Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 24 Jun 1954

Vol. 146 No. 3

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

Mr. McGrath

When I moved to report progress yesterday I was discussing the housing position in Cork and the derelict sites we have there and I was asking the Minister to give speedy sanction to the building of flats for the Marsh area. I hope that he will do all in his power to speed up sanction for any schemes submitted by the corporation because, as he said himself in his opening statement, he is concerned with the housing position in Dublin and Cork.

There has been an application for the extension of the borough boundary in Cork, and the Minister, being new in his Department, may not be aware of the urgency of that extension. The Department is well aware that the corporation had to build thousands of houses outside the borough boundary, with the result that considerable hardship is suffered by a great many of the tenants who were shifted out there from tenement houses within the city. I am referring to people who were in receipt of T.B. benefits and of blind welfare payments from the corporation. I am sure the Minister is aware that the difference between T.B benefits in the city and county is 2/- for each child, 5/- less rent allowance and a difference in the payments on the house. During Dr. Browne's time in office I made a request to him to try to level up the rate of benefits to people in corporation houses outside the city to the amounts payable within the county borough and the best thing he could do at the time without introducing legislation was to ask the county authority to waive the abatements on national health and other items in order to try and bring those corporation tenants outside the borough up to the city rate of benefit. That did help in a big way but not sufficiently.

I could also give a list of people in receipt of blind pensions who receive payment from the county council and from the corporation. There is a big difference between the welfare grant paid by the county council and the grant paid by the corporation, with the result that these people who were-shifted out suffer a big hardship. I have given one case in point of a son of a blind pensioner who moved to a house outside the borough. Later on he brought out his father who had been living in a lane in the city to reside with him in the corporation house outside the borough until such time as he got over an illness he had and the result was that there was a reduction in the welfare grant and the rent was increased because the income from the father's blind pension was taken into account under the differential rents scheme for corporation houses.

I think the officials of the Department are pretty well aware of the urgency of this matter. The Minister in reply to a question by me last week said that he hoped to have the result of the inquiry in his hands very soon and that he would see there would be no delay. That may be so, but if the Minister knew Departments as well as some of us do he would know that it may not be so easy as he thinks and I would impress on him to push as hard as ever he can because of these difficulties. We have a scheme of housing at Gurranebraher which is partly in the city and partly in the county with the result that next door neighbours could be receiving different T.B. benefits and I am sure everybody will agree that that is very aggravating. I would therefore urge the Minister to do all he can to make his officials speed up the extension of the boundary.

During the elections in Cork City and County there was great comment on the amount of money being spent on the improvement of a roadway leading into Cork City. It is called the Dunkettle-Tivoli Road and my colleague, Deputy Barrett, had a question down yesterday about it. I have seen the reply to the question, which stated that £41,473 has, to date, been allocated for the improvement of this road and, of that allocation, £23,711 has already been spent, but out of the sum of £41,473, £40,283 was provided out of the road grant. That is the most important roadway leading into Cork City. It is the main road from Dublin, Fermoy, Mitchelstown and Cashel. It is also the principal entrance into Cork City from Waterford, Youghal and Cobh. All those roads converge on this particular section. There is no doubt that it is the principal entrance to the city. On that road there have been numerous accidents for years back, including several fatal accidents. Anyone who has driven from Dublin to Cork must remember the terribly dangerous bends and the blind corners on that particular section of the road.

I maintain that in Cork we have one of the most efficient deputy county engineers in the country. He has done wonderful work in improving the roads leading into the city. In my opinion, this was the most necessary job and the best job I have seen done yet. Why Cork Fine Gael Deputies in the city and county have criticised that improvement I cannot understand. They talk about unemployment. This work has given a great deal of employment. I understand that in road improvement the labour content is about 40 per cent. Not alone was this a great improvement to the main entrance to the city but it also gave that very useful employment.

A couple of years previously, the same deputy county engineer carried out many improvements on the other side of the river, on the Cork to Crosshaven road, which is leading to a very popular seaside resort. He certainly made a great job of that road. With all due respect to Deputy Desmond and his colleagues of the South Cork area, however, the main road from Dublin to Cork was just as important as the road to Crosshaven.

