all, these works should be carried out in the interests of the people and not to suit the engineers.

We have heard a lot about red tape. I would like to see much of the red tape cut, but I would like to see some left to control the Minister who is like a bull in a china shop. He is nothing but a bull of a man. When he was Minister for Agriculture he got up inarms against the farmers so that they absolutely hated the ground he walked on.

Agriculture has nothing to do with this Vote.

He is now Minister for Local Government and, instead of trying, in a kindly way, to get back into the farmers' hearts he is squeezing them further. The farmer who wanted a house could get one under the inter-Party Government but he finds now that he cannot get a house or a housing grant. The Minister tried to fleece the taxpayers of £300,000 but thanks be to God he was not let do so, so far anyway. That is a poor headline for him to set. He should try to do something good while in public life as a Minister.

I agree that, as far as the ordinary poor people are concerned, reasonable progress has been made over a number of years so far as housing is concerned. I think that, within a reasonable period, the housing needs of the people will be fairly satisfied. We have, however, made no effort to build up the villages in our country areas. They are a public disgrace. Nothing has been done as regards taking over derelict sites which are an eyesore. I know scores of little villages which could be made handsome, good looking places in which people should be able to get reasonably good service. But nothing has been done to improve them. I do not want to see costly houses erected, but a type of a house that can be put up at a reasonable cost.

We have dozens of people in country areas who need houses, but they have not enough money to build them. We have nurses, retired Civic Guards, veterinary surgeons, and all those young people who are only too glad to live out in villages in country areas, but who find on starting out in life they have no money to begin with and they cannot get houses. What is the result? Most of that type of people have to go to the bigger towns 20 or 30 miles away and reside there with their families perhaps all their lives. I want to see that type of people restored to the villages and towns ofthe country. That is their natural place where they should be and where they want to be. Nothing is being done to bring up those villages. I will be told that the county council has powers. I know that, but I know, too, that the county manager and many of the staff do not want to embark on those schemes. They want to concentrate on the same old way of building cottages on one-acre plots. I am in favour of the cottage and the one-acre plot if the plot is tilled as it should be, but in my county there are four or five thousand acres of the best land given to labourers' cottages, and I would safely say that 60 per cent. of these plots never have a spade stuck into them and they are growing nothing but weeds and dirt. At the same time we have the Civic Guards going around to the farmers if they find docks or thistles on their land.

It is time that the Department of Local Government had its eyes opened and sent inspectors down to the country areas to find out if I am telling lies or truth. It is a public disgrace to see 3,000 acres of land in plots allowed to go derelict. If there are acre plots which should be, and could be, tilled and are not tilled, let the authorities step in and build more houses on those plots. I can understand an old age pensioner or a sick or infirm man being unable to till a plot and I would say: "Leave him alone; somebody will come in and do it later." But when I find a big, hefty man refusing to take a spade to the garden I think there must be some way of stopping that. I have raised it now for ten years but the deaf ear is always given to me. I would ask the Minister now to take note and to see that no plot is allowed to go to waste and to see that it is used in the interests of our people and national economy.

In the larger towns where we have built houses over a number of years the rents are too high. I am satisfied that if in a couple of years there was the slightest sign of depression, Cromwell and his battering-ram would be nothing to the sheriff's activities and the evictions that would take place in our big towns. We are not going tostand for evictions of poor people from their homes when they are not able to pay the high rents that are being charged if it is our fault that they are unable to pay. Men are unable to pay up to 35/- a week for rent alone. It is beyond them and they are pinching their children and leaving their families hungry in the effort to do it. The State should make an effort to have reasonable rents fixed. I do not stand for rents that are too low and put too great a burden on the taxpayer, but I want to see a reasonable rent in all cases. I hope the Minister will take heed of what I am saying and make amends for many of the things he has not done over the past few years.

Now I come to roads. The road system will have to be changed. I would ask the Minister to change the grants or, at least, give equal grants for the secondary and main roads, and if he does not do that, I do not believe the taxpayers will stand for it very much longer. Year after year, we see the rates going up. I know my own rate has doubled in the last eight or ten years, and I know it is the same with other people in less fortunate circumstances than I am. Their plight is an unhappy one. I would ask that they get a fair share of the grants that are going instead of the big grants being given to the main roads. The little people who have to pay for those services need them.

