Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 29 May 1956

Vol. 157 No. 8

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

Debate resumed on the following motion:—

That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration.—(Deputy Briscoe.)

Mr. Rooney

When I was speaking on this Estimate last Thursday, I was referring to the references made by Deputy Briscoe in connection with the finances affecting the housing situation, particularly in Dublin City and County. I was pointing out that the difficulties which are presenting themselves now can be traced back to a reversal of the inter-Party policy by Fianna Fáil in 1951.

In 1951, there was a progressive programme of national development and housing under way; and in the months preceding the general election of 1951, a campaign was carried on by the Fianna Fáil Party against the capital development programme which was well under way and being operated by the inter-Party Government. It was stated by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, in the spring of 1951, that he intended to float a loan of £20,000,000 in the summer of 1951. But the general election came at the end of May, 1951, and no loan was floated. At that time money was plentiful and every loan floated by the inter-Party Government up to that date had been an outstanding success. It seemed obvious that the loan of £20,000,000 proposed to be floated in 1952 by the inter-Party Government would have been a success again and the money——

An Ceann Comhairle

This is not relevant to the Vote for the Department of Local Government. The House is not debating the success or failure of loans.

Mr. Rooney

I am referring at the moment to the shortage of money for housing.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy could go back indefinitely about that.

Mr. Rooney

The point I am making is that a loan of £20,000,000 was not floated in 1951. It could have been floated and it could have been subscribed.

An Ceann Comhairle

That was all discussed on the Budget Resolution. We cannot go back and rehash all that. The Deputy should come to the Estimate.

Mr. Rooney

In any case, the loan of £20,000,000 was not floated in 1951, and to-day we are short of money for capital projects, particularly in relation to housing. We are confronted now by the difficulty of finding finances to complete a programme which is in progress at the moment. Until the money is found, it will be difficult to pursue the housing programme as it is being operated at the moment by Dublin Corporation. I think Dublin Corporation is the local authority in the greatest difficulty, so far as making finance available is concerned. On a few occasions, Dublin Corporation floated public loans and the subscriptions to those loans were not sufficient to enable Dublin Corporation to continue its housing programme under the Small Dwellings Acts in addition to housing under the Working Classes Acts.

At the moment there are many houses not yet completed and there are many people who expected that, in the ordinary way, finance would be available to them, and we have now an announcement from the Minister for Local Government that negotiations are taking place with building societies, insurance companies and other financial concerns who might be in a position to contribute the necessary capital to persons desiring to get loans for the purchase of houses.

The same position, I assume, applies in respect of the working-class houses under way with Dublin Corporation. I want to mention here that, for a small country with very limited resources, a remarkable contribution has been made by the nation towards our housing programme. The total amount contributed from the limited resources of this State, since 1948, amounted to £90,000,000, being £67,000,000 in respect of local authority and working-class houses and £23,000,000 in the form of loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts for the building of white-collar, or middle-class, houses. That was a huge amount of money for this small nation to put up in a limited number of years. We have not yet succeeded in providing all the houses considered necessary, but we have gone a long way towards completing our housing programme. The difficulty at the present time is to secure the necessary finance to enable us to complete the job.

In connection with housing grants, we have a system at the moment whereby there is a housing grant of £175 available and a further grant of up to 50 per cent. of that amount available from the local authority to persons desiring to build houses for their own occupation. The majority of people who build their own houses are subject to these grants and qualify for the supplementary grant and I would like to ask the Minister to consider whether it would be better, and less cumbersome administration, if the amount available in the supplementary grant could be issued at the same time as the local government grant is issued. At the present time the local government grant must be paid before the local authority will consider the payment of their grant.

Another matter I should like to refer to in connection with this Estimate is the continuing slaughter on the roads, and the increase in the number of accidents which take place from year to year. We must ask ourselves what is the reason for the increasing number of serious accidents taking place. We must, first of all, associate that increase with the increase in the number of motor vehicles. In the year 1955, an extra 20,000 motor vehicles were registered in this country. A number of those were autocycles and motor cycles, but that was the extra number of vehicles which came to use the roads.

When we come to consider this matter, we must remember that in the majority of accidents motor vehicles are involved. Very frequently however it is not the fault of the motor-vehicle owner that an accident takes place and for that reason I am inclined to suggest that the Road Traffic Act of 1933 is out of date. That Act when it was passed was not designed to meet the modern conditions which we must face on the roads at the present time. For that reason, it needs to be amended or replaced by new legislation. I know local authorities have the power to adopt by-laws to improve the traffic situation. I know that is so as regards Dublin City, but, if they did adopt such a set of by-laws, they have not been effective.

The confusion in the traffic in Dublin City is too obvious, not alone to the people who must travel through the streets in connection with their daily work, but also to the people who visit our city. It has become so bad that many people find it impossible to bring their motor cars into parts of the city at certain times of the day when they require them most. There is considerable delay, not alone in pedestrian, cycle and motor traffic, but also in the bus services. People desiring to use the bus services to get to and from their work find it impossible to get the best advantages from the services available to them. I believe that, if amending legislation is not brought into operation, it should be possible for Dublin Corporation to adopt a new set of by-laws which will make things easier for everybody trying to travel through the streets of Dublin.

The situation on the roads is not caused altogether by the drivers of motor vehicles. Many road users are selfish. They do not realise that they are sharing the use of the road with other people, that everybody has equal rights to the road, and that they should not monopolise the road to endanger the safety of others.

I should like to refer to the use of crash helmets by motor cyclists. The use of these helmets was made compulsory in Great Britain years ago, but apparently here in this country we have not imposed that compulsion on the users of motor cycles. We should consider whether that is something that ought to be done.

An Ceann Comhairle

Has the Minister power to enforce the use of crash helmets?

Mr. Rooney

I think so, Sir.

Minister for Local Government (Mr. O'Donnell)

No, I have not. I have no such powers.

Mr. Rooney

If it is not a function of the Minister, I will say no more about it. There is another aspect of our traffic regulations to which I should like to draw attention, that is the withdrawal of driving licences, which is automatic in the case of the drunken driver. There is a feeling that the withdrawal of a driving licence for a long period is a very great hardship.

An Ceann Comhairle

Has the Minister any power in that matter?

Mr. O'Donnell

I have no say in it at all.

Mr. Rooney

According to the Road Traffic Act of 1933, the Minister has power.

An Ceann Comhairle

Can the Minister withdraw a licence from a driver?

Mr. Rooney

The Road Traffic Act of 1933 makes it automatic.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is it not the Department of Justice that should enforce that? I am not anxious to stop the Deputy, but there is no use in dealing with the Minister for Local Government, if he has no power or discretion in the matter. I do not think he has and the Minister says he has not.

Mr. Rooney

I understood that automatically for a period of 12 months a driving licence under the Road Traffic Act——

An Ceann Comhairle

Does the Minister come into it there? Does the Minister withdraw the licence? Has he power?

Mr. O'Donnell

No. It is a matter entirely for a judge on appeal.

Mr. Rooney

Another point I want to mention is the lighting on roads. Many accidents are caused by the fact that there is either no lighting or that there are defective lights on vehicles. In that connection, and arising out of the large number of accidents that have occurred in recent times, I was wondering whether it would be possible in connection with the new Road Traffic Bill to specify the standard of lighting which is required, not alone on motor vehicles but other classes of vehicles using the roads. I would also mention that the Town Planning Act of 1924 appears to be out of date in many respects. The adoption of the Planning Act was, of course, delayed for a long time but there are some sections very ineffective.

An Ceann Comhairle

I am sorry to interrupt the Deputy so often, but he is advocating legislation almost since he stood up to speak. The Deputy may not advocate legislation on an Estimate.

Mr. Rooney

Very well, Sir. Am I entitled to point out a defect in the existing legislation?

An Ceann Comhairle

That has been already decided. The Deputy may deal with administration and policy.

Mr. Smith

Talk about the Road Fund and the Minister for Finance's raid on it. That would be an interesting subject.

An Ceann Comhairle

We shall hear Deputy Rooney on administration.

Mr. O'Donovan

You might talk about Deputy Briscoe's hurry with the Dublin Town Plan.

Mr. Smith

The Road Fund is much more interesting to me.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may deal with it later. Deputy Rooney on the Estimate for the Department of Local Government.

Mr. Rooney

I was glad to see that the present Government decided, in connection with the Road Fund, to allocate a greater amount of the available money to the improvement of the county roads instead of the main roads. In years past, too much of the Road Fund money was being used in the construction of main roads instead of on improving the roads in country districts where most of the money came from and where most of the ratepayers lived. Especially in the rural areas the ratepayers were paying very heavy rates but were finding it nearly impossible to use the roads which would enable them to get to their market or to their fair. Only when they came to the main roads did they see any evidence of the money which they contributed. It was a very good thing for the Government to do and it is a pity it was not done sooner. I have noticed in County Dublin, in any case, that the country roads have improved greatly and they are very much up to standard all over the county.

It has been noticeable in recent years that the ratepayers are having a greater burden imposed upon them. They seem to be asked to subscribe very heavily towards many public services, public services which are available not alone to them but to many other classes of the people. There is a feeling amongst ratepayers that many of the public services should be financed from public funds instead of being financed from direct contributions by the ratepayers. In recent years we have found also that the expansion of social services has resulted in an increase on the ratepayers. Many of these ratepayers who have been obliged to pay extra rates towards the cost of extended social services cannot themselves benefit from these social services. This is a great grievance amongst many ratepayers because they feel they should be able to get some of the advantages which are available from the money they contribute direct towards these various public services.

Finally, I was glad to notice that the Minister for Local Government during the year appealed to the nation in general, and particularly to people in rural areas, to cut hedges along roads. It is a fact that high hedges along public roads cause destruction and keep the roads damp. The result is that construction and maintenance work carried out on such roads is frequently offset by the damage done by these high hedges. I hope the Minister will impress again on the owners of property the necessity for cutting these hedges. In many cases it would not be necessary to spend money taking away turns on the roads and doing various road-widening jobs if the hedges on either side were properly cut down, thus making the roads safer. In the past we have noticed that the straighter the road the more accidents that occurred upon it, but if the fences were cut down and the roads made good for traffic it is probable that there would be fewer accidents and more careful use of the roads.

Mr. Casey

I am sure that Deputies on all sides of the House were glad to note from the Minister's speech when moving this Estimate that, in very many local authority areas throughout the country, our housing problem has either been solved or has reached the stage where we can say with confidence that it will be solved in the foreseeable future. I say Deputies on all sides of the House would welcome that statement because successive Governments here have made it a primary object in their programme to solve the very serious housing problems that existed in this country during the past 20 or 30 years. Unfortunately, I must say, coming from the City of Cork, that we must continue to impress on the Minister the urgency of our housing problem in that area. It is still very serious and, unfortunately, we are not in the happy position of being able to say we can foresee its solution in the immediate future.

We are in the position that we still require something in the region of 4,000 houses in Cork City. The enormity of that problem may be judged when we take into account that there are only approximately 5,000 corporation houses in the city at the moment. In other words, since 1886, when the first of these houses were built, the corporation have built only 50 per cent. of the city's housing requirements. I said here on previous occasions that I feel people sitting at their desks in the Custom House—Ministers and the secretaries of Departments—cannot in any way visualise the conditions under which people are living in Cork. Deputy MacCarthy, who is listening to me, will bear me out in what I am saying. I would say that 75 per cent. of the representations made to Cork City Deputies in the course of their public duties are in relation to houses.

When the Minister spoke on the introduction of this Estimate last year, as reported at column 948 of Volume 151, he estimated that in 1955-56 Cork Corporation would erect 477 houses. At that time we felt a greater effort should be made. However, we now have the figures and the work done has fallen short of that estimate by 25 per cent. On the same occasion, the Minister said that in 1956-57 it was hoped that something over 500 houses would be erected in Cork. In his speech on this Estimate, he fell even below that figure, so that it appears that, for one reason or another, not alone are we not making greater progress, but we seem to be falling behind. It would seem that the individuals who are advising the Minister are getting complacent about the problem.