Mr. O'Donnell

It used to be said it carried a lot of traffic out of Cork at one time.

Mr. McGrath

It carries a lot of traffic both ways. I do not know whether the road to Crosshaven brings them in the right direction or not. I am not objecting to what was done on the Crosshaven road. I hope that the same deputy county engineer will go further and improve the remainder of the Crosshaven road, from Douglas into St. Finbarr's Hospital at the top of High Street which is just in the city and which in parts is not much wider than a boreen. Any money spent on the improvement of important roadways like that is money well spent. The Cork County Council has been pressing to get grants—and to get £40,000 out of the Road Fund for a £41,000 job is a pretty decent instalment. No matter what the expenditure is, I hope that all these main roads into our city will be improved for present day traffic. The one I have mentioned, the start of the road to Crosshaven from Cork City, is badly in need of attention. If any suggestion comes up for that particular road, I sincerely hope that sanction will not be delayed.

There is only one other matter, the question of pedestrian crossings. I was given two replies by the Minister's predecessor in the span of a couple of years, that it would require legislation. I suppose the Ceann Comhairle will be ruling me out, saying that I am not entitled to advocate legislation on an Estimate; but I can assure him that I will not spend many minutes on it. In my experience in Dublin and Cork, there is no respect at all for the pedestrians crossing the road. The Gardaí do not seem to look at them at all—if you get half way across the road in Dublin and traffic comes the other way, there is no safeguard at all. In other countries, once a pedestrian puts his foot on the recognised crossing I understand all motor traffic stops. I would suggest to the Minister that he should consider that legislation very soon.

I will finish by wishing the Minister every success in his Department.

Mr. Barrett

The Minister has heard a great deal about housing needs in Cork City during this debate. I make no apology for adverting to the same subject. He told us to-day, in reply to a question I put to him, that there were 2,600 families still to be rehoused in Cork. You can take as an average about five people to each family. That means there are 13,000 people at the moment, at a minimum—and I think the Minister's estimate of 2,600 families is conservative—living under conditions which have to be seen to be believed. They live in hovels, under conditions which are scarcely fit for animals. We are told in the Constitution that the family is the fundamental unit of society but in Cork 2,600 families are living under conditions which make it almost impossible to maintain family life. We who live in decent respectable homes find it hard enough to put up with our families when we go home after a hard day's work; but when the bread-winner has to go in to a poky, smelly, dirty, small room where there are four or five children tired and getting near their bedtime, to a wife who has been looking after those children during the day in those surroundings, his natural reaction is to get out of the home again as soon as possible. It is hard to bring up children in a family atmosphere if you have four or five in the one room. It is most likely that they will end up playing around in the street until all hours of the night.

I would like to compliment the Minister on giving hope to those 2,600 families in Cork. He has told us that one of the first things he has done under his aegis is to give an undertaking to send important officials of his Department to Cork to look into the matter on the spot. I hope that the result of the visit of those officials will be that, when we ask the Minister again the question I asked him to-day —how long should Cork Corporation take before they are over their housing problem—he will not have to say eight to ten years. I hope he will be able to say that within five years' time Cork Corporation will have tackled the housing problem as they should have tackled it all along.

We were told recently at a rates meeting that the corporation intended to build 400 houses. We pressed them to build 500. It was suggested, at all events, that that ideal could not be attained. If that idea continues, the housing problem there will not be solved in 25 years. The social consequences are really dreadful. At the moment a young married couple cannot hope to get a corporation house, because men and women with two, three or four children are clamouring for the type of house which such married couples should get.

I was amazed to find that the Cork Corporation officials did not know how many families of over five persons are at the moment each accommodated in one room. One would think that if the officials interested and in charge of housing in Cork were really trying to solve the problem the first section of the community towards which they would turn their eyes would be families with four and five living in one room. I am certain that the citizens of Cork would be amazed to learn that not since 1946 has an effort been made to find out how many families in Cork are living four and five in one room. I urge the Minister to have such an inquiry carried out without delay because, in turn, it will mean that fewer families of four and five will be living in one room in Cork City.