We have been talking like that for the last 20 or 30 years and it is no use. The same people get all the amenities and the big roads are provided and maintained for the high-powered Rolls Royce and if there is a bad patch on them there is a complaint to the Minister. But there are bad patches on all the secondary roads. I would say to the Minister: shame on the roads you have in County Cavan: they are a public disgrace to you and the Government. Some of the roads in North Meath are a public disgrace. The Minister should change his tactics and concentrate the grants on those byroads and get away from the main roads. I am sure that if the Minister were to go down to County Cavan and see those byroads, if he had the powerand ability he would come back and do something about them.

About bridges—I have heard of the Youghal bridge and Athlone bridge, but what about the Enfield bridge on the highroad between Kilcock and Kilbeggan? Not a fortnight passes but there is an accident on that bridge. Fortunately there was no death on it yet, but if nothing is done for another year there will be. There is a lump sticking out from the main road in the village of Enfield. I will be told: that is your work. I know that, but I am unable to drive our engineers or surveyors to go quickly enough. We are told there is a man there fighting for his rights—and more power to him. There is a public-house right at the bridge and if the bridge is changed it means that the public-house will be very little good to him. If the bridge goes, I think the road will be four or five fields away from him. But why not tackle that problem immediately, and if the man is entitled to compensation, settle up with him? He is a decent man and let the Government Departments and our own engineering staff get together and settle that, and get that bridge removed, because if there is a death on that bridge, I will hold the Minister responsible for it. I have told him here now, and I want something done about it. You can talk about Athlone bridge and Youghal bridge, but you must also take Enfield bridge out of it.

It is the same with employment on the roads. I see too many men always idle, and I do not blame them. The Fianna Fáil Government is concentrating on keeping men on the roads. You see squads of men all the summer tipping at a few little weeds here and there, and trimming sides.

There must be more modern ways of getting that work done. There is plenty of work for these men on drainage in the Summer months but the Department has a happy knack of never sanctioning a grant until the months of September and October when the floods begin with the result that the unfortunate workmen have to wade almost up to their bellies in dykes and ditches in order to carryout the work. From May to September no man should work on the roads unless a man who is really needed on them. All this labour should be concentrated on drainage. That was the policy of the inter-Party Government but now the Minister is so narrow-minded he says: "No, by damn, we will not let the inter-Party Government get the credit for that."

The Deputy should moderate his language.

I would like to, but when one looks across and sees the leer on the Minister's face, it is very hard to moderate one's language.

He does not like me.

I never did. To me, you have been a political impostor all your life.

Let us get back now to the Estimate and forget the personalities.

I am glad Deputy Dillon in his own way told the Minister a little of what he should be told. We know the "Molly Maguire". Look at her over there.

Was the Deputy one of the boys, too?

You certainly were not because they would not take you in.

Will the Deputy come to the Estimate now?

I supported the managerial system and I believe I was right in doing that, but I think the system is now in need of review. I do not advocate the abolition of the system. Much good work has been done under it. Some abuses have crept in. The administration is very streamlined at the top. No expense is spared in recruiting staff and providing buildings. Indeed, too much is spent in that direction. The staff in my county could run the Twenty-Six Counties. If it was cut by 50 per cent. we would get just as good service. The return the ordinary people get for the moneys spent is not commensurate with what they have to pay. All theamenities are provided in the towns. There should be a review of the system in the very near future.

I hope that common sense will prevail and that the county managers will be content in future to use the staffs they have. At the moment if they are asked to undertake a scheme they immediately ask for more staff. When the staff is provided they ask for bigger buildings in which to house the staff. Sometimes these buildings can cost as much as £60,000 or £100,000. This country is no John Bull or Uncle Sam. It is a poor, beggarly little country in which the people have spent the last 30 years fighting each other. We do not need this streamlined administration. It will be time enough to think about that when we have united our country and have the finances at our disposal.

County managers are being given too much power at the expense of the local authorities. I want to see some curb put on. We must cut our cloth according to our measure. I have spent years trying to get the old historic road from Tara opened up. It was decided the road should be constructed. What was the result? Almost 12 months elapsed and when the county council asked the county manager if he would go ahead with the road he said he wanted more rates.

If some of the money spent on the main roads was spent on other roads the ordinary people would derive greater benefit. The man on the five-acre farm or the cottage plot is entitled to his share of the spoils. The ordinary people are not getting justice. The ordinary people are flying from the land and out of the country. They are being squeezed out by the streamlined gentlemen from India and London who are buying up land in units of thousands of acres.