We who are dealing with the problem every day realise its enormity. There are approximately 4,000 parents living in slums and in congested flats in the city. There is no need for me here to outline some of the resultant evils that have been brought to our notice forcibly in places where there are serious housing problems, particularly in Dublin and Cork. It must be quite obvious to everybody that, when a man has not a home, he has no family life. The normal reaction of such a man is that when he must come home to his wife and family living in one room, he will get out of that place as quickly as possible and go to the picture house, the public house or the greyhound track.

I do not want to set myself up as some crusader in this regard. Other people have brought these things more forcefully to the public attention than I could ever endeavour to do. We hear quite a lot about juvenile delinquency in these cities. A great deal of that juvenile delinquency is attributable to the very serious housing problem that exists in these areas. I know families in which there are two or three children, in Cork, of which the mother and one child live in one house with her mother and the father and the other two children live in another house.

People whose business it is point out to us that the marriage rate in this country presents a very serious problem, but in these big cities it must be quite clear that we cannot solve this or very many of our other problems, unless we regard the housing situation as being one that calls for real emergency action. We find that Governments up to the present time have been wont to say: "We will plod along and add a few houses each year". I feel much more drastic action than that should be taken, particularly now that the Minister has been able to say that in many areas housing problems have been solved. Surely the energies of the Custom House, which were diverted over various local authority areas in the past ten and 20 years, might now be brought to bear vigorously on the few remaining eyesores.

As I said previously, the problem is one calling for immediate help. I could give names and addresses of parents with five children all living in one room in tenement houses in the City of Cork. You have young married couples, full of hope and love at the start, endeavouring to make a go of it. They find themselves later separated and they have been separated for the past three or four years. You have members of our Defence Forces, who are supposed to be prepared at a moment's notice to lay down their lives for their country, living in hovels and slums in the worst possible conditions in Cork City. I feel sure the same conditions apply to Dublin.

There is one aspect of the housing situation in Cork, even in relation to the houses that the corporation have succeeded in building, to which I should like to draw the Minister's attention. Cork Corporation have now built 5,000 houses, and, if we continue as we are going at the moment, the problem will be solved by the erection of 4,000 extra houses. In that connection, I should like to say I do not think it is a good thing that a local authority should be a landlord to that extent. I think every encouragement should be given to people who are housed by the local authority to own their own houses. We in Cork endeavoured to bring such schemes to fruition, but I must say we received very little encouragement. The majority of us, of various political views, felt that every encouragement should be given to prospective corporation tenants to own their own houses, and, with that end in view, the corporation submitted plans to the Minister which envisaged a tenant purchase scheme, but for some reason best known to himself the Minister turned us down flat.

On the first occasion on which we went to him, it was a fairly large scheme of something up to 90 or 100 houses and the Minister on that occasion said, while conditions existed as I have outlined as regards slums and congested flats, he did not feel disposed towards making a tenant purchase scheme available. That was perhaps understandable, but even in relation to smaller schemes submitted by the corporation after that—schemes of 16 to 20 houses—we were also turned down flat. I believe in endeavouring to promote such schemes. We should be able to say to existing tenants of local authority houses that they could now transfer from their rented local authority houses into houses which they could purchase on a tenant purchase scheme and that there would still be the same number of houses available to local authorities for allocation to those on their waiting lists who require houses at a weekly rent. I again appeal to the Minister to have a look at the suggestion. It did receive some encouragement from previous Ministers and I was personally very disturbed to find that there had been, apparently, a change of policy in that direction quite recently.

In connection with local authority houses, also, I should like to make this point. I feel that there is not sufficient co-operation between the Departments of Local Government and Education in relation to the erection of houses in newly built-up areas. It has happened in Cork over a number of years now that large housing schemes have been completed for many years, without even a sod being turned for the erection of a national school in the area. Apparently there is always a very big time lag in that connection and I would seriously suggest that this is not a problem that is insurmountable. I feel that when the Department of Local Government receives from the local authority the plans and proposals for the erection of a large local authority housing scheme, the Department should immediately get cracking on the situation, so as to ensure that the very shortest time lag possible would ensure between the completion of the housing scheme and the erection of the schools.

I think it is simply a matter of lack of co-operation and I urge the Minister to endeavour to bring about with his colleague, the Minister for Education, better liaison and better co-operation in this regard.

There is another matter I should like to draw to the attention of the Minister in connection with housing and it refers to the system of differential rents. As the Minister is quite well aware, many local authorities now have in operation differential or graded rents systems. I think that Cork was perhaps the pioneer in that field, and some changes have been made in the mode of assessment of differential rents over the years. Other local authorities have followed suit and brought in different schemes. I think the time has now arrived when the Minister might address himself to producing something in the nature of a uniform system which might be adopted by local authorities generally in connection with these differential rents.

Unfortunate people who live in differential rent houses in the City of Cork are aggrieved to know that the differential rent systems in the Cities of Dublin and Limerick are much more advantageous to the tenant. I am not pretending that this is a very simple problem, but I am suggesting to the Minister that he might address himself to the problem and endeavour to bring about and to make suggestions to the various local authorities regarding some degree of uniformity, at any rate, in relation to this differential renting system.

Before I sit down, I would appeal to the Minister to expedite a decision between himself, possibly, and the Minister for Finance regarding the financial situation of the Cork Corporation in relation to its capital development for housing. I have here a recent minute of a meeting of Cork Corporation where a letter was read from the manager of the Munster and Leinster Bank referring to the corporation's application for an overdraft at the bank during the period ending 31st March, 1957, of £1,500,000 on capital account. The existing debit balance on capital account of Cork Corporation is £494,000 and in that letter the directors of the Munster and Leinster Bank conveyed to the corporation that they could not see their way to grant a further extension of the existing accommodation on the capital account up to more than £750,000 in all. They could only go as far as that and then only on the understanding and on the condition that the amount would be repaid without fail by the end of the year.

All that has been brought to the notice of the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Finance and we are awaiting a reply as to where we are going. The position is that there is one fairly large scheme of something like 120 houses for which the contract has been awarded in the City of Cork and not a thing has been done about it, while we have seen weeks of the finest building weather pass by. We cannot get ahead with the actual building of these houses which could be started in the morning if we had a solution to our financial problem. I do not want to labour this point, because I am quite sure, as a result of representations made to the Minister and in accordance with his own desire to help as far as possible in these matters, the matter is receiving his attention, but I should like to impress on him again the urgency of the situation.

We will all have to realise that it is no use for this Government or any other Government to be pouring money into health services of every description, if we must say that we have no money for housing or that there is delay in providing money for housing. I do not claim to be an authority on these financial matters, but I myself feel there appears to be a lot of codology about it. We appear to have no difficulty at all in finding £1,500,000 for the Department of Defence for new planes and runways and what not, schemes that are of little more, I might say, than a prestige value for this country, yet £1,500,000 could be found this year for schemes such as that, while this Government has to turn to Cork Corporation and to other local authorities and say: "Well, we do not know for the moment, at any rate, what the position is regarding finances for housing." I have no doubt at all in my own mind that there will not be any great hold-up of the building programme in this country because of the financial situation. I am looking forward to an announcement in the near future by the Minister giving us the green light, not merely to go ahead at the fairly slow speed at which we are going at the moment in relation to the housing problem, but to redouble our efforts.

I mentioned that I felt that the enormity of the housing problem in the City of Cork was not realised by the people in the Custom House. I should like to invite the Minister to come to Cork. He has been two years in office. He paid us a flying visit on one occasion, prior to the introduction of the City and County Management (Amendment) Bill. The Minister would be quite welcome to come to Cork and I am sure the Lord Mayor and the corporation would appreciate a visit from him for a few days or a week. The Minister could get down to the problem with the corporation and there could be frank discussion. The Minister could see the waiting list for houses. He could see some of the slums and some of the proposed sites. Above all, the financial situation could be discussed. I have no doubt that the Minister and his Department desire to solve these problems, but I do think that more might be done if the Minister and his immediate advisers were to study the problem on the spot. I hope the Minister will avail of my invitation.

Mr. MacCarthy

I would not be prepared to subscribe to any suggestion that certain useful works should be abandoned so that other selected works might go ahead. We are still in the position that a great deal of all-round development is required in this country. I maintain, however, that building should have certain priority because it is the most pressing problem confronting local authorities at the moment.

One of the chief causes of the emigration of skilled and unskilled building workers is the intermittent nature of the employment under the contract system. Workers do not know where they will get employment when the contract on which they are engaged is ended. The lack of continuity in employment is doing a considerable amount of harm.

At the present time, schemes are ready to be put into operation, but there is a hold-up in schemes carried out directly by the local authorities or in the giving of loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. I know that in this case the Minister has done his part, so far as the Cork authorities are concerned. He has sanctioned the loans and the matter has gone to another Department. There is a considerable hold-up somewhere but the consequent criticism falls on the Minister and his Department.

New building schemes are ready and can go ahead as soon as the loans are sanctioned. In my opinion, we have spread out far enough now in the cities and towns. Undoubtedly, a certain amount of clearing and extension was necessary in the early stages, but at this stage the acquisition of market gardens and fertile land for housing purposes should be undertaken only in case of dire necessity. First and foremost, the question of compensation is involved. That is a very costly item. I will quote an example. It transpired at a meeting of the South Cork Board yesterday that a site was required in the environs of the city for a dispensary and clinic. The Cork Corporation asked us for £750 for half an acre.

The cost of site development and the cost of compensation adds to the total cost and ultimately to the rents of the houses. All kinds of amenities and services must follow the people when they move out. New churches, new schools, new water schemes, new lighting schemes and so on, increase the bill to a very high level. I ask the Minister, in so far as his Department can do so, to turn inwards and to try to develop the derelict sites in the towns.

Mr. O'Donnell

Hear, hear!

Mr. MacCarthy

I would ask the Minister also not to standardise the houses too much. If one house, or two, or three houses can fit into a particular site, if planned properly, they could serve old people or small families who do not want a big house or a big garden. That is the form development should take in the immediate future. The planners should turn inwards and avail of the derelict sites that are available. In that way, the appearance of towns and villages could be improved. It would also have the effect of reducing expense on the occupants whose families might otherwise have to travel long distances to schools and churches. That is so obvious that I need not stress it any further, but I would appeal to the Minister to have that suggestion carried out.

Of course, the Minister needs the co-operation of the public authorities in that respect. They must make a start by putting up schemes, because the Minister and his departmental officials cannot be expected to do the planning for them. The public authorities must work it out for themselves. In many cases, the implementation of that idea would mean lower rents and, certainly, as I have said, would involve less expense in sending children to school. It would also provide much needed employment in these towns and villages for semi-skilled workers in clearing the derelict sites and for skilled workers in the building on those sites of houses appropriate to the locality.

Another matter that is causing concern at the moment is the question of the interest on loans already authorised by local authorities. I shall give the Minister one example from which he can judge what is happening. I know a prospective tenant who applied to the local authority for a loan under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act, which was approved in 1953. The tenant got the house built and has been living in it for over a year. He was in fair circumstances and was not pressing the local authority. He had his house and was quite content. However, a sum of £280, which was authorised in 1953, was still due to him and remains unpaid because the house has not been inspected for the final grant over the past 12 months during which he has been in residence.

Mr. O'Donnell

Did he notify the Department that he had completed the house?

Mr. MacCarthy

I am almost certain that he did.

Mr. O'Donnell

And he has been 12 months waiting?

Mr. MacCarthy

I could not say whether he notified the Department or not, but certainly the local authority was aware.

Mr. T. Lynch

Did he approach the local Deputies?