I want to ask the Minister also to see to it that those derelict sites in the centre of Cork City will be used for housing purposes in the immediate future. For some considerable time past, members of the Cork Corporation—indeed, members of all Parties in the corporation—have been pressing to have that done. We have always found, however, that our hands have been tied by red tape either in the Department of Local Government or locally in Cork.

There are churches and schools ready to absorb the population there but, as the centre of the city is steadily becoming denuded of families, neither schools nor churches are being built in the new areas for them. Any Cork Deputy who is interested in housing must agree that people have a decided objection to living two, three or four miles outside the city because it means increased bus fares for them or the purchase of bicycles to enable them to get to work, to the churches and to the schools. We in Cork feel that the sensible way to tackle the problem would be to build on the derelict sites and also to destroy the horrible and filthy hovels which there are in some parts of the city and build there instead of buying new land farther and farther away from the centre of the city.

It seems to me that a set plan for a certain type of house is demanded by the Department and that nothing the local authority might say to the Department can induce the Department to change their mind. The most usual complaint which we come across in Cork is that the people cannot pay the rents for their houses, that in many cases the houses are larger than they need be and that they are difficult to heat and to furnish. I suggest that the Minister should ask the officials whom he is sending down to Cork to take a look at some of the older housing schemes there—schemes which were not as ambitious as some of the present-day schemes but in which families are to-day living healthy and happy lives—families which are a credit to the city in which they are being raised. These older houses are not large and they are quite unpretentious but they are what the people want. I urge the Minister to bear that fact in mind.

Deputy McGrath evidently thinks that so long as you have the money you can spend it on anything you like. He thinks that if there is money in the Road Fund it might as well be wasted on, say, a road from Dublin to Cork which travels through Clonmel, and so forth. I agree that some of these new roads are excellent technical jobs but I suggest that we are making the roads unsafe for posterity. It is true that there was some necessity to do something with the road to which Deputy McGrath referred. However, I feel money is being squandered when I see a perfectly good house about to be demolished in order to make room for a road which it is intended will be 100 feet wide, or maybe even wider than that.

Mr. McGrath

No house has been demolished.

Mr. Barrett

I said "about to be demolished". As a matter of fact, somebody has already built a wall to protect it and the wall will have to be taken down as well.

Mr. McGrath

One only.

Mr. Barrett

It is my duty to protest, not only from election platforms but here in Parliament, against the squandering of public money which is taking place in relation to that road. I simply took that as a particular case in point to illustrate the general waste on road construction. You find the same on several parts of the road from Cork to Dublin. Despite the tradition which exists, the volume of traffic on that road is not so large as to require such wide roads as are now being constructed throughout the country. In my view, roads which carry vehicles three or four abreast would be quite adequate. If you travel on the road between Cork and Dublin I think you will find that seven vehicles can drive abreast. I would ask the Minister to inquire into that matter with a view to discovering whether, in fact, there is any necessity for the over-ambitious schemes in relation to road construction which are in progress at the present time.

I do not think we should build roads simply with a view to providing employment. I believe we can find more useful ways of spending the money than on schemes of the type to which Deputy McGrath has referred. The Minister has given a good start to the solution of the housing problem in Cork and I trust that he will take speedy steps to cut down the squandermania in relation to the construction of roads throughout the country which has been a feature of the previous Government's administration.

Mr. McQuillan

I want to congratulate the new Minister and to wish him success in the very onerous task which lies ahead of him. He is in charge of one of the most important Departments of State and one which, to my mind, has more connection with rural Ireland than most of the other Departments.

A great responsibility rests on this new Minister who has come in with an open, fresh and vigorous mind to tackle the many problems that await solution. At this stage and so early in his term of office, I do not propose to bring many matters to his attention. I feel sure that at the present time he is concentrating on getting a grasp of the administration of his Department. There are, however, one or two matters which I feel I must refer to—one, especially, that occurred during the past 12 months and which concerns the administration of his Department.