That does not arise on the Estimate.

I think it does. These people are buying up huge tracts of land and the ordinary man cannot get an acre. It is time the Government and the Minister took heed of what is going on and made some effort to give the people a square deal. Iappeal for an immediate inspection of Enfield bridge. I want that bridge removed. Years ago a bridge four miles away was removed and its removal saved the lives of thousands of people, I believe, because it was nothing but a death-trap. The bridge at Enfield is a death-trap but nothing is being done about it. If one individual is holding up the scheme, then he should get his rights and the scheme should be put into operation. Outside Trim there is a bridge nine feet wide. Two cars cannot pass each other on that bridge. Nothing is being done about it. The demolition of these bridges and the construction of proper bridges would provide much-needed employment. I hope that when this Estimate is under discussion next year I will not have the same complaints to make.

Some long speeches have been made on this Estimate in the last few days. Listening to Deputy Dillon this evening, one would imagine that the Minister for Local Government had served a writ on the Dublin Corporation and the Dublin County Council to stop house building.

Deputy Dillon produced the usual white elephant, Dublin Castle. Does Deputy Dillon want the Minister for Local Government to abolish all the county councils in Ireland? Is he anxious that the Government should take complete control and carry out the building of houses? That seems to be the trend of thought that prompted Deputy Dillon to refer to Dublin Castle.

The Government are justified in introducing schemes of public works. As far as they can, they have helped and encouraged county councils and corporations to carry out the building of houses. That is essential. We are faced with a possibility of having to develop public works for the relief of unemployment. We on this side of the House are prepared to face up to that and to do it. Deputy Dillon referred to the rebuilding of Dublin Castle and Leinster House——

Deputy Dillon was informed that these matters do not arise on this Vote.

I know, Sir. I am not disputing your ruling, but I am replying. Deputy Dillon got a good deal of latitude on this particular point.

Deputy Dillon got no latitude on that point. He was informed that it was a matter for the Board of Works and not for the Minister for Local Government.

I obey your ruling, Sir. Deputy Dillon could not point out that the Minister for Local Government failed in his duty in one iota or that he held up any local authority building scheme. The Minister did not do that. He was anxious to encourage such work and so were the Government.

Next I wish to refer to a matter about which I am deeply concerned. During the summer period of last year the local authority warned the residents of Skerries that the water supply would be cut off at 7 p.m., notwithstanding the fact that Skerries is a tourist centre, that there were hundreds of people there in two holiday camps and thousands of people in Skerries during the height of the season. I maintain that Dublin County Council are failing in their duty to provide proper water schemes in the county. I have spoken on this subject outside the House and I want to take advantage of this opportunity to deal more fully with the matter. Not alone in Skerries and Balbriggan but in every area adjacent to the City of Dublin the water schemes are inadequate. Now that a joint town-planning officer for Dublin City and County has been appointed I would suggest that his job should be to improve the piped water scheme in County Dublin.

In some areas within a few miles of the City of Dublin people are still looking for a pump. Some of the pumps are only nine, ten, 15 and 20 feet deep whereas they would need to be 50 to 90 feet deep in order to have safe drinking water. I am speaking about areas adjacent to the city. If there were more co-ordination between the Dublin Corporation and the Dublin County Council a proper piped water supply would be provided. There are a number of areas in NorthCounty Dublin and South County Dublin where that would be impossible without great expense. I am talking about areas where the expense would not be so great and where the work should be carried out.

There has been a good deal of comment on the subject of road improvement. Listening to the majority of Deputies from the far side of the House who have spoken on this subject one would imagine that we had first-class roads. We have not first-class roads and every Deputy on the far side of the House knows that. They know that a number of roads are in a very bad way and that a lot must be done before we have the roads we desire. In certain counties second-class roads and main roads require a good deal of improvement. Anything that the Minister is doing in that regard is for the benefit of the country. The remarks of Deputy Giles on the subject prove that the roads are definitely bad and that more money must be spent on the roads.

It is good national policy to have good roads. Main roads and second and third-class roads, at least, should be good. Good roads enhance national prestige. I would congratulate the Minister on the stand he has made for the expenditure of more money on the roads. Let us do one job well before we set out on another.