Mr. MacCarthy

No, Sir, not until the question of the last £280 arose. He was asked to pay the new rate of interest on the last £280, even though it was authorised some time ago and he has been in the house for the past 12 months. Some of these problems should be re-examined by the Minister. I will leave the subject of housing there, as other members have dealt with various aspects of it and I do not want to reiterate what has already been said.

As well as going out too far around the cities and towns and paying too high compensation for building sites, causing subsequent high rents, and so forth, I think the same applies to the main roads. We have taken in too much space. We have wasteful margins along our main roads for which compensation had to be paid and this land would more usefully be employed if it had been kept for production purposes rather than having far too much of it lying waste and derelict along our main roads. I realise that a certain amount of provision has been made for the future but I feel we have gone too far in that direction.

As I said at the outset, I do not subscribe to the view that certain progressive works should be held up and others allowed to go ahead. However, when we are contemplating these progressive works we should, as far as we can judge, provide for the foreseeable needs. There is no point in taking in a whole lot of land. In this country, land is not so plentiful that we can afford to have wide margins, miles in extent, along our roads when a considerable amount of that land could be put under tillage or used for grazing purposes so that it would be some help to the nation rather than allowing it to lie waste, as it is now.

Another aspect of getting land into productivity is the necessity to clear streams. Sometimes the local authority submits projects to the Department. The local people who have spent their lives in the area are very well aware of the deterioration brought about by silting, and so forth. The projects are examined by the engineers. Nevertheless, we get the reply from the Department that the work would not provide benefits sufficient to authorise the expenditure of the amount of money that would be involved. I was very sorry to note a hold-up in that regard, especially in view of the fact that the county councils now have modern machinery. At times when that modern machinery is not required on the roads or in the quarries it could be used for the clearing of streams. I am not advocating now the clearing of tributaries which might only flood out the people further down the river. I am advocating the clearing of streams flowing directly to the sea or, at any rate, into rivers where there is a good flow and no danger of flooding. Our engineers will not put up projects that will cause them trouble or that will cause trouble to the ratepayers. The Department should help in that regard.

Anybody who examines the bridges over our streams cannot but notice that some of them were very skimpily built, so much so that when the floods come there is not enough space to allow the water through. In consequence, there is silting and unless the silting is cleared there, as well as at the river bends where the same trouble arises, valuable land will be flooded and rendered useless. I know of thousands of acres of land in that condition and every other Deputy is I am sure in the same position. I hope the Department will give attention to the schemes sent up in that way by the engineers and give a more ready approval to them.

I agree with what Deputy Casey had to say about purchase schemes. For example, in one area in the South the assistant county manager set his mind to getting the tenants of cottages to purchase them and to build up a little family asset for themselves. The result in that case has been a big reduction in the rates so far as the cost of repairs is concerned. Then take another area beside the first area. The net loss, after the rents were deducted, in respect of the cost of repairs to cottages was £21,000. That represented about 8d., 9d., or 10d. in the £ on the rates for the repair of cottages whereas, in the neighbouring area, the imposition was only about 1d., 2d. or 3d. That is one problem that could be solved. The worker himself knows that he has a family asset and he is more careful about it when it is his own.

The position that obtained hitherto has now been changed. Formerly, if his cottage got into disrepair and if he had purchased it, he was responsible himself for its repair and he had nowhere to go for the funds. Now, if he has purchased his house, it will be eligible for grants just the same as any other building. Consequently, I think the worker should be encouraged to purchase his own house.

We have heard much talk about the danger on the roads, the want of sufficient lighting, the bad lights on the vehicles themselves, and so forth. I do not think the conditions obtaining on our roads are responsible for the accidents at all. Very often, the more serious accidents occur on the straightest and widest roads. There is a want of proper care and vigilance. The erection of public lamps in the vicinity of towns and villages might cost between £20 and £24 each and then there is a subsequent charge on the rates of from £6 10s. to £7 a year. There is a limit to these things. Very often motorists complain that the position of the lights makes them more a hindrance than a help. It is very easy to talk about these problems, but we must get down to the thing locally. If the Department encourage us to do our work locally, to prepare the schemes and submit them for sanction, then local authorities will be able to make worth-while progress in their own areas and give satisfaction to the people whom they represent and help, in a local way, to build up this nation.

Dr. Esmonde

Like other Deputies, I deplore the number of accidents, fatal and otherwise, which have occurred on our roads recently. It is worthy of note that the widening, straightening and enlarging of roads do not always create a better state of affairs. I remember, between the two world wars, the first attempt in Britain of constructing a long straight road— the Great North Road going out of London. That road was responsible for more accidents than any other road in England. I think that, in itself, is an indication that the widening and straightening of our roads does not always produce the necessary desirable results. I fully concur in what Deputy MacCarthy said, that most of our accidents occur on these long straight roads. It is worthy of note that, on the Continent of Europe, where, perhaps, they know a great deal more about roads than we do and where they have longer stretches of road, far from making roads straighter, they are, in fact, creating artificial bends for the greater safety of travellers.

It is also worthy of note that, where they have bends, they have large signposts with luminous paint on them at such a level that the lights of an approaching car can engage them and indicate to travellers that they are approaching a corner, a bend, or a twisted part of the road where danger is to be met and guarded against. We have signs in Ireland, but in the majority of cases they are obsolete signs put up in the past 15 or 20 years. There is also another factor, that is, that the lighting system in the modern type of car is undergoing changes for the safety of those who use the roads. The lights do not show as high as they did before. Our signposts in the vicinity of schools and so on are at such a level that it is impossible for the lights of motor cars to engage them. That is responsible for many accidents in this country and there seems to be no serious attempt made to deal with that situation.

I feel that if the Minister were to exert such influence as he has over local authorities and ask them to concentrate on that problem, not only would there be greater safety on the roads but the Department would save literally thousands of pounds. I travel to the Dáil each week by a certain road to Dublin and the very thing referred to by the last speaker can be seen along that road. Huge tracts of arable land have been sacrificed in the making of bends at a cost of thousands of pounds. Incidentally, those jobs have not been particularly successful and, indeed, some of these jobs have had to be done again, and in one case a job had to be done twice. I do not know what the reason for it was, but it strikes me as being an appalling waste of public money. We are approaching a situation in this country where everyone wishes to see money being saved and it should be the lot of every Department to make a contribution towards that end.

Here is the suggestion I make to the Minister. He can effect savings not only in regard to the central Government, but in regard to local authority administration, if the roads are properly signposted and if he is very slow to sanction any further ironing out of bends at extraordinary expense to both the central Government and local administration. If these things are approached from the proper angle, we will have far fewer accidents. Every other country in the world is doing this and I do not see why we should not do it in Ireland. I am told that the county surveyors in the different counties are encouraged to visit countries and study methods of dealing with traffic in regard to the cities. It would be worth while to pay the expenses involved in sending those people abroad to study the situation in regard to roads. The money saved would be well worth while.

I could not agree more with the last speaker on the question of derelict sites. If one wants to start a housing scheme in this country, there is a long delay while the land is being acquired. There are delays in connection with litigation. I do not know why litigation should be so protracted. The title has to be approved, and then there is the question of water supply and sanitation. The reason we need so many new houses is not the fact that our population is increasing. Unfortunately, that is not true. Our population has been more or less static over the years. The reason we need so many new houses is the fact that houses built 30, 40 and 50 years ago are no longer fit for use.

What happens, particularly in the rural districts and in our bigger towns, is this. You have streets of houses not belonging to the local authority, perhaps, but to private individuals who, because of changing circumstances, the rigidity of the rents and the cost of repairs, find it impossible to repair the houses. These people go to a Deputy or someone on the local authority and ask that the local authority take over these houses. There is a long delay. The houses are inspected by the local engineer who may express the opinion that it is not possible for the local authority to take the houses over. An appeal is then made to the local authority and a further long delay ensues. The local government inspector comes down and he almost invariably upholds the decision previously given by the local authority officer. It is decided that nothing should be done to the houses.

Ultimately, the houses are left to tumble down and they become a discredit to the town and a loss to the nation as a whole. I might also add that tourists who see these derelict sites in our towns and villages are given a bad impression. It should be a simple thing for the local authority, in conjunction with the Minister's Department, to take over these sites, buy them from the people, even if £50 or £100 has to be paid. Such a procedure would result in the saving of money in the long run. Those houses should be demolished and houses rebuilt on the sites where sanitation and water supplies are available.

The housing requirements of this country have been practically met, with the exception of Dublin and Cork. I can assure the Minister and his Department that, in so far as Wexford is concerned, the housing requirements have not been satisfied. If there are houses vacant in any town in Wexford, I receive a lot of letters from people looking for them. These are people not properly housed already. I have always been of the opinion that in regard to the welfare and security of the individual it is wrong to throw the responsibility of building houses directly on to the local authorities or the State. If we are to build subsidised houses, we are throwing a greater charge on the finances of the country as a whole and we are creating a situation in which it will cost more and more to build these houses. At the present time, there are housing schemes held up by virtue of the fact that the houses cannot be built at an economic rent, unless the subsidies are very much increased.

What happens is that the houses are not built and people are waiting for them. What is the answer to that? We must try and be constructive. The answer is this. Houses are being built for people who are able to afford to build their own houses and who should be encouraged to build their own houses. I know for a positive fact that many more people would build houses and avail of the grants, provided they were able to build a house according to their own inclinations, but they are tied up by all sorts of regulations. They are tied to a certain size, number of rooms, and so on. Surely the Minister could alter in some way the existing rigid regulations in order to encourage people to build houses and enable them to build the type of house they want to build for themselves?

I feel that if it was made easier for people, with fewer restrictions, less officialdom and less bureaucracy, to buy their own houses, many people in this country would do so. Surely schemes could be introduced—and I feel that the energies of the Minister and those concerned with houses should be devoted in this direction— to encourage people to buy out houses? This would be one of the surest moves to encourage saving, to bring about stability. If you have people in a country who own their own houses, they are part and parcel of the nation. Ownership of a home is the foundation of security; fundamentally the home is the basis of Christianity and of the Christian State. I would ask the Minister, his officials and officers to consider that. I am not a local official myself and I cannot pretend that I am able to offer any definite suggestions, except that I do know that the schemes that exist at the moment are not sufficient to encourage people to buy their own homes.

Another matter I want to raise is the appointment of rent collectors. The appointment of rate collectors, so far as I know, is carried out by the democratically elected representatives of the public, the county councillors. I do not envy them their job in choosing rate collectors. I am glad to say that I am not a county councillor myself. I think that for one friend they make probably many enemies every time a vacancy arises. Rent collectors appear to come under a different heading. They are appointed by the county manager, and I want to submit to the Minister that I do not think that is a satisfactory arrangement. I am speaking purely for my own county, which is Wexford. I have no information outside that. The procedure that is adopted in Wexford is that the county manager appoints a commission—I think it is called an appointments commission—to advise him in selecting a candidate. A rent collectorship is quite a useful job nowadays, and there are invariably somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten to 15 people at least for each area looking for that job.

It is the invariable custom for the manager—I am not suggesting anything derogatory or underhand about this—to appoint three people to sit on this appointments commission who are always local officials. We may have the county secretary of another county, the secretary of a town commission or urban council, or the county manager of another county. As local officials they must be prejudiced, judging from the results, in favour of the most suitable applicant being an official of a local authority.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Has the Minister any responsibility for the appointment of a rent collector?

Dr. Esmonde

I do not know, but I believe that he would have. If you would allow me to elaborate my point——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If any change in the method of appointment would require legislation, the Deputy may not advocate it on the Estimate.

Dr. Esmonde

I never mentioned legislation. I mentioned the appointment of rent collectors.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Yes, but I am inquiring if the change the Deputy desires would require legislation.

Dr. Esmonde

I think it can be done by ministerial Order. That is the reason I am raising it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

So long as it is a matter for the Estimate.