It may seem a small matter to many Deputies but to my mind it is significant that, while Deputies in this House and public representatives outside this House talk about fair play and security of employment, officials of the Minister's Department and possibly of other Departments can put regulations into operation which adversely affect the unfortunate employees of local authorities down the country. At this point I should like to refer the Minister to circular letter No. E.L. 6153 of the 25th June, 1953. I presume that circular letter, a copy of which I have before me, emanated from the Minister's office as a result of advice. It relates to rules governing temporary appointments, especially clerical appointments, to local authorities and limits the period of employment to a maximum of nine months in any one year.

When that circular letter was issued, it immediately affected not only local authority employees such as clerks, typists, and so forth, but also other sections of our community such as nurses who, actually, do not come under the administration of the Minister's Department at all. That is an extraordinary circular letter to issue to any local authority. I know for a fact that employees on county council staffs in all parts of Ireland who had been employed constantly for four or five years were told last year after nine months' service: "Sorry, we cannot employ you any longer this year. You must knock off for three months."

That has happened. I brought this matter to the notice of a particular county manager. I cannot understand any possible reason for a circular letter like this unless it is a question of officialdom trying to protect itself to the extent that if a person is employed in a temporary capacity for a period of years he then has a right to demand permanent employment from the State. As far as I can judge one of the reasons for the letter is to ensure that temporary employees of local authorities will not have at any time in the future a claim to permanency or compensation if their services are dispensed with when they are employed in a temporary capacity. Some years ago I think a temporary clerk in the Civil Service took action against the Department in which he was employed in a temporary capacity for 18 years. I understand that there is a record of that case on the files in the Department and the Department does not want any similar claims to arise.

If the Department of Local Government is concerned with protection for its own permanent staff, I would suggest that it is quite sufficient to notify a temporary employee that his services are terminated for the period of one day per year which is for the sake of breaking the service. That, to my mind, would be sufficient. If there is a question of a right of way on a road all the body which has control of that roadway has to do is to close that roadway for one day in the year and that will give them the right to close it at any time in future. In the same way, if the Department of Local Government feel that people employed in a temporary capacity would have a right if kept on continuously over 12 months, why not knock them off for a week at most?

A serious situation arises out of this. If we have a man or woman employed on a particular matter in a local authority and if they have spent three or four years carrying out certain specified tasks they need skill and experience; but just because they are in a temporary capacity they are knocked off and somebody raw and new is taken in to do the very same work. I will not pursue that matter further except to ask the Minister to get the circular letter. I should also like the House to remember that it affects not only the clerical staffs employed in local authorities but it goes further afield. I have already had occasion to bring this matter to the notice of the former Minister for Health and I was assured that in regard to one particular institute the circular letter did not come into operation and that the girls employed as nurses were allowed to continue their services in a temporary capacity and were not dispensed with. I will refer to this matter on and off during the course of the year in order to see what has happened.

Another point I should like to mention concerns the local elections. I want to be very brief. I presume that within the next 12 months or so the local elections for the county councils will take place. If the Minister is considering, as I think he is and rightly so, introducing changes in the Managerial Act, I would suggest that those changes should come about prior to the next local elections.

Mr. O'Donnell

I hope to do that.

Mr. McQuillan

I am very glad to hear that because we will have an opportunity of getting a good type of councillor because he knows that functions will be restored that now lie, to a great extent to my mind, in the hands of petty dictators.

I do not suppose the Minister will have any chance at the present time or during this year of increasing the allocation of money for local authorities under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. It may not be possible. I do think that tremendous work was done in the rural areas under the Local Authorities (Works) Act as far as drainage is concerned. Certainly, if the Minister is not able to do it this year I hope he will be able to do so during his second year in office, if the Government lasts that long. I hope he will take steps to ensure that more money is made available to local authorities for the very important work of drainage. If we have not got the land in a suitable condition to carry crops and an increased number of live stock, then we will not be able to get that expansion in agriculture which is so desirable and essential to-day.