In introducing the Estimate the Minister referred very briefly to a matter that is of vital importance. He said that work on the consolidation of local government law was proceeding satisfactorily. I spoke on this matter last year. We may have various points of view on this subject. Parties may differ in their outlook on local government. Every member of the House must realise the vital importance of consolidating local government law. Consolidation is long overdue. Deputies who bemoan the number of staff that it is found necessary to employ in local authorities must realise that that is a result of the outdated and outmoded method under which the officials have to operate. There is a great deal of legislation by reference and the various Acts that are passed add tothe confusion which has arisen over the years. The Minister, who is closely associated with a county council, must realise that if we are to make proper progress in local authority matters there must be no further delay in the consolidation of local government law. If it is necessary the staff should be augmented in the Custom House.

The Deputy is now advocating legislation. He may not do that on the Estimate.

No, Sir. The Minister said that he was satisfied with the work that was proceeding in connection with the consolidation of local government law—simply the consolidation of the various Acts; and as the Minister mentioned himself that he is satisfied that such work is proceeding satisfactorily, I am simply saying that I am not satisfied that so many years have elapsed and still the position remains as it is. My words in that respect, of course, are not directed personally either against the Minister or the present Government, because this position has unfortunately been the same in all the years back. I am suggesting to the Minister the urgent necessity of having this work completed at the very earliest possible opportunity.

Members drew attention to the necessity for a true sense of co-operation between local authorities and the Department of Local Government. We all desire that happy position to obtain, but if we are to achieve that true sense of co-operation which is essential the Minister must understand that our desire in rural Ireland, whether we may be called bogmen or men coming in with sugáns is immaterial, is that the fewer circulars that are sent to local authorities in connection with various trivial matters the better it is for local government. Perhaps in the past local government may have had its weaknesses in the various localities. After all, there is no system perfect either in this country or elsewhere, but from my experience of members of all Parties in a certain county council I would say thatbecause of their interest in local authority matters and in the areas that they represent it is deplorable that these men are not able through a greater sense of freedom as the elected representatives on those various councils to give more than at present owing to the system in operation whereby so much is more or less ordered by a Department of State.

Mention has been made of housing throughout this whole debate. Perhaps we again will approach this problem from different angles. I cannot blame members of the Government Party if they say that in their particular areas they are satisfied that progress in housing is satisfactory. It is because we are speaking here on an Estimate closely related to the everyday life of the people in rural Ireland that we consider it essential to discuss the various matters on this Estimate as we ourselves see them. I noticed that the Minister, in introducing his Estimate, made no reference to the building of houses by local authorities under the direct labour system. He mentioned that recently he was satisfied that the figures tend to show that through competition from the various builders competing for various contracts, prices are inclined somewhat to be reduced. Competition will nearly always tend to do that, but I consider that it would have been only fair and just to the various local authorities who have put into operation a direct labour system to refer to that important angle in connection with housing. Some local authorities found it somewhat difficult to start off such a scheme. Some of us who have been connected with building activities in other spheres can understand quite clearly the advantage many a builder may have through the amount of materials he has which will do in connection with various building projects. Some local authorities when starting out on this important measure of direct labour naturally had to start as it were from scratch and had to provide the necessary materials; but I am convinced that while the building by direct labour of some of those schemes undoubtedly proved much superior in finish and also cheaper in price, a continuance of that system,because of the materials in hands when some jobs are finished, would enable the councils or local authorities quite clearly to show that their prices for the building of houses would also tend to be reduced. Let me say to the Minister that in my experience and in the experience of many members of local authorities houses built by direct labour are far superior to those built by contract. I am not blaming contractors.

Any of us who may have some connection with building knows that a builder will build according to specification laid down by the architect but no further, and if he complies with the specification then his job must be passed as O.K. We also know, however, that on many occasions engineers in local authority employment, when not satisfied that everything may be as good as they wish, may desire that extra materials be used in the building of houses under direct labour and also that if necessary more time be allocated to their completion. Who is going to gain more than the local authority itself? We all know from sad experience of seeing cottages around the country that were built long ago at a time when the system of contract was in operation, that it was certainly anything but satisfactory. On many occasions men had contracts for such cottages who knew nothing whatsoever about building but just depended on getting a few outside men to do the work for them. We must realise now that whatever about the overall cost of houses, the owners of such houses are the local authorities, and ultimately the people who are paying the rates can claim that because of their contribution to the building of those houses they are entitled to see that they are built in a proper workmanlike manner. I believe that direct labour, the system not even mentioned by the Minister, proved, as I know by comparison of figures myself, the one and only way of breaking a vicious ring around the 1948-49 period when contractors were quite prepared to divide between themselves the spoils in many areas where housing was essential. I know by statements issued by the Minister himself—he made it quite clear—that all thingsbeing more or less equal he definitely was in favour of the contract system.