Dr. Esmonde

If it is a matter for a ministerial Order, is it not a matter for the Estimate, then? A ministerial Order is administration by the Minister's Department. I do not know. I am not prepared to argue the point. May I continue?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Yes.

Dr. Esmonde

My suggestion is that the Minister takes over the function. It is fair, I think, to the county manager for it to be done, and I certainly think it is fair for the applicants who are applying for the job, or have been applying, in my constituency. I have known as many as 20 people called for one vacancy, but the result was that a local authority official got the job. In the period that I have had the honour to represent Wexford I have not known anybody but a local authority official to get the job. I am submitting that the Minister should take over the function and let him appoint, if he likes, officials in Dublin to make this election. What I hope to achieve is that people with sufficient education for this particular job, who go to the trouble of passing an examination and, maybe, travelling long distances for interview and then are left in hopes for weeks, will have some chance of getting the job.

Another matter with which I want to deal is parking in the City of Dublin. We in rural Ireland are very interested in this matter. Dublin depends, shall we say, for its balance of payments on the money that comes into it from people in rural Ireland who come up here and spend their money. People come from the country for the day. They come up in a car, and the main portion of their business in the shopping centre is situated in or around Grafton Street and O'Connell Street. The Dublin people get into the centre of the city and have their particular parking places to go to. Probably they find it difficult enough. But by the time anybody gets into Dublin from rural Ireland, trying to spend money in Dublin, they will probably have to park around Merrion Square or up in the north side and walk all over the city to do their shopping. I do not know who exactly is responsible for this, but I feel that it must be the responsibility of the Minister for Local Government.

In the course of my travels I have been in other cities outside this country and it is the usual procedure to build parking places when they are not available. I do not see any reason, when the Dublin Corporation, I understand, are going to build a bathing pool at considerable expense to the ratepayers, why they should not build overhead light steel fittings for parking cars, or underground parking places, and charge the requisite fee to people parking cars there. There is a tremendous amount of obstructive parking, and by freeing the flow of traffic in the busy hours, and in other times too, this should make it an economic proposition. If they do not like to do it for the Dublin people, I as a country Deputy ask them, and suggest that it is our simple right, and the right of our constituents, if they come to the City of Dublin, to be able to move their cars and to park them. The least that Dublin Corporation, which is responsible for it, should do is to provide them with proper parking facilities.

One other thing strikes me—that the traffic in Dublin is gradually getting out of control. At certain times of the year, and in the heavy tourist season, it is practically impossible to move anywhere in Dublin any more, and even, at all times of the year, in certain periods of the day when there is considerable obstruction with traffic. It seems to me that some changes could take place. I want to cite one instance before I sit down. There is a busy traffic corner, with the beacon lights, just outside St. Vincent's Hospital turning into Lesson Street.

There is a continual flow of traffic there not only during the busy hours but throughout the major portion of the day.

The buses travel on that route. First of all, they are held up at the traffic lights. They then turn the corner and, immediately they do, they have to stop once more because the bus stop is hardly as far distant from the corner as is the Fianna Fáil Party from where I am now. With the bus stop situated where it is, there is no chance for other traffic to pass. All following traffic is held up by the bus. Surely it should be possible with a little intelligent examination of the situation to have that bus stop placed at least 50 yards further up Leeson Street instead of adding to the already overburdened traffic situation in the City of Dublin.

Mr. Smith

The debate on this important Estimate has so far been very quiet. I suppose it is only natural that a discussion on such an Estimate as this would be quiet. Certainly the Minister in his opening statement did not contribute anything which might have the effect of making the debate a lively one.

I always pity a Minister reading a statement introducing his Estimate. I have often had pity, too, for those who prepare these statements, year in and year out. They deal with the progress made in relation to the principal items affecting the Department and affecting local bodies all over the country— housing, roads, water and sewerage and other important national works of that nature. It is not easy for those who prepare these statements to make them in any way enlivening. But I was disappointed in a very particular way with the statement made on this occasion.

When one has occupied an office which is now occupied by another it is only natural that, having listened to a two-day discussion, one should say to oneself: "I wonder how I would have fared if I were over there now and responsible for the important matters to which I have referred?" I listened to the Deputies who support the Government here and I was amazed at some of the efforts made to justify, especially in relation to housing, what is taking place at the moment. I know quite well that political and Party loyalty is a tremendous thing and it can induce people to take up all kinds of strange positions and adopt all kinds of strange attitudes. But the attitude adopted by a number of Deputies supporting the Government certainly exceeded anything I anticipated or anything I have ever witnessed since I came into this House.

Let us take housing about which Deputies have been talking here, not only on this occasion but for years and years. The Housing Acts expired on 31st March of this year. There is now no housing legislation of any kind, shape or description in existence. There is nothing as far as I know, although parliamentary questions have been addressed to the Minister, on the records of this House, or on record anywhere in the Custom House, or even outside it, to indicate what we will have in the way of housing legislation in the future.

I admit housing legislation is promised. I also admit that this is not the first occasion on which a Housing Act expired and there was no Bill before the House designed to take its place. But, if such a situation did exist—and it did exist in my time— there was a statement made to the Deputies here and to the country giving a clear indication that as far as housing was concerned, whether private or public, provision for it would be not less generous than it had been under the Acts hitherto in existence.

How does it come about that we cannot now get from the Minister for Local Government, from his Parliamentary Secretary or even from the Government a simple assurance on that simple matter? I have been sitting here trying to picture myself sitting over there and finding myself in the same position as the Minister does. I can imagine what the Deputies of the Labour Party, the Deputies of the Fine Gael Party and the Deputies of some of the other Parties, which have not been represented here at all during the course of this discussion, would have to say.

I say quite bluntly that in a statement to this House, such as we have listened to from the Minister, there surely should be some reference to this important matter, some announcement as to what the proposed Housing Bill will contain, some statement as to whether the grants provided in the Acts of 1948, 1950, 1952 and 1954 will continue, some statement as to whether they will be more or whether they will be less, some statement as to whether there will be provision for supplementary grants.

Since there has been no reference to such an important matter, I think I am entitled to assume that the policy of the present Minister and of his Department at the moment is to kill housing by creating doubt in the public mind as to whether or not these grants will continue. There was during the course of the discussion here what I can only describe as a brazen attempt to suggest that there was no hold-up in the Cities of Dublin or Cork in relation to housing because of any shortage of money. That was stated from the opposite benches and every Deputy, whether he represents the city or the country, knows there are contractors in this city who are at their wits' end—contractors who have overdrafts in the bank, contractors who have acquired sites and who have developed sites and invested in them all their earnings and all the borrowings on which they could lay their hands, contractors who have houses erected remaining on their hands because the potential purchasers are unable to get approval for their loan applications under the Small Dwellings Acts. Yet, during the course of the discussion here, it was brazenly asserted that no situation existed in these Twenty-Six Counties.

I should like to get some life into this discussion. I would like to hear the members of the Labour Party discuss the whole question of unemployment in this industry. I remember one occasion, in respect of a very large housing scheme in Finglas, when, because of some engineering difficulties, it was necessary for the Department of Local Government to intervene; and their intervention, although technically necessary, had the effect of holding up the scheme for a few weeks. On that occasion there was not a Deputy of the Labour Party or a city Deputy of any Party then in opposition to the Government who was not in the House at Question Time every day during that period. Where is the use in Deputies standing up in this House just merely to make their contribution to a discussion on an Estimate of this nature, unless they face problems as they did during my time? I have no objection to members of an Opposition Party challenging me every inch of the road, if I am responsible.

I have had experience of the cooperation given by all Parties on local bodies in this matter of housing during my term of office, and I have heard them over and over again repeat the anxiety of all Parties to meet and solve this problem. We have had a change of attitude overnight on the part of the very people who accused us of being hostile to direct labour building by local bodies, such as in the case I mentioned—the case of Lucan—and who said that my intervention at the time would have the effect of causing unemployment. How many times have deputations approached me from Dublin Corporation when I, on the advice of and in consultation with officials of my Department who were concerned about the cost of building and the high rents which working people would be asked to pay, questioned some of the work being done by these local authorities through direct labour building? Because I questioned that, deputations from the corporation and from other sources approached me and tried to make a political issue of it. They were hoping that, because of the factors I have mentioned, I would clamp down and say: "Direct labour building can continue so long as it competes with private enterprise."

In those days, there was none of that ready acceptance of the difficulties which we find to-day, when the situation is ten times worse. The housing situation has not progressed in the way Deputy Casey was hoping and is now so bad that the whole building industry seems to be on the verge of collapse. It was only about two months ago that the public got the first hint from the Minister for Local Government of what was coming. The Minister was down in Cork at the opening of a housing scheme. On such occasions, Ministers are always called upon to make a speech, and I like to read these speeches, although sometimes, like my own, they are not very interesting. This speech was obviously a prepared speech and prepared speeches can sometimes be very flat, because those who prepare them do not understand the technique as well as would a politician. There is not a reasonably intelligent man or woman in the country, who, having read that speech, could not see that the ground was being prepared for a slowing up in housing.

I admit there is no sense whatever in over-building by local bodies. That would be a hopelessly stupid thing. I certainly admit that there should be from time to time, at whatever intervals are thought suitable, a survey of housing needs. But it was clear from that statement that those who prepared it knew there was some frog in the well as far as housing is concerned and as far as the availability of money is concerned. That speech was prepared and handed to the Minister, and the Minister read it out. It was a foolish speech in a political sense, but it did convey, to those who would understand, what was being aimed at, and that is the abandonment of our housing programme.

It may be, as Deputy Rooney on the opposite bench has stated, that this matter of housing has become a very serious question from the financial point of view. Neither the Minister who introduced this Estimate nor any member of the Government has made any reference to that important matter. What sort of knowledge of the position existing to-day in regard to the availability of money has been made available to Deputies such as Deputy Rooney that could not be made available to the members of this House and to the country, if there are difficulties about housing and about housing finance?

I accuse the Department, and I accuse the Minister, of permitting things just to drift along. As I have stated, there is no Housing Bill. Nobody knows what provisions the Housing Bill will contain or when it will be enacted. In Dublin City the only people to whom loans will be made available under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act are those entitled to secure supplementary grants from Dublin Corporation, which means that the number of people who can borrow money, and build their own houses, and pay for them, is limited very severely. We hear that sort of policy being justified by back benchers before any announcement has been made on such a policy by the Government. That policy is being supported by back benchers who, only a year or two ago, were talking to us about foreign assets and about making money available to outside Governments at a ¼ per cent. and charging our own people 6 per cent. and 5½ per cent. for money for building houses. These people were then talking about the flow of money. I heard speeches in which it was stated that making available the necessary finance for the building of houses was so simple that it could be done by a crack of the fingers. Now these people are standing behind the Government and making speeches stating that money is not available even though the Government itself has not said so.

I accuse the Department of, not only countenancing and supporting the delay, the hold-up and the indecision and lack of information to the public, but I accuse them also of slowing down in every other respect. I admit it was often difficult, when I was in the Department of Local Government, to get reports on private housing all over the country. There was often a scarcity of inspectors and it was not always easy to get the volume of work done which one would like to get done. I would not be unreasonable, with the knowledge I have, even if there was some fairly considerable delay after the individual had notified the Department that he had completed some job of work in the reconstruction or the building of a new house. But I suspect that, while that might be the case at all times, the passage of time between the notice of completion of the work and the paying out of the money to which such a person is entitled has been extended three times over. I do not know who is responsible for that or if there is anybody at all responsible.