There is another point in connection with the Local Authorities (Works) Act. There was always a delay in notifying the various county councils with regard to the allocation. It leaves the engineering staffs in a dilemma. I am speaking now for my own county. I cannot, of course, speak for other counties but I presume the same complaint has been made by other local authorities. If they had an idea in time of the amount of money to be allocated, even a rough estimate, they would be able to prepare schemes for submission to the Department instead of, as at present, where it is all a rushed job. I hope the Minister will remember that.

Finally, I would ask him to bring the fresh mind he has to bear on the question of roads generally. The question of grasping the problems that must be faced in connection with road improvement generally is a tremendous business. I know that in the past Ministers have gone into office with great ideas of what could be done, but after a short period they were enmeshed in the red tape and formalities that exist in the Department. I think that the present Minister, while he is really fresh on the job, should take steps to ensure that the same standard of road is laid down in every county.

I know that the Department have laid down standards, but anybody who travels the road from here to Galway knows, by looking at the road, where each county council comes in. I think it is necessary that the engineering staffs, not only the county surveyors but assistant engineers, in most counties should be brought together and given a course, if necessary, on what the Department engineers believe is the proper method of surfacing and laying down roads.

At the present time a great deal of controversy exists amongst engineers in this country and Britain with regard to the proper foundations which should be made for roads. I do not know if the Minister is aware that in his own Department everything is not too happy in that regard as far as the technical advice is concerned. Doctors differ; so do engineers. Up to a few years ago the expert idea that was prevalent in connection with the laying of the foundation for roads was that you would want to have at least a bed of nine to 12 inches of rough stone and so forth before other layers were laid down. A good many engineers have since changed their minds on this, and quite a number of them now say, and have authority from abroad on it, that a much finer type of stone and much lighter layer will do the job. It is quite possible that this has not been resolved yet in the Department, and the reason I am mentioning it is that you may have engineers in the South of Ireland prepared to go ahead on one line and engineers of more conservative views in other areas who will stick to the old one. I think it is essential that all engineers in this country who deal with roads should be brought together and given a course of instruction, if necessary, on what the Department wants done.

I am not going to give specific examples here, as that would be unfair, but I do know that when officials and departmental engineers come down the country their patience is often strained at the type of work done under the supervision of assistant engineers in various counties; and it is a tragic thing to say that local representatives can do nothing to remedy this, because we do not get a copy of any report that comes from the Department of Local Government.

We are not entitled to look at it. As far as these complaints are concerned they are handled by the county manager and county secretary, who are in direct communication with the Department of Local Government, and the local authority appointed to know what is going on and to guard the people's money and to raise money for these works does not know anything about whether these men are efficient or not. If we are going to get what I call a good return for money spent, every local authority representative must be satisfied in his own mind that the money laid out is well spent, but not one of us can give any proof at the present time whether it is well spent or not because we have no access to the appropriate reports. We would nearly want to employ our own private technical staff to supervise both the Department of Local Government engineers and the local authority engineers.

That is all I have to say, except again in conclusion to wish the Minister well in his new appointment and to ask him to bring that fresh and vigorous mind that he has to bear on those problems that face him.

Mr. J. Brennan

I, too, would like at the outset to congratulate my colleague on his elevation to this important office, to wish him every luck, and to assure him of all the assistance we can give him to improve matters in so far as they relate to local government within the ambit of his office. His predecessor set a fairly high standard, and I know that if he follows in his footsteps he will not be going far wrong.

I would like to remind him, too, that he is not just Minister for Cork.

Deputies

Hear, hear!

Mr. J. Brennan

There are other counties in Ireland as well, and I am sure that in the course of his work he will remember that there is a place also called Donegal and there are a few other counties.

I am not going to deal with matters so parochial, having sounded that note, but I would like to say that this question of local government which is debated here every year usually follows the same pattern and the same discussion takes place, and I do not know whether it affects policy for the coming year to any great extent. Personally I feel that the burden of local government is becoming heavier as years go on and it does not merely concern one Minister alone.

