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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 24 Feb 1954

Vol. 144 No. 7

Private Members' Business. - Adjournment Debate—County Cork Building Site.

Deputy Desmond is raising the subject matter of Question No. 40 on the motion for the Adjournment.

The first reply which the Minister gave to my question to-day and his further replies to supplementaries make me wonder as to the attitude of the Minister in this particular instance. In reply to one supplementary by me, the supplementary being: "If the officials of the Cork County Council have been asked to show cause by the Minister" the Minister stated: "The officials of the Cork County Council know the requirements in this matter, and, therefore, if they go outside the village to a considerable distance they know that they must show cause for that decision."

Frankly, I cannot understand why the Minister should give such a reply to this question. Apparently, the Minister admitted, or wanted to admit or claim, that the officials of the Cork County Council had neglected their duty by not giving the necessary information when, in reply to another supplementary he said: "If the Minister was so aware he might consider the present site, but apparently those whose responsibility it is to make the Minister aware of that fact have not done so." Did the Minister wish to state or to insinuate that it was the officials of the Cork County Council who had failed in their duty? If he wanted to put that across here, then I say that he is is utterly wrong in making such suggestions.

Is it correct to state that, first of all, the compulsory purchase Order was sent up from the Cork County Council about the 27th or 28th February, 1952, and that included in it was a request for sanction for this particular site? Furthermore, is it correct for me to say that, roughly about 12 months ago, the Minister had a letter sent by the Department to the Cork County Council inquiring as to why this site had been selected owing to the fact that it was considered to be a certain distance from the village? Will the Minister deny that the inquiry was answered by the Cork County Council officials? Will he also deny when I state here clearly that the information transferred to the Department from the Cork County Council indicated that approximately five, six or maybe seven sites were inspected by the officials and by the members of the sites' committee, including myself, and including members of the Minister's Party?

When one takes into consideration the advice that was given by the architect employed by the Cork County Council, as well as the suitability and accessibility of all sites, one can say that the reply from the county council fairly indicated to the Minister that this site was considered suitable and preferable even to any other site. Will the Minister deny that from the time the Cork County Council sent their letter, in reply to the inquiry that was made by the Department that they have never since received even an acknowledgment of it? I want the House to realise the extraordinary situation in which even the officials of a local authority can be placed. Sanction was sent down a few weeks ago. It simply stated that this site was deleted, and that sanction for it was not given. No word of explanation was offered, good, bad or indifferent to the officials or members of the Cork County Council as to why sanction was not given for this site. Apparently, the Minister wishes to take it upon himself to decide whether or not a site is to be made available. If he decides that it is not going to be acquired, then we are to get no information: we are to be told nothing by the hierarchy in the Custom House under the present Minister for Local Government.

In view of the answers which were given to-day by the Minister to my supplementary questions, I am rather in a quandary as to whether all this was due to lack of understanding or to political ignorance or whether it was just the Minister's wishing to trample on the opinions of everyone who might oppose his voice here on a subject like this. Will the Minister now state whether it is the custom and the procedure in all cases where a local authority asks for sanction for the acquisition of a site for building, that an inspector from the Department of Local Government is sent to inspect the sites? Further, is it the procedure for the inspector, in all cases, to report back to his Minister?

I presume and I believe that the inspector did his work on this occasion but the difficulty, of course, is that as far as I am aware such reports are considered as confidential from an inspector to his Minister. We do not know when we are trying to get to the root of these problems whether a report from an inspector merely sets out that a site is not suitable or otherwise. Why is it, then, that the Minister failed to inform the Cork County Council why this site was not included? He cannot state at this stage that it is further from the church; it is nearer to the church. He cannot state that it is much further from the local schools; as a matter of fact it happens to be much nearer to one national school, and from the other school it is nothing more than 82 yards further on than the lowest point in the village of Ringaskiddy. Does the Minister realise as his inspector does, I believe, that the village of Ringaskiddy is situated in such a way that we have no hope of getting a site adjacent to it? Is he also aware that in this particular instance we marked this site on the advice of the local architect, and that it is situated close to the public road, with such conveniences as a public bus service to and from the village? Is the Minister trying to insinuate in his reply that we were not prepared as local representatives to take into consideration the importance of trying to keep the people as near as possible to the local village? What use is it for local representatives at all, at our own loss of time, to go searching as we did in this instance and seeing five or six or seven different sites trying to get the most suitable one for housing? Then when we got it, or believed we had got it, we are simply told by a Minister of State that we are not going to get sanction for it. May I ask the Minister this—if two years have elapsed before we got this unfortunate information why is it that it took so long to do it?

I have my doubts. I am not going to bring in any other matter into the discussion of this particular point except to say that there is a touch of irony about it when we realise that this site is nothing more than, roughly, three and a half miles away from a site which the Minister a couple of years ago also rejected and for which we had to fight here. Eventually, I am glad to say, the officials of his Department, in their wisdom and in their proper reports, made it clear that it was a perfect site. Must we now go through the same procedure again? Must the people in this village be held to ransom, as it were, for another couple of years until we get the Minister to agree to giving sanction for this site? Why should it be that he refused, or even had not the courtesy, as Minister for Local Government, to inform the officials and the local authority why the site was not suitable? He may state more indirectly than directly in his reply in connection with these supplementaries that it was far away from the village, but I want to pin him down to the main point, the point of admission by him of either ignoring the whole inquiry and asking for sanction of the site, or else of wishing not to give sanction in this particular area, for political purposes or otherwise.