I do not know whether that is deliberate policy or not. I do not know what it is if it is not but I do know that that, as well as the other factors to which I have referred, is responsible for shaking public confidence in housing. After all, if a man is building his own house, if a farmer is reconstructing his house, he would like to know in March, in order to take advantage of every dry day in the summer months, where he was going to be when the job was done. I am sure that Deputy Casey, who has already spoken on this Estimate, is interested in housing, because Cork is one of the cities where there is still a big leeway to be made up. However, there is not the slightest reason that I can see to hope, as he seems to hope, that vigorous action will be taken in regard to this matter. All the indicators point in the very opposite direction and that is that there is, on the part of the Department and the Minister, and I suppose also with the approval of the Government as a whole, a deliberate policy of slowing down on this great work.

I think it is a pity, a great pity. Tremendous strides have been made. Tremendous progress has been made everywhere. When one thinks of the stage of progress reached, one knows that it would not be so very hard to finish the job. If we ease off from it now, and if that easement is to continue for a while, it will not be such a simple matter to get things going again. The Government, may have difficulties that I cannot see but, naturally, having listened to them and the people who support them, so long, stating that the provision of money for housing was a simple matter, I do not know what is the cause of the change.

Time after time the present Government and their predecessors, and their predecessors and their predecessors before them, have conveyed to local bodies that it would not be because of a shortage of money that housing would be abandoned. Money was available for housing in times that seemed to be more difficult, in an economic sense, than the present. In the years 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1937 money was available. These were difficult years in many respects and yet local authorities could, during these years, find the money necessary to go ahead. There was not a single occasion when a local authority was prevented from going ahead with this work because of lack of money. Now the position is that when a housing scheme is put up for tender, when a tender is accepted and approved by the Department of Local Government it still has to be submitted to the Department of Finance for their approval.

In my time and in the years previous to my time the approval of the Department of Local Government was sufficient guarantee that the necessary money would be made available by the State. Now a situation has been reached where, not only is the approval of the Department of Local Government necessary, but the approval of the Department of Finance is also necessary. I do not know what became of all the money that was available until such a short time ago for this work of national development. I do not know how we came as a country to be so poor that we must abandon, at this well-developed stage, our policy for the eradication of bad housing conditions.

There is another matter to which I will refer and about which some parliamentary questions were asked here not by me, although I had a fairly considerable amount of information regarding the subject. I have always taken the view, in Government and out of Government, that whether it be a local body or a Department of State that is involved, if any contractual obligation is entered into with a private citizen, if a private citizen is induced to undertake work on the understanding that certain facilities will be available to him during the course of that work, when it is finished, that Department of State or local body should honour its bond with that private person. That problem confronted me when I was in office. I could not make a decision on it without Government approval. During my term of office as Minister for Local Government, the rate of interest was increased. There was a tremendous furore here. Some of the present occupants of the Front Benches opposite were amongst those who were most concerned as to how I and the Government of the day would meet the disastrous consequences that would befall those who had entered into some contractual obligation to build a house.

I invite the Minister to consult his officials on this matter and he will find how I tried to deal with that situation. The Government do not give way easily on matters of that kind. Ministers for Finance do not give way easily, no matter in what Government you find them. A Minister for Finance is not entitled to be in that position, unless he is fairly tough, but it should be possible for any Minister, confronted with the sort of situation to which I have referred, to make a case in such a way as to secure justice for those affected.

The State, the community and the Exchequer are surely bigger than the private person. They can take knocks which the private individual cannot take. An increase of 1 per cent. in the rate of interest will mean a great deal to a man with a small income who intends to build a house costing £1,600, £1,700, £1,800 or £2,000. If that man has entered into this contractual obligation at a time when he thought money was available at 5 per cent. and, when he has gone half way through the work, finds it will only be available at 6 per cent. or 6½ per cent., I say that is not fair. As far as I can remember in my term of office, the Minister for Finance had to make available £750,000 at the old rate in order to meet our obligations and we met them to the last penny.

At that time I had to come into this House and reply to about half a dozen questions on this subject. I was drafting the reply setting out the categories of persons to which money at the old rate of interest would be made available. I found I had six in all and naturally I had to seek and to get the approval of the Minister for Finance. I sent a copy of my reply to him and he approved of four of the categories. I was still not satisfied, and, before I came into this House, I telephoned him and said: "This is something a Government should do. This is fair play. You have permitted me to meet this problem to the extent of 75 per cent. in approving of these four cases. It is not worth your while to refuse me the other two." And he said: "All right. Go ahead." I was able to come into this House with that sanction and my Department in their administrative work were able to clear every case where there was the slightest evidence in writing that a potential builder had entered into any contractual obligation.

From what has been said in this debate, it seems that there is an attempt made to deny that such was our approach only a couple of years ago, but the evidence is there that such was the case. But what is the approach that is being made now? I know a man who has had his loan approved. He received half of the loan before the new rate of interest came in and an effort is being made to charge him the new rate on the balance. Is it any wonder that those of us like Deputy Casey—who has admitted, like myself, that he is not a financier—who have an ordinary, common knowledge of the subject and who have listened to others who pretend to know, should feel surprised that such a sudden development should have taken place as has taken place here? I do not understand it.

Mr. Casey

I am sorry for interrupting but could Deputy Smith state whether in 1952 a circular was issued over his name to the effect that such a thing would not happen again?

Mr. Smith

That circular was in existence 20 years before.

Mr. M.P. Murphy

Deputy Smith made a definite ruling on that and he should not try to go back on it now.

Mr. Smith

I will not go back on anything, the Deputy need not be one bit afraid. There is no man with any sense of responsibility who will not admit that the rate at which money is borrowed must determine the rate at which it will be lent. I am conceding that, whether it refers to 1952, 1951, 1950, 1948, 1937 or 1932. It has no bearing whatever on this question. Say I have contracted to build a house for myself when the rate of interest is 5 per cent. I have purchased the site, the contract has been determined. I am able to calculate exactly what the money is costing me, exactly where I stand. Suddenly the rate is changed by the Government and I am asked to pay the new rate. That is one issue which I would fight to the last fence were I a member of a Government.

I have noticed, too, an extraordinary attitude on the part of the Minister and his supporters in the House on another question that is of vital importance to people all over the country. It was a matter which really caused me the greatest disappointment—the Minister's attitude to the Road Fund.

Mr. Kennedy

Hear, hear!

Mr. Smith

I do not say it was the Minister's own attitude but I do say it is a lost battle as far as he is concerned. I admit that the present Minister for Finance was not the first man to raid that fund.

Mr. T. Lynch

Hear, hear!

Mr. Smith

I admit that, but Deputy Lynch, who apparently approves of that statement, will remember an occasion when I, as Minister for Local Government, brought motor taxation proposals before this House in 1953, designed to build up the Road Fund for a very necessary and a very worthy purpose.

Mr. T. Lynch

I was not a Deputy in 1953.

Mr. Smith

I never thought the people of Waterford were so wise for so long. Anyhow, the Minister for Local Government was in opposition at that time. The present Minister for Finance was the shadow Minister for Local Government in the Opposition. My proposals were designed to change the system of motor taxation that had been in existence from 1926. I do not think that for such a laudable purpose any previous Minister had been kept in this House so long as I was during the passage of that measure. There was not an aspect of the new code which I proposed that was not examined and discussed for days and weeks. My case for these proposals was that as a young man on county councils I had noticed that the attitude of farmers all over the country to the improvement of roads was one of hostility.

I had seen deputation after deputation come before local councils protesting against the danger of the tarred road. Twenty-five years afterwards, these same farmers were the very people who complained about the condition of the roads and who wanted some attempt made on the part of those responsible to modernise the roads to meet the new situation that had developed. The railways were decaying and are decaying. Buses, heavy lorries, became the order of the day and the roads were not made to take them. That was the case I repeated here, day in, day out, during the passage of that measure. Because some slight alteration in taxation affected the Dublin taximan, the public galleries were full during that debate and an effort was made to intimidate certain Deputies here not to vote for that proposal.

Since the present Minister took office one would think he had worked himself to the jaws of death to get that piece of legislation through when, as a matter of fact, he and his colleagues opposed it every line. I do not mind the Minister taking advantage of what he finds when he comes into office. When I brought that measure into the House I was reminded by my colleagues of how hard the task was for a Government which was almost a minority. I was also reminded that much of the work we were doing was for a very worthy purpose but that the benefits of it would be enjoyed by others. Surely that has come to pass? The present Minister for Local Government was only a very short time in office when he made the tremendous, earth-shaking announcement that the additional receipts to the Road Fund as a result of this taxation would be devoted to the improvement of county roads, and a campaign was started to bolster up a case that there was sympathy now for county roads which never before existed in the minds or hearts of the Minister's predecessors.

You must have the way of building before you start to build. As a result of the passage of that Bill, in spite of the then Opposition, an opportunity was given to build roads and to improve county roads. But when the present Minister for Local Government got that he allowed the Minister for Finance, at the very first opportunity that arose, to come along, take £500,000 and divert it to some other purpose. He allowed the Minister for Finance to do that although, in this House during the passage of that Bill, the Minister for Finance, who was a lawyer, happened to ask me if I would give a guarantee that never again would the Road Fund be raided in the way in which it had been raided in previous years. Of course, I knew I could not give that guarantee because any guarantee I would attempt to give could not bind my successor or any successive Government or could not bind the Dáil, but I did say to him— and my statement then is on the records of the House—that as long as I was Minister for Local Government I would give an assurance to this House that no matter what the stringency might be or how stringent the financial circumstances of the Government of which I was a member might be there would be no raiding of the Road Fund.

What kind of case did the Minister make to his colleague? I know when it comes down to brass tacks—do not think I do not appreciate the difficulties of any Minister who is fighting his corner—a Minister cannot have his way all the time. There are times when he must yield just as any other man, but there are some matters on which there should be no yielding and that was one of them. Where is all the talk now about the amount of employment that would be given through increasing the Road Fund? Where is the talk now about the generosity of the Minister who decided to give all additional moneys arriving in the Road Fund to the improvement of the county roads? What happened the Federation of Rural Workers and their just rates as a result of the withdrawal of half a million of money and the creation of a much shorter spell of employment for those whose lot it is to work on the roads in a permanent way?

Mark you, this is a matter that affects the Minister's own constituency in a very definite way. Would the Minister, in the course of his reply, or would he at any time, instead of dolling and frilling around with little rows and squibs with Dublin Corporation, come along to this House, or go down to Donegal, and explain to the people of Ireland through the people of Donegal, how he can justify the existence of the National Development Fund from which we distributed large sums of money for the making of roads in congested areas in addition to their due share of all that was in the Road Fund?

How can he justify the existence of the National Development Fund largely for the improvement of roads, while at the same time he allows his colleague to raid the Road Fund that has been built up as a result of such effort? I remember, as will Deputies who are interested in county roads, that I once got a lecture in this House from a Deputy who is now present, on the roads of Cavan and the bridges of Cavan, and on the poverty of Cavan, and on the efforts which, if I were doing my duty, I should make in order to improve that position. But we are not all fortunate enough to be planted on fertile soil and we can only do our best where we find ourselves. I am as much in touch with rural life as Deputies of any Party in this House, and I do say that there is no problem now that is more acute than the condition of county roads, in my constituency, anyhow.

Those people who had to pay the additional tax, the additional charge for their driving licences, at least expected that the moneys so collected would be devoted to saving their tyres and their vehicles by giving them roads over which they could pass with ease. The very first time that a little crisis arises, the Minister for Local Government and his Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister for Finance go off with £500,000. There the pledge is broken, and broken by the man who asked me to give an assurance that it would not be broken. I will tell you the truth: I do not know how the Minister for Local Government feels about it. I know how I would feel myself if it happened in my case.

Some people have been talking here about road policy. Now, that is a matter to which I gave some attention myself, and being a layman, I would say it is not wise for a man to fly in the face of technical advice always. A sensible man may have his doubts about some of it—I often had mine as to the wisdom of spending the vast sums of money on those corners and bends and all the rest. I discussed them time and time again, not only with the chief engineers of the Department of Local Government, but with county engineers of all kinds and, indeed, with people who were engineers but who were not members of local bodies or employed by local bodies at all.