It goes, perhaps, with his outlook on local government. Let me say to him: "It is a long road that has no turning." These houses will be judged yet as to the way they were built. Years will provide the time for judgment on them and on the houses built under our present system, a system reintroduced, more or less, by the present Minister, who deviated from the line and the example of a Corkman as Minister for Local Government, followed by a Deputy from Limerick. Perhaps it is because Ministers for Local Government in Southern Ireland are more in touch with the problem of securing proper housing that we can say the present system of giving contracts to contractors is one of the greatest weaknesses in the operation of local authorities under the present Minister.

The Minister mentioned the 1947 survey. Here, again, we may differ. He seemed quite satisfied with the accuracy of the 1947 survey. Let me say here and now that I disagree completly as to the accuracy of that survey. A certain member of the Minister's Party who happens to be a member of a local authority with which I am connected and other members of the Minister's Party and various other Parties realised that the survey, so far as we were concerned, was totally inadequate and unjust as regards the provision of houses for people who needed them. It would not be safe for us to assume at this stage that the survey was anything like correct.

Figures were given here regarding the number of houses in the course of erection and the number of men employed. I, naturally, disagree with Deputy Burke on this issue. If we take into consideration the number of houses in course of construction in August, 1950, and compare it with August, 1953, we will see that there were 3,286 fewer houses in the course of construction in August, 1953. An equally important factor is that there were 5,551 fewer employed in August, 1953, as against August, 1951.

In reply to a question in the House yesterday the Minister admitted thatin respect of rural areas in which some of us have a particular interest there were over 1,000 men fewer employed in September, 1953, as against 1951. How can we say we are satisfied with the progress of building operations in rural and city constituencies when the system under which we are now working permits each year fewer houses being constructed and fewer men being employed?

I know that the few points we may mention on this Estimate will get very little consideration from the Minister who considers that his way and his way alone is going to prevail. It does not matter. We are still determined to draw attention to some of these points and where credit is due we are neither afraid nor slow to give it. But where, in our opinion, constructive criticism is necessary, we will also offer that.

Deputies also spoke about the system in regard to housing grants, particularly with reference to reconstruction grants at the present time. The system in operation during the few years of the inter-Party Government in connection with reconstruction grants was admirable. It was intended to show the great importance of real local government. Unfortunately, after the change of Government, that system was altered. Applicants for reconstruction grants during the periods 1948-49-50 were able to call at the offices of the local authority and apply through the local authority for their grants. Unfortunately, we have this mad idea of centralisation and Dublin is regarded as being Ireland. We have this vicious idea of people in Dublin thinking that they and they alone have a say in this country. A system was introduced whereby grants would again have to be applied for through the Department of Local Government.

Why should the Minister or the Government decide to alter the system and give back to the Custom House a right which was exercised by the local authority and the individual who in our opinion counts for so much in rural Ireland? Why was the old system not allowed to operate—that system which was in operation during thetime of the inter-Party Government when people had the right to have their claims dealt with by the local authority? Instead, officials are sent down from the Custom House to every local authority office and they get all the files and take them back to the Custom House.

Let me say that I certainly sympathise with the officials in the Custom House who had to do their very utmost to unravel the terrible complications involved in trying to straighten out this problem in connection with grants. I do not blame in any way the officials who were placed in such an invidious position and who found themselves snowed under with extra work. I blame the Minister and, through him, the Government for reintroducing a system which reveals that they are not interested in giving even such small powers to the local authorities.

I was very pleased to hear so many Deputies, including members of the Government Party, draw attention to the present unsatisfactory system in regard to the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. As I said at the outset, I give credit particularly to members of the Government Party from Donegal who stated quite clearly that in their opinion things were not so good in connection with this important matter. I referred to this subject a long time ago and, therefore, I am not going to repeat myself at length. All I want to say is that the system in operation is not satisfactory. The man who is anxious to build his own home and who should be helped is not being given that help and cooperation which we, as members of local authorities, consider he should get. In union with the other members of the various Parties, I would ask the Minister to direct the attention of the managers in the various county council areas to the system. The system operates well in some areas as against areas, including Cork, where the would-be applicant suffers such grave disadvantages. In my opinion, the system was introduced to help these people and they should be helped.