In a full-dress debate on local government, one would like to see here the Minister for Health, the Minister for Social Welfare and, the most important Minister of all, the Minister for Finance. These are Ministries which place a considerable lot of work on local authorities as well as the Minister directly responsible for local affairs. The most important one of all is the Minister for Finance, and the Minister who has just taken over the important office of local government will find his success will be largely governed by the amount of money he can extract from that other Minister, the Minister for Finance.

I am sure that it is not necessary to appeal to our new Minister to ensure that every penny available in the Road Fund will always be used for the construction of roads throughout the country, which is, after all, our number one need; and the more money he can get the better will he be able to carry out the important task which falls to his lot now.

I do not agree with the previous speaker in one thing he said when he exhorted the Minister to bring in an amendment to the Managerial Act before the next local elections, when he said that it would have the effect of inducing a better type of candidate to go forward for the county council. My experience is that with the coming into being of the Managerial Act we actually got a better type of councillor to offer himself for election. I will assert that it took place in Donegal and a few other counties that I know. I do not think we could in any way complain of any deterioration in the type of local representative we have secured since that Act came into force.

Dealing with the question of amending the Managerial Act is a rather tricky thing indeed, and without going outside the bounds of this discussion or in any way discussing legislation which is still only contemplated I would say that those functions which are the reserved functions of the elected representatives are not always the best-carried-out functions under a local authority. The Minister would be well advised to consider seriously what functions he would place in the hands of the elected representatives before he takes any drastic action with regard to the amendment of the Managerial Act.

All of us would like to have powers in the local authority. Individuals would like to be able to wield as much power as possible, thereby proving to the people who elected them that they are capable of doing this, that and the other thing, but we have certain functions already reserved and when it comes down to the question of who is the best canvasser to secure appointment I do not think that that is the best means of making that appointment. At least the county manager is responsible to the local authority and to the Department of Local Government for each appointment he makes, and he must show the reason he has selected a particular individual to be a tenant of a house or for any other appointment. I think on the whole it has worked out reasonably satisfactorily. It is quite possible, human nature being what it is, that if the power of appointment were in the hands of the individual elected members appointments would not always be made on merit.

Mr. McQuillan

I do not think there would be any question of handing back powers like that.

Mr. J. Brennan

That, I thought, was something like what the Deputy had in mind when he spoke on this question. There are certain powers I would like—and I mentioned it here in the debate on local government before. I think councillors should have some authority in the allocation of grants to roads.

Mr. McQuillan

Hear, hear!

Mr. J. Brennan

I believe that the local councillor is a better judge of what road really requires improvement in his area than is any newly appointed surveyor coming from some other county to take over charge in a particular area. Then we have the added difficulty of the break in continuity of the service of these local engineers, particularly in places like Donegal. When we get an engineer his one ambition is to see if he can get some job nearer Dublin as soon as possible, with the result that we have them coming and going. One man has a particular scheme in mind and when a fresh appointee takes over he has another scheme and he proceeds to pursue his scheme. After a year he has gone to some other place where he will be near better schools for his children or something like that and a new appointee has a further scheme in mind. The suggestions of the local councillors in most cases are ignored. It would not be any harm to give the local elected representatives more say, better individual powers, if you like, with regard to the allocation of money on roads in concurrence with the assistant and county surveyors.

There are many other things one would like to deal with on this Estimate, but one must have consideration for others who may wish to discuss particular matters. The important point about local government, to my mind, is that the local council, the county council, has become something to which the people look for benefits all the year round, but, when the annual estimates come along and the rate is struck, they proceed to condemn the high rate which they are called on to pay. During the rest of the 12 month period, they expect to be able to get money for roads, for hospitalisation services, for water works and sewerage schemes and for all the other amenities. The people who comprise the present Government did not fail to make all the propaganda they could out of the increasing rate during the recent elections, but that increasing rate is the result of the greater demand for improved amenities, for housing and so on and I cannot foresee that upward trend being arrested. The public have to be made aware that, if they want these amenities and these improved services in connection with local government, they will have to pay for them. The public, furthermore, do not fully realise that what they pay in rates alone is only a fraction of the total cost of the services. They do not realise that a very great percentage of the cost is recouped from the Central Fund, but we have to make up our minds whether or not we want these services. If we do, we must be prepared to face increased rates.