I suppose every man may have his own views on this. I travel down through the heart of Meath on my way to Dublin. I remember—it may be 30 years ago—when the first efforts were made, after the introduction of buses, by the local bodies to make that stretch of the road reasonably safe then for the new traffic that had come on it. I do not think that there is a single, solitary turn on that road that was improved around that time that has not been vastly improved since. There is not a turn that has been removed, where it was not thought necessary, apparently, to acquire much more land since, in order to make further easements of the position and to widen the road still more for the further development of motor traffic.

An appeal once came before me when I was Minister—I think it concerned County Louth—where apparently an undue amount of land was being acquired by the local body for the purpose of road widening. When I asked the engineer to give me reasons, I must say that the first reason he gave me was the possible needs of the future. While I do not suppose it is necessary for engineers of local bodies to look hundreds of years into the future—because they could not do so successfully, anyhow—still, having regard to my own experience, that within a period of 25 years, I saw that it was necessary to approach the problem that had apparently been dealt with at one time, as it was thought, in the proper way, but had to be approached again. Therefore, I was inclined to lean in favour of those who said it was better to make some provision now, if not too elaborate, for what might be required in that regard and thereby eliminate the necessity for all these prolonged inquiries and arbitration proceedings in the future.

These are matters, as I say, on which, I suppose, if every member of the House in turn became Minister for Local Government, he would probably have a different approach, but while some will say that it is on the straight roads of the country that the worst accidents occur, it is a noticeable thing all the same that where accidents do occur at bends, it is the customary thing for juries and such bodies to add riders to their verdicts drawing attention to the fact that a dangerous bend exists that should have been attended to long before by the local authority. It is all right to talk about the one case where an accident occurs on the straight, for which there is no accounting, but where accidents occur at the other places, the people called upon to investigate them always make such reference.

I have made some slight reference to the skirmishing that is going on between Dublin Corporation and the Minister for Local Government and his Department. In my view, that is terribly childish conduct. I had my difficulties with Dublin Corporation when I was Minister for Local Government.

Mr. O'Donnell

You abolished them, did you not, at one time?

Mr. Smith

No, I did not.

Mr. O'Donnell

Your predecessor did.

Mr. Smith

Yes, and I suppose I would do it, too, if I thought it necessary.

Mr. Gilbride

Does that mean that the Minister will do it?

Mr. Moher

There is a precedent.

Mr. Smith

I will give this advice to the Minister, but I am not enthusiastic about giving it, even though the Minister is pleasant enough——

Mr. O'Donnell

It is always welcome.

Mr. Smith

The Dublin Corporation is a big body and the staff of the Dublin Corporation is a very large staff. I shall not say anything that is untrue, but I had my difficulties with the Dublin Corporation; they were minor ones and sometimes I thought there was a tendency on the part of the officials of the corporation and the officials of the Custom House to itch for a row, and my advice always was that we should not behave like children. Where replies to parliamentary questions were framed for me on matters affecting the Dublin Corporation, wherever the answer was framed in such a way as to suggest that the fault lay with the corporation, I always amended the answer. I insisted that we should not behave like a lot of children, and, where there was only one small stool in the house they would all try to sit on it.

Mr. O'Donnell

I wish to goodness that Deputy Briscoe would listen to that.

Mr. Smith

Deputy Briscoe is Deputy Briscoe, and he is a Jew and all the rest of it, and it does not matter to me whether he is a Deputy, or a Jew, or a member of the Fianna Fáil Party. I dealt with Deputy Briscoe and I dealt with the Dublin Corporation, and they tried to create political problems for me very often and tried to get me on the wrong foot.

Mr. O'Donnell

I quite agree. They are trying the same thing now.

Mr. Smith

Deputy Larkin is not here. Neither Deputy James Larkin nor Deputy Denis Larkin has been here during the course of this discussion.

Mr. O'Donnell

I beg your pardon— the Lord Mayor was.

Mr. Smith

Just for a few seconds. I was here at the time. I was quite conscious of the fact, as one must be when dealing with a local body that is composed of political Parties, that they will try to put you on the spot and that they will do a bit of play-acting with you. But it is no answer and I do not think it is good business, for the Minister or his Department to behave like children, one saying to the other: "You did it first. You hit me first. You threw the first stone." The Minister does not have to take the advice I am giving him.

Mr. O'Donnell

I welcome it.

Mr. Smith

I am not concerned whether he takes it or not. Perhaps it was not the right approach, but that was my approach, and every senior official in my time in the Department of Local Government knew that it was my approach. Sometimes they may not have agreed with it, but it was the policy that I pursued and I do not think it was a bad one.

It is the greatest nonsense for those responsible for the activities of the Department of Local Government to compare the activities of Cork Corporation and Dublin Corporation, to clap one on the back and to say: "They are a lot of good boys here" and to say in respect of the other: "Here are a lot of playboys and Deputy Briscoe is the worst; Deputy Briscoe is the real offender." Did anyone ever hear such nonsense as the nonsense that was spoken by Deputies on that bench over there when they were talking about sabotaging this and sabotaging that?

Mr. O'Donnell

Did they not try to do it?

Mr. Smith

Nonsense. It is alleged that the Irish Press is sabotaging the cattle trade, that Deputy Briscoe is sabotaging Dublin Corporation, that Deputy MacEntee is sabotaging something else, and all the rest of it.

Mr. O'Donnell

We did not let them.

Mr. Smith

You are very tender-skinned over there.

Mr. O'Donnell

I am not. I am not going to say that I am thick-skinned.

Mr. Smith

The Minister should not be so tender-skinned. He has had a different kind of training from the training a man gets here and as a member of a local body. When I read some of the statements and heard some of the statements made by the Minister to this House, I often thought the Minister must imagine that it is as easy to put over an extravagant statement in this House as it would be in a district court.

Mr. O'Donnell

Sometimes you have a very intelligent audience in the district court.

Mr. Smith

I thought on a few occasions that the standard of reasoning and intelligence attributed to this House by the Minister was appallingly low. Dublin Corporation is not one iota different from what it has always been and the members of the Dublin Corporation are just as anxious as the members of any other local body are to get on with the work that is of greatest urgency. Dublin Corporation have had their problems in the past 12 months or so. I do not want to lay any blame on the Minister's shoulders that does not belong there, nor do I want to save the corporation from any criticism that may be due to them, but I say that, in my judgment, from what I have seen and heard of the Minister's dealings with the Dublin Corporation in the matter of housing for the past 12 months, the Minister has not been fair to them.

We have put down a motion to refer back this Estimate. That is customary procedure for the purpose of widening the scope of the debate, but there is more involved in the motion to refer back this Estimate than the desire to widen the debate. There are two reasons in my mind for wanting to vote against this Estimate, even if nobody else were to vote against it. I have discussed them at some length. One is that I suspect that the Minister and the Government are deliberately refraining from stating clearly their attitude and their policy towards housing. This Coalition Government have deliberately refrained from saying "yes" or "no" because they think it is good political tactics to leave things in the melting pot, to allow men to lose their confidence and hope and tradesmen to go abroad, here, there and yonder and private people to say: "There will be no grant this year, we will let it slip." They are deliberately not stating clearly Government policy in regard to housing. That is the first reason why I shall vote against this Estimate.

My second reason for voting against the Estimate is the inability of the Minister to save the £500,000 for the roads of the country—roads that will be crying out for the next 20 years for millions of pounds in order that the people living in backward parts will be able to get about in a proper way and in order that they will be able to use the vehicles on which they are paying heavy taxes, not only in regard to the vehicles themselves but in regard to petrol and oil as well. For these two reasons, we put down the motion: "That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration".

Mr. T. Lynch

The line taken by the Opposition with reference to money and loans—especially Dublin Deputies —was a political line. I would agree with the previous speaker's statement that this is a skirmish: it is an effort by the Opposition to embarrass the Government. The Opposition hope to make political capital out of the housing situation. I had hoped that the former Minister would put up some constructive suggestions. I would agree with him that those people who applied before March should be given the loan at the old rate of interest and I am not afraid to say that.

There is a great deal of confusion down the country about small dwellings. I am a member of the Waterford Corporation. We built a considerable number of houses under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. The officials there did not endeavour to take the applicants' fingerprints or read up their history or try to get their pedigree. I am sorry to say that the same thing does not obtain in the county and that it is very difficult to build a house under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts there. Sureties are demanded. The Minister should make a ruling that the house itself should be considered to be enough security. It is there. It is built to the specification laid down by the engineers and architects of the local authority and the Department. It is inspected and they see to it that a good job is made of it. I have never seen one of these houses left there. If a man took a house and subsequently lost his job, or something like that, and had to give it up, there would be a queue of people trying to get possession of it. Even recently, people were willing to pay a substantial sum of money in respect of a house in Waterford in order to acquire the interest of the out-going tenant. In my view, one ruling should be made rather than have a forest of different rules all over the country by various county managers and their legal advisers.

On the subject of traffic, I put a question to the Minister on the 8th February last asking him if he was in a position to state when the traffic laws of this State would be improved. He replied that proposals to amend the Traffic Act, 1933, were being prepared. It is imperative that these proposals be brought before the House as soon as possible. I must have had about five escapes from death this morning on my way up from Waterford. If you drive with one wheel on the grass margin, it is possible for you to count four or five cars and lorries between Waterford and Dublin or along that distance that will hold the crown of the road. It is a frightful and dangerous state of affairs. Whether at bends or on the straight, there are some motorists, shall we say a minority of motorists, who do not know the meaning of the expression "courtesy of the road".

The remark is often made that it is very easy to get a driver's licence and that a man who is nearly blind, or who is suffering from a physical disability, can get a licence, but there are some barbarians who have a driving licence and who have no manners, no courtesy. They are trying to drive people off the roads. It is tragic to read in the paper every morning that some unfortunate family has been bereaved through a road accident. Just think what an awful shock it must be to a family when the breadwinner is killed or when maybe two or three members of a family are just butchered on the roads. It is about time we dealt with this matter and dealt with it drastically.

On the subject of roads, I think members on all sides of the House are agreed that we should stop spending money on these enormous bends on the roads.

Mr. O'Donnell

Deputy Smith did not say so.

Mr. T. Lynch

I think he brought the Minister to task. I think he said that it was a problem for the Minister even in his own county so far as the raiding of the Road Fund is concerned. Whatever they will say to the Minister in the rest of Ireland, I am sure his constituents in Donegal can never find fault with him in view of the fine road grants for Donegal in comparison with Waterford. I am envious and the people of Donegal are to be congratulated.

Mr. Kenneally

Good for you.

Mr. O'Donnell

I hope Deputy J. Brennan will say that at the next council meeting.

Mr. T. Lynch

Waterford is a tourist area.

Mr. Allen

"The Garden of Ireland."

Mr. T. Lynch

The Minister has spent many a good holiday with us down there. I think it was very remiss of him not to include it, too. There are enormous road grants under the heading of Tourist Road Grants: £10,000 to Cavan; £35,000 to Clare; £55,000 to Cork; £55,000 to Donegal; £55,000 to Galway; £55,000 to Kerry; £25,000 to Leitrim; £55,000 to Mayo; £25,000 to Roscommon and £25,000 to Sligo. Whoever allots these grants evidently thinks that the whole tourist business of Ireland takes place on the West coast. I am sure I am not without somebody on the Opposition Benches, maybe even on the Front Opposition Bench, to back me up when I say that Waterford County, Wexford and Tipperary——

Mr. O'Donnell

These grants are for tourist roads in the Gaeltacht. If Ring were not allowed to dwindle away, Waterford would be entitled to an allocation.

Mr. T. Lynch

It has not dwindled. It is down under tourist grants.