I have had cause on many occasions to draw the attention of the local authority to the fact that the peoplewho are gaining the benefits under this particular Act are those who can very well afford to do without them whereas other people who are anxious for such benefits cannot avail of them. Ultimately the local authorities themselves are suffering by this because if people are denied these advantages they have no alternative but to apply for a local authority house.

Deputies also mentioned the question of the purchase of cottages and houses. Some members drew attention to the number of cottages—it is rural cottages I have in mind—that has been purchased in some counties and the very small percentage of the total number that has been purchased in other counties. It is quite obvious to some of us who have studied this even in a small way that nobody but a fool would apply to purchase some of these old cottages built 50 or 55 years ago. In fact, it is a mystery how some of them are standing up. I have openly advised the tenants of these cottages under no circumstances to purchase them. I realise that if the houses that are being built at the present time are put under a system of purchase, if the years of purchase and the annuities are made favourable, then it is undoubtedly up to the tenants to consider the matter, but neither the county council nor the Minister should expect the tenants of these very old cottages to purchase when the clause is there condemning these people, in the event of purchase, to be liable for the maintenance and repair of such houses, many of which are tumbling down.

The Minister may say that it is the duty of the local authority to put such cottages in repair before the final purchase form is signed. That is true but, like everybody else, even local authorities do not at all times carry out their duties. I have known many cases of tenants appealing against the local authority when the House was supposed to be completely repaired. I know from my own experience that these cottages were not properly repaired, but I have yet to hear of the case of the tenant winning his appeal. It seems always a case of the inspector from Dublin favouring the local authority or the engineer. He may suggestthat some minor or trivial matter should be attended to, but that in my opinion is not sufficient. As long as local authorities fail to put such houses in proper repair there is little use in their complaining about the cost of repairs, because the fault lies at their own doors. I have never been and never will be in favour of tenants purchasing cottages that were erected 50 years ago and over.

Mention has been made of the problem of rent. The rents being charged in rural areas are too high for some people to meet. Every member here who is connected with these areas realises the uncertainty of employment in many of these districts. Men who have no hope of getting a job with a farmer or with a local authority during certain periods of the year face nothing but unemployment. The Minister may say that the Government are giving a fair contribution towards building these houses. I am not going to take the credit for that away from him. The local authorities may say that the ratepayers are also contributing heavily, but what is lost sight of very often is that many of our hospitals and sanatoria are full at the present time with young people as well as old people from rural Ireland, people who are being condemned to ill-health owing to being denied the right of owning a decent home. The provision of homes is as important as anything else. Homes and hospitals are required—there must be a connection perhaps—but if the decent homes are there, then very often the hospital is not needed.

May I say as a member of a local authority that too often we are faced with the problem on these local councils that a majority of members fail to realise the grave problem which confronts them. Some are prepared to continue the system that has been in operation for so many years, the operation of a programme which we believe is out-moded.

There is one particular matter to which I wish to draw attention. Unfortunately I had occasion to clash with the present Minister here on a certain difficulty extending over a long period. I knew, of course, the Ministerwas not correct in his approach and notwithstanding the fact that the Minister most determinedly steered the same course on the motion for the adjournment of the House, is it not a strange thing that after two long years the Minister had to put his name to the paper giving sanction to the building of 26 houses in a little village in County Cork, the erection of which was held up for that lengthy period? Never once did I blame the officials concerned. Even now I will not do so because I am not so satisfied that the officials were at fault. Members of this House were called and the Minister unfortunately accepted advice which it took two years for him to find out was not correct. I am glad at this stage that the 26 houses in this village are being built for the purpose of seeing that 26 decent working-class families go into occupation of them.