When he states that officials of Cork County Council did not take into consideration and did not state why this site outside the village was selected, I want to make it perfectly clear that he is totally unjust and unfair to officials of a local authority who cannot defend themselves. If officials in Dublin cannot be attacked, I maintain that a Minister of State has no right or privilege to attack the officials in County Cork. A site in Ringaskiddy is going to be sanctioned, whether it is by Deputy Smith, the Minister, or somebody else, as was done in the last site a couple of years ago, when an inspector doing his duty in a honest and honourable fashion decided that it was a perfect site. I believe that site was no better than the present one.

We want to see the people in Ringaskiddy area going into those homes. The Minister by refusing sanction has decided that the building of these ten houses is going to be held up. He must take the responsibility for it, but it is cold comfort that we are going to be held up for probably another two years. I will conclude with one point, and all I can say is that I do not care what way the Minister takes it—I believe, myself, that the same influence is brought to bear in rejecting this site as in rejecting the other, and that influence was the square and compass.

I do not like to see Deputy Desmond getting hot and bothered about this matter, if I might use the term. I think he is the only Deputy from any side of this House who has had reason to raise a matter of this nature since I came into this office. I think that he would be foolish to regard himself, or indeed myself, in the light that I would be in any way anxious to single him out, or the area for which he speaks here or in the local body, for any kind of exceptional treatment.

The practice in Cork, as I understand it, is a practice which does not prevail in most other counties. The local bodies there endeavour to select sites by agreement even though the selection of those sites has to be followed by the making of a compulsory purchase order. They adopt that procedure, which often results in their being unable to get what we think, anyhow, would be a better site if they proceeded in a different way. If the Cork local bodies, as they must, have reason for that sort of procedure it is the responsibility of my Department to ask them to justify the selection of a particular site in a case about which we are in doubt. My contention here is that in this case it appeared to us that a better and more convenient site was available. If we were wrong in that belief we gave an opportunity to the officials of Cork County Council to show that no better site would, in fact, be available.

I have no desire to attack anybody. I have no desire to defend my own officials if it can be shown at any time that they were blameworthy, nor have I any desire to attack local officials, because though I could do so freely, they have no means of defending themselves. The fact that that is the case means that I would be very, very reluctant to make any such attack on them. As I say, a compulsory purchase order was made in respect of a number of sites in the area of South Cork. This particular site for the erection of ten cottages was excluded for the simple reason that in our view the officials there did not show cause, did not show reason and did not produce evidence that it was, in fact, the best site available. After all, if we have any function in this matter of inspection of sites we have the right to say to a local body that they should try to procure the best site available.

I remember in the old days away back in the time when district councils functioned it was the practice to shove labourers' cottages on any and every piece of waste land in the country. There is a new approach now. I am sorry if that has resulted in this case in the exclusion of a site in relation to which, if a strenuous case had been made along the lines I have suggested, approval might have been given. But without attempting, as I have assured the Deputy I will not do, to pour blame on officials of any kind, I still say that we regarded the site in question as not the most suitable and, as far as I can see, no proper effort was made to show that, even if it was not the most suitable site, it was nevertheless the most suitable site procurable.

The Deputy is unfortunate in so far as he is the only Deputy who has had to raise a question of this kind with me. I am not in any way courting his friendship but I would like him to know that I am not just so smug, mentally or otherwise, as to behave in the fashion in regard to a matter of this kind, or indeed in any matter, that he has described. There is no desire on my part if a local body approaches me in a reasonable way with evidence that is not perhaps available to me in the ordinary way, to refuse to listen to that evidence or the particular reasons in support of a particular matter. My mind is not fixed or rigid. I am advised by my officials. I cannot see these sites. I have naturally to listen to the advice tendered and I am influenced by what I am told. If any Deputy can at any time—not by parliamentary question, because that is not always the most desirable way, unless for the purpose of exposing failure to make a proper approach—bring to the Minister's attention the fact that there is another side to a question, a side, perhaps, that the official is unable to see who approaches the matter in a somewhat narrower fashion, then the Deputy can always exercise his powers of persuasion. Without pretending to be over-saintly, I am as amenable to reason as anybody else.

I am sorry that a question of this kind should have arisen in connection with Deputy Desmond. We have at all times, as I say, the right to inspect, to see and be satisfied that the sites are reasonably good and reasonably convenient and to ensure that public money is spent on the provision of houses on proper sites and the best sites available. Houses are costing a good deal of money, and that should be our approach. But, at the same time, if it had been shown that this was in fact the only site, even though not entirely satisfactory, we would have been open to reason. In my submission that case was not made; had it been made, I would have listened to reason.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.25 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 25th February, 1954.

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