Mr. Allen

Is Wicklow in the Gaeltacht?

Mr. T. Lynch

I did not think Leitrim was in the Gaeltacht.

Mr. Allen

Or Wicklow.

Mr. T. Lynch

I did not think Cavan, Roscommon or Sligo were in the Gaeltacht. This is under tourist road grants and it is mentioned in reply to a question by the Minister himself as set out in Volume 157, No. 2, of the Official Report. Wexford, Wicklow, Kilkenny, Carlow, Tipperary, North and South—counties which have been left out—should be included.

As I am on this subject, I had occasion some time ago to be in another country. I saw a map of Ireland, and from this map of Ireland I discovered something that I never came across in my own country, that the sunniest part of Ireland is the South-East, embracing the counties I have mentioned. I have already pointed out that these places should come in for more of the tourist road grant and I respectfully draw the Minister's attention to that.

In regard to the Fíor-Ghaeltacht, I have nothing to say. The Minister mentioned it. That is all right, but these roads are done under tourist road grants and substantial amounts of money are involved. I would say that we have got very little of them in the South-East and I would ask the Minister to turn his eyes towards us in the South-East.

Coming up to the time of striking the rates, there is always a spate of articles in the newspapers all over the country and post-prandial speeches are made by the chairmen and presidents of chambers of commerce intimating that something must be done. I always cherished the hope that some of those captains of industry and those leader writers who mould public opinion would set out how that something could be done. I always cherish the hope that they would make some suggestion as to how a little money could be saved. I have gone to some bother in this connection during the past 16 or 17 years as a member of a local authority. The outgoings always beat us. The cost of administration always seemed to be going up and more services were demanded. We were never able to beat that. Then somebody discovered a handy way of giving the people something. Certain provision was made, resulting in so much being levied off the local authorities down the country. That started a snowball.

I think there is a way of bringing down the rates in the near future. It would be only restitution to give back to the local authorities what the central authority has taken from us. It is always better to make a comparison in respect of one's own county or constituency. The levy for roads in Waterford at the last rating estimate of the Waterford County Council was £148,000, or 11/- in the £. That is a substantial amount of money. The roads are getting better and better every year, and now that we will be able to put an end to the madness of pouring hundreds of thousands of pounds into the matter of bends, it appears that in a very short time we may be able to get to the secondary roads, finish them and look around to see what we can do with the Road Fund. Then is the time to stand fast and make restitution to the local bodies. The time is coming when that restitution should be made a State charge off the Road Fund.

I have seen great delays in housing and in other things in local government and I have heard complaints in this House about the difficulty of acquiring land and sites. In regard to derelict sites, the owner comes to the county council and one would imagine that there is gold to be had, having regard to the price he asks. The owner will relent when he is left a couple of years, when the price is beginning to fall and the local authority will be able to buy the site from him at a reasonable price. After a long time, the local authority gets the site, but it is now derelict with a lot of old buildings on it. A case is put up for a grant to try to clear the site. That is going round the mulberry bush all over again.

I have seen places in the most convenient parts of the city from which I come on which we could not build any houses. We were able to build two or three housing schemes outside the city. The same thing applies to various other places. In regard to housing, roads and so on, greater reliance should be placed by the Department on the local authority engineers.

These engineers are recruited by the Local Appointments Commission and I have no doubt that they are recruited from the best men available in the country. It is not good policy for the Department to treat them as inferiors. It has a very bad effect upon these engineers down the country and on the local authorities. It also has the effect of slowing down things. It is wasteful from the country's point of view and it stagnates the work of the local authorities. It would be far better to give freedom to them and make the local authorities, their engineers and their officials responsible for their actions and not treat them as if they were small children.

I know the Minister and the Department will want to keep in touch, but surely it is not necessary to send inspectors down the country for every small extension to a small house and for everything in respect of which the Government give grants. The Department should rely on these officials down the country as being the people who should have the last word. The Department would be well able to keep in touch with the local authorities, because they have their general inspectors, but to send an inspector down for every fiddle-faddle is to stagnate and slow down local government.

A Minister in another Department took the inspectors off the farmers' necks. I think it would be a good thing if the Minister for Local Government took the inspectors away from the local authorities, with the exception of the general inspectors. In the case of relief grants, the money provided has already been contributed in different ways by us, but, when we get it back by way of grant, all kinds of strings are attached to it. We often have the greatest difficulty in getting approval for spending it as we know it ought to be spent under local authorities down the country. This, in relation to our own money, is intolerable, and it means only duplication and waste. To a lesser degree, the same can be said of any service which is partly financed by State subsidy, by the contribution of a fraction of the money, when the Department gains control over the administration of the service. This tendency, which is on the increase, will bring about the result that the local authorities will be neither local nor have effective authority. It is a trend that must be regarded with apprehension by anybody like the Minister who is interested in local autonomy.

I have been told unofficially, and I do not know if it is true, that, in the Six Counties, when a matter requires the sanction of the Minister for Local Government or his Department, if approval has been applied for by the local authority, and no reply is received within three weeks, the proposal is deemed to have been sanctioned by default. If that is correct, and even if it is not, it is a thing well worth trying out here.

In the matter of extensions to and improvements of existing houses, I have had some trouble. I was met very courteously by the Minister's Department about it, but it seems that the Department objects to corrugated asbestos roofing of those extensions, and to certain classes of roofing manufactured in the city I come from. With all due respect, I do not think it is right to object to Irish manufactured roofing, and I would draw the Minister's attention to that. I have known of grants held up, and in one case reduced, because corrugated asbestos was used. It has been tried by time and proved that it is a success, and where a person is putting on a small extension—a kitchen or a bathroom—it is cheap to put up and a good, sound, dry job.

I would say to the Minister—and I know his anxiety about housing—that he should examine what I have said about giving authority to the local officials. I am sure I will be pardoned if I do not mention the name, but my council had occasion to approach another Department in the matter of a grant, and they just said: "We would like to do such a thing and our engineer says that the cost will be so much." They said: "Go ahead, and when your engineers have done the job and have certified, we will send down a man who will look at it", and we got the money immediately. That was better than having to send up for sanction, wait for an inspector to come down to look at the thing that wanted to be done, and so on, and all this tortuous waste of time and money.

The Minister did a really good job when he went through the country and met the local authorities. Even though there have been some sneers from the Opposition, it was a good thing for a Minister for Local Government to do, and I want to compliment him on it. In closing I will say to him that I do hope we will be busy in this House with a recodification of the traffic laws.

Mr. J. Brennan

The trend of the debate on local government this year has not dealt so much with the general pattern of local government, perhaps, as it has in the past. So far as I have listened to the debate, the speakers have confined themselves to dealing with specific points arising out of local government administration. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the much maligned Managerial Act, since it has got the blessing of the present Government by a milk-and-water amendment last year, is now no longer a controversial item in this debate. It is accepted by all.

I still think that the overall pattern of local government is something which must yet demand the serious attention of any Minister for Local Government in this country. £19.4 million of a burden of local rates in the current year to finance the ever-growing system of local government is providing a problem that will be more difficult to solve, the larger it grows, particularly when one considers that that revenue is collected by means which are antiquated and long since out of date. The collection of that sum of almost £19,500,000 through the rateable valuations of this country means that the money is provided by a system, the overhaul of which is long overdue.

Some people have been advocating derating. I think it was Limerick Corporation which at one time asked for the derating of buildings and properties, and that the entire burden be transferred to agricultural land. Other Deputies advocated the derating of agricultural land. Whether one is an advocate of one or other system, the fact remains that the present system is very much out of line. The unfortunate citizen who has improved his dwelling or other buildings comes in for the heavy knock of revaluation, while his ne'er-do-well neighbour, content to remain in the premises in which his great-grandfather lived, is allowed to get off with a low valuation, and thus has only to contribute a comparatively small portion of the revenue. Is that an equitable system?

Revision of that haphazard means by which local revenue is collected to finance ever-increasing works, to the tune of almost £20,000,000, is one of the great tasks which the present pattern of local government has before it, and until some Minister is big enough to undertake a thorough study of the system, and have it revolutionised, I do not think we can say that local government as such is operating as smoothly as it should be, or certainly in accordance with the wishes of the people generally.

Mr. O'Donnell

Surely the matter of valuation is one for the Minister for Finance, not for Local Government?

Mr. J. Brennan

If the Minister for Local Government is not concerned with the means by which revenue is produced for the administration of local government, I do not think he can expect the Minister for Finance to be the first person to worry about it. I am afraid we would wait a long time, if we waited for the Minister for Finance to move in that respect, and I would expect the Minister for Local Government to have more than a nodding acquaintance with that antiquated system.

Mr. O'Donnell

The remedy is one for the Minister for Finance and not for me.

Mr. J. Brennan

That sounds rather like the old familiar "passing the buck" system. I would expect the Minister to show some little concern for the present situation and I believe the Ceann Comhairle is not entitled to come to his aid on this point.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is not for me to say anything.

Mr. J. Brennan

I believe this is quite relevant.

An Ceann Comhairle

I am afraid it is not.

Mr. J. Brennan

The matter of raising revenue for local authority administration is certainly something which one must discuss on this Estimate. The Minister, in his opening statement, made a striking reference to the position when he dealt with the financial position for the current year. At column 159 of Volume 157 of the Official Report, the Minister said:—

"Excluding vocational education committees, committees of agriculture and harbour authorities, local revenue was £47.8 million in the past financial year and for the current year it has been estimated at £51.7 million."

There is then the contribution from the Central Fund. I think I am entitled to draw the Minister's attention to the colossal burden that is crushing the ratepayers, in so far as it should be his concern to devise some other system. I suggest that he should set up a commission to study the system by which revenues are collected for the financing of local authorities.

Mr. O'Donnell

We might then find ourselves in the position Buncrana found itself in.

Mr. J. Brennan

Not if we had revaluation generally.

An Ceann Comhairle

I have already told the Deputy he cannot proceed along the line of revaluation, as far as the Minister for Local Government is concerned. The Minister has no responsibility for it.

Mr. J. Brennan

I am grateful to the Chair for permitting me to go so far. I shall not pursue the matter further, other than to say that local authorities are financed by an antiquated system. The Minister interjected and said we would have the same position as Buncrana. I am afraid many ratepayers find themselves in that position at the moment. There are many being revalued and many others beside them who are not being revalued. This is more than indirectly connected, I think, with our local government system. However, that is that.

Has the Minister forgotten one of the very hopeful statements he made in the first flush of his appointment to office? He said he would procure a very large scissors to cut all the red tape entangling the many schemes in the Custom House. In any action he takes in that respect, he will have the support of more than the Government Benches.

Mr. O'Donnell

The knots were tied so tight by my predecessor they are a bit difficult to loosen.

Mr. J. Brennan

Probably that is about the best answer the Minister can give.

Mr. O'Donnell

But we are slowly cutting them.

Mr. J. Brennan

The answer is an inadequate one and by no means a proper one. The fact remains that the red tape has accumulated and has become more entangling than ever before. Its use is becoming even more prevalent, not only in the Department of Local Government, but in every Department of State.

There is one item to which I must refer. That is an item of £2,000 in relation to the improvement of housing conditions for families where one or more than one is suffering from T.B. The small amount allocated for that very worthy scheme is in itself indicative of the fact that the scheme is not being availed of as it should be. That is due entirely to all the unnecessary red tape which is strangling the scheme. Any Deputy who has ever had to give assistance to a constituent in relation to that scheme knows what the position is and understands why such a small amount is being made available.

If an applicant sets about doing the necessary things, which are laid down in a simple sheet of instructions, this year, and if he succeeds in having that extra room built on to his house by the end of 1959, he will, I think, be exceeding the average rate of progress of such schemes. One would think that all that should be necessary in such a case would be a certificate from the county medical officer of health stating that the applicant was in need of improved housing facilities. One would expect a certificate of that type to be sufficient to enable the work to be proceeded with without further ado.