That brings me to my final point, the question of the unfair way in which that burden of local rates is carried. We have a system of haphazard valuation under which a man who has had the misfortune to improve his premises has his property revalued and, as a result, has to pay a much higher share of the local rate than his neighbour who is content to leave his premises as they were and who has not carried out any improvement which would necessitate a visit by the valuation officer. The result is that a section of the people is carrying an unfair burden— the section which has been unfortunate enough to have its property revalued in recent years. If the Minister can do anything to bring about equality in this matter, if we could wake up in the morning and find that everybody had been revalued, the burden on each and any individual would not be any greater, but, so long as you have this system of an occasional revaluation here and there, so long will this inequity continue. I know cases of business premises with a valuation of £30 while the premises next door, the owner of which has the same income and who is probably doing better business, carry a valuation of £5. That is a very unfair allocation of the burden of rates and it is due to this whole question of valuation getting out of line.

All the other speakers referred to some local matter and I will be forgiven if I appeal to the Minister to consider the position of tenants of new cottages who are complaining about the rather high rents they have to meet. In the town of Ballyshannon at the moment there are a large number of tenants who are compelled to pay a rent which in many cases they are unable to meet. That is proved by the fact that, when cheaper rented cottages become vacant, the number of applications from tenants of the higher rented houses is colossal. I need not stress the matter in any detail because the Minister is personally aware of some of the hardships about which I complain and I feel he will make some effort to find a means whereby these rents may be lowered to a point more in keeping with the average income of the tenants who live in these houses.

I wish the Minister success in the office he has taken over. I am sure he will get every co-operation from this side in any worthwhile proposals he makes. His predecessor has set a fairly high standard, which, I am sure, will be a guide for him in finding his feet in this important office.

Mr. Desmond

A matter of vital importance to people in rural areas is the present system under which people make application for grants for reconstruction work or otherwise. In or about 1948, a system was introduced by the Minister for Local Government under which local government meant local government in regard to these housing grants, in that there was a true sense of decentralisation. When a person wished to apply for these grants, he could go to the local county council office, get the necessary forms and complete them there. That system, which was in operation roughly from 1948 to 1952, was changed and I believe that change was a retrograde step in relation to helping people in the matter of these reconstruction grants and housing grants generally.

In order to help people who are anxious to help themselves by improving their own homes, without depending on local authorities to provide them with local authority houses, it is vitally important that they should get the grants to which they are entitled with the least possible delay and I earnestly ask the Minister to consider reintroducing the system of having these grants completed through the local authority offices and not to leave us faced with the problem of the bottleneck in the Custom House which arose in 1952—not the fault of the officials but the fault of the system which was reintroduced and which meant that the officials in the Custom House were snowed under by the enormous number of applications which should have been dealt with locally but which, by reason of Government or ministerial Order, had to come to Dublin. The less we have of Dublin in the matter of local government and the more we have of real local government, the better.

We are still faced with the problem of people who cannot make out where they stand with regard to the supplementary housing grant. Some years ago, a Labour Minister for Local Government, the late Mr. T.J. Murphy, introduced legislation which made it clear that people were entitled to a supplementary housing grant from a local authority on certain considerations. That Act has been amended since, and, as a member of a local authority, I am firmly convinced, as are many of my colleagues, that the amending Act means more complications and heartbreaks for many applicants than anyone will ever realise, because the introduction of three means tests in this amending Act has created for these people a problem they cannot get over. It has also brought in its train a new system under which the attitude of local officials in certain areas has been anything but commendable in dealing with applicants on the basis of these means tests.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.