While that may be so, I would like to refer to another matter of equal importance. Deputy Burke asserted that there was no hold-up in building or in obtaining sanction for building. I remember on a few occasions inquiring from the Department—and as far as I remember also through questions in the House—as to why sanction was being held up in connection with a scheme of houses in South Cork in places such as Ringnaskiddy. A request was sent up to the present Minister for Local Government asking for general sanction for this scheme. It was sent up, not this year but in February of 1952. Up to the beginning of this week, according to my information, the Minister has not yet given such sanction. I am aware that there were certain problems related to portion of the scheme, but there was no difficulty whatsoever as regards the greater part of it. It is not very creditable to say that we have to draw attention here to such an extraordinarily long delay in giving sanction to the South Cork Board of Health and the Cork County Council to build houses for these people.

There is another matter which might be attended to by the Minister. It is not something for which he is responsible, as it has been in operation for many years. I refer to reconstructionwork. I know a person is eligible for grants for re-roofing a house or putting additions to it. It would help us greatly in rural Ireland if the grant were made available to those who found it necessary to do general repairs. In many cases the roof and accommodation may be all right, but through the continuous effect of weather over the years, general repairs may be necessary. Those people find it difficult to provide the money for such work. If grants were made for general repairs—provided the inspectors were satisfied they were of a capital nature and of vital importance —it would help the people concerned. It would also help local authorities if such houses were put in proper repair.

In regard to water supplies, no matter how we manage, it is impossible to meet the demands of every local authority for general water supplies to villages. As a member of a local authority I realise that one of our greatest problems is that of providing water pumps in various localities, not just in villages, but where there are groups of houses. We find the cost of sinking wells and fitting pumps, to the extent of £300, makes our commitments very heavy. If this problem could be dealt with in such a way that the local authority could tackle it in a more determined manner, the provision of these amenities would make things more comfortable for people in rural areas. In the case of a village, the people are in a position to make themselves heard sooner than the people living in a few small cottages, or in areas more or less isolated. Attention to that matter would help us greatly in solving this problem.

Many speakers have referred to main and county roads. It is quite likely that my views may be considered as different from the views expressed by members of the Opposition as well as members in the Government Benches. No matter what Government may be in power and no matter what money they may be getting through the Local Loans Fund, on account of the various commitments in other Departments— health, and social welfare, in particular—it is not possible to meet the demands of every local authority infull, to put every road in proper condition.

One of the biggest offenders—and I am sorry to say it, but let my words be recorded—is none other than the Cork County Council itself. We all have been anxious to get as much as we can in Government grants. Consistently, year after year, officials have been asking for a certain amount of money to give the local people decent county roads. What have we found? Year after year, the recorded vote consistently shows opposition to the full estimate being passed, none other than a handful of Labour members voting for that full estimate. In fairness to everyone, and because I am a firm believer in local government, I say that many members of political Parties, and a few Independents, when thrown in, fail to realise their own personal responsibility towards the people who elect them. We want good county roads as well as good main roads, but as long as members are imbued with a system which should have been abandoned and abolished long ago, so long will the people in rural areas be justified in saying that their representatives are not attending to this important problem.

While I place the responsibility as far as I should on local members, I would suggest to the Minister that, though we all realise the excellent work being done on main roads, we would prefer to see the programme somewhat altered so that the county roads would be put in better condition.

The authorities concerned are giving us an excellent road between Dublin and Cork. Whether it is to bring us more quickly to Dublin or to get us out of Dublin more quickly I do not know. However, it is the county roads that form the biggest problem. A substantial grant should be given towards the improvement of county roads, and, what is very important, towards their maintenance also. If the Minister would increase the amount and allow a grant for the maintenance of county roads, and if he would place the responsibility on local authorities to provide an equal share, perhaps we could then force those members on the local authorities toface the problem and give the people in those areas the roads to which they are entitled.

Representatives on urban councils have undoubtedly a problem to solve, owing to the difficulty of striking anything additional on the rates for roads within their jurisdiction. However, it would be beneficial and helpful if some contribution could be made to such councils, which would help them to solve that problem in urban areas for the people they are trying to serve.

Even though many members of the Opposition have already spoken about the Local Authorities (Works) Act, it is of such vital importance that I, too, wish to draw attention to the failure of the present Administration in connection with that Act. People may say there has been too much talk about it here, but the difficulty is that we hear so much about it in rural Ireland. We hear complaints from people who themselves saw many advantages accruing from the operation of this important Act over a few years. We find that £1,750,000 was provided for these works in the 1950-51 Estimate, but unfortunately the figure has dropped to £400,000 in the 1953-54 Estimate. That in itself is a justification for our complaint and for our opposition to this particular Estimate. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
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