The applicant has, however, to fill in a set of seven forms on both sides. They have to be signed by the assistant county medical officer of health, verified by the county medical officer of health, passed to the county council, returned to an architect to have plans drafted and they go through a shuttle service to the Department of Local Government. Eventually, somebody comes along and discovers the plans are not correct, and the whole thing is begun all over again. Meantime, the patient has died, has been removed to hospital or, in most cases now, has improved and gone off to work abroad. I appeal to the Minister to give some consideration to that scheme. It is a very worthy scheme.

I want now to say something about the use of corrugated asbestos or corrugated zinc in the roofing of rural dwelling houses. If two local farmers are repairing their dwellings and one carries out repairs at a cost of £200, he qualifies, if it is a three-roomed house, for a grant of £80; his neighbour carries out repairs costing perhaps £700, but, if he replaces his roof with corrugated asbestos, instead of the approved asbestos slates, £12 is deducted from the £80 grant he should receive, because corrugated asbestos is held to be sub-standard. It is a very useful roofing material in rural Ireland. It may be unsightly in the towns and villages, but it is certainly a most serviceable roofing in country districts. People who use it should not be penalised to the extent to which they are at the moment, particularly when they expend more on repairs than those who use the recognised roofing material approved for the full-scale grant. I have frequently tried to procure for persons who expend a considerable amount in repairing their dwellings the full amount of the grant, which is only £80 for a three-roomed house, £100 for a four-roomed house, and £120 for a five-roomed house. But in every case, irrespective of the amount of the estimated cost and the actual amount spent, there is a deduction in respect of corrugated zinc or asbestos from the maximum grant allowable under the scheme. I think it is most unfair and, through you, Sir, I would protest to the Minister against the operation of that scheme.

Mr. O'Donnell

The scheme was made by my predecessor, not by me.

Mr. J. Brennan

I often think if Ministers had not predecessors, they would have nothing at all to say. I have heard it said of a man: he was lucky his father was born before him. The Minister is lucky his predecessor was here before him. He has a scapegoat.

Mr. O'Donnell

The Deputy has got the right name for him; he has branded him well.

Mr. J. Brennan

He has got a scapegoat for every accusation. Surely some day a Minister will be big enough to come along and say, irrespective of what was done in the past or who did it: "I am capable of doing it better?"

Mr. O'Donnell

I am doing it every day, but you made so many mistakes, it will take some time.

Mr. J. Brennan

If there is to be any criticism of the Minister in this House, I prefer it should come from somebody else. If it is a question of deciding who is doing better, you had better not start me on that.

Before I am dragged into this, I want to move on to the question of parking places. Some Deputies have already referred to this and it is a matter which is very close to my heart. If the Minister has the intention of doing better, I think he has a little outlet here for bringing about some improvement. Did it ever occur to Deputies that at every single church in the country, particularly in rural areas, irrespective of denomination, there is a need for a parking place for cars at the present day? Some people might stand up and say that is a matter for the church authorities themselves but the church authorities have plenty to do, and they are doing a good job. If the local authorities came to their aid in the provision of parking places for cars outside their houses of worship, or convenient to them, they would be easing the density of traffic and the danger of traffic at the approaches to those churches on Sunday mornings and other occasions, and they would be doing very useful and very helpful work.

Mr. O'Donnell

I am in full agreement with the Deputy, but the Deputy will appreciate it would increase the rates, and surely they are high enough at the moment?

Mr. J. Brennan

In the past, the rates have been increased in many ways by many things, but I believe this is one matter in which the Minister would not be criticised for any increase on the rates. The amount involved would not be great. One could work it on the system whereby contributions would be asked from the church authorities concerned, the same as in relation to school buildings. I suggest to the Minister that he should give some consideration to this scheme——

Mr. O'Donnell

I certainly will indeed.

Mr. J. Brennan

I know he has a personal interest in it himself. Every one of us knows the long line of cars that are parked on narrow roads outside these houses of worship——

Mr. O'Donnell

If we are going to hold a political meeting, we know the difficulty.

Mr. J. Brennan

When a candidate gets up to speak at election time he cannot hear his ears with traffic moving off. I would seriously make this suggestion to the Minister.

Mr. O'Donnell

And I shall seriously consider it.

Mr. J. Brennan

There is a token sum in the Estimates for the codification of local government law, and I hope that that work is progressing. I think we have been carrying that token sum for some years and I hope that the work will be brought to fruition in the near future. If local government law is not to become a complete paradise for lawyers and legal people generally, I think the Minister will agree that there will have to be simplification of the code by a consolidation of the legislation which has gone through this House since it came into existence and through another House for 100 years before that. This has left us at the present time with a mass of legislation, covering the conduct of local authorities, which must be a happy hunting ground for the legal profession. I am not grudging them anything they may make out of it, but it must be a complete headache to the staffs of local authorities whose duty it is to administer it. I think the acceleration of work under that heading would be welcomed by everybody in every local authority in the country and particularly by the members of this House.

In his opening statement, the Minister referred to fire-fighting. There is only one remark I should like to make on that subject, and it is not original, either. It concerns insurance companies and their relation to fire-fighting services. I remember that, when I first became a member of a local authority, I was amazed to find out that insurance companies did not contribute anything to the maintenance of fire-fighting organisation. I always thought they were the people likely to benefit most by having in existence a good fire-fighting service and that it would be in their own interest and welfare if they were allowed or compelled to make an annual contribution to the maintenance of fire-fighting organisation in the country generally.

Going home from Dublin last week, I found a house on fire in Cavan. The fire brigade from Cavan town came out very quickly and worked very hard to prevent the place being gutted. I thought to myself what a job of work they were probably doing for some insurance company. It is possible that no insurance company was concerned, but most premises are now covered by insurance. When one sees these fire-fighters working might and main to bring under control a fire that has got a bad grip on the premises or possibly trying to save adjoining premises, one realises the job they are doing in saving thousands of pounds for some insurance company. The least one would expect is that those insurance companies dealing generally with fire and accidents would make a substantial contribution towards the maintenance of fire-fighting organisation in the country generally. It would be in their own interests to do so, as well as being a most welcome subvention to local authorities, who have sufficient on their hands, without having to impose an extra burden on the rates for fire-fighting services.

The vexed question of housing is one which no Deputy could sit down without referring to in this debate. Perhaps the Minister, in his closing remarks, will give us some indication as to when we may expect legislation to continue the housing programme.

Mr. O'Donnell

Within the next two weeks.

Mr. J. Brennan

We are all very glad to know that there will not be any further delay. Without anticipating the legislation, I can only express the hope that those who already have work on hands, particularly those who are expecting to qualify for the local authorities' supplementary grant, will be taken into consideration and that their confidence and their hopes in this scheme will not be misplaced. I will not anticipate the legislation otherwise, nor do I expect the Minister to make any statement at this stage.

I would say again, as I said last year, that we in Donegal have been concentrating on a special type of rural house. We have been providing the small holders of up to £5 valuation with county council cottages which we have named "specific instance" houses. That is the most desirable type of house under our special circumstances. Building in towns and villages is tapering off. A good reconstruction scheme, with generous grants available, would now be sufficient to maintain in proper repair and fit for occupation, the houses in the more densely populated centres.

In the rural areas, we have yet a great many slums to clear. We set the limit of valuation at £5 as a guide to us, but there is nothing to prevent us bringing that limit up to £6, £7, £8 or £10 in order to qualify small holders for a "specific instance" house. We have made a great deal of progress, but we are meeting a few obstacles which are not unknown to the Minister, and some of which may have already been removed. There is the difficulty of getting down to a figure which will be approved.

Mr. O'Donnell

Would the Deputy consider direct labour?

Mr. J. Brennan

That question has been under consideration, but so far no decision has been taken to carry out any scheme by direct labour.

Mr. O'Donnell

The Deputy can rest assured that anything I can do to expedite the building of these houses will be done.

Mr. J. Brennan

The technical advisers of the Department seem to have fixed a price of between £1,000 and £1,100 for this type of house and they are completely adamant in refusing any tender above that figure, irrespective of the fact that house costing is, to a great extent, influenced by the type of site and by the location of the site. In places like Glencolumcille, in County Donegal, it is not easy to get the ideal site. It is far from the hub of things and one would expect that, for a house in an area like that, a contractor would be entitled to at least £100 more than for a house near Lifford, Letterkenny or Ballybofey, where he is on the doorstep of the builders' provider and where he is close to the main road. I am sure the Minister could get the technical advisers in his Department to take into consideration the great difficulties there are in regard to prices to be accepted from contractors for the building of such houses.

We are not making the progress we should make with the scheme at the moment and the main delay arises from the fact that Local Government is not sanctioning any price greater than £1,050. There should be more flexibility.

Mr. O'Donnell

We go to £1,500 for the service cottages.

Mr. J. Brennan

We have a specific design which was submitted to, and sanctioned by, the Department and that is the design on which we are working. In most instances, the sites of these houses are not convenient to water mains and sewerage mains, and they are not service houses. There is a price fixed by the Department for the building of these houses which does not vary much between £1,000 and £1,100. That is not sufficient in many cases, and the proof of that is that we cannot get contractors to undertake the building of these houses in the backward areas, where site development is difficult and where the terrain is difficult.

Mr. O'Donnell

I think you should try direct labour and see how you get on.

Mr. J. Brennan

If we had a little more flexibility from the Department, there would be no need to embark on such a scheme.

Mr. O'Donnell

We are trying to save as much money as we can.

Mr. J. Brennan

Direct labour may not always be such a great success.

Mr. O'Donnell

I am merely suggesting that you try it.

Mr. J. Brennan

We tried it before in connection with ordinary cottages.

With regard to the rather vexed question of autobahnen for plutocrats, I am disappointed that the Minister has not set down more for county roads. Somewhere recently I saw a statement by the Minister for Agriculture that he had thought out a different scheme. He contended that if the bends were left on the main roads, particularly, we would have fewer accidents and that, by opening up these roads and making traffic movement faster, we tended to increase the number of accidents. I do know that sometimes the exceedingly had bend is not the place where most accidents occur. The slight curve and the obtuse angle is the place where the driver is not inclined to slow down in his approach. The very bad bends, such as are in the Rosses and along the Gweebarra, are the places where the least accidents occur.

In the old days, when the farmers' iron shod carts went along the county roads, they ground in the loose stones and it was a good enough job to spread loose material. That is not happening nowadays. When loose material is put on the roads, it remains there until the turf lorries and the farmers' own cars come along and shoot it into the side of the roads. It does not remain on the road to make a surface. If county roads are to be made now, as we would like them to be made, steam rolling is absolutely essential. I am afraid that much of the material used on the roads without steamrolling is wasted to a great extent. Some engineers are trying to use a pressure material for a binding, but the suitable type of material is not always available. Local authorities will have to look forward and do more in the way of permanently improving the surface of the county roads. The only way to do that is by getting more money for the county roads from the Central Fund. We were hoping and I personally was one of those who was advocating—and I think it is completely contrary to the advice of the engineering sections of the Department of Local Government —that we would ease off on the main roads for a few years and have the money being used thereon diverted to county roads. Now the Minister has permitted the Minister for Finance to put his arm into the Road Fund to the extent of £500,000.

Mr. O'Donnell

But has increased by £200,000 the allocation for county road grants this year.

Mr. Kennedy

And the wages went up.

Mr. Coogan

Do you want a standstill Order?

Mr. Kennedy

Let there be no red herrings.

Mr. J. Brennan

The increased allocation is barely sufficient to meet the increase in wages and, if wages were as high as they should be, it would not meet them at all.

Mr. James Tully

We hope the Deputies will increase them when they get back.

Mr. Kennedy

When the time comes.

Mr. Coogan

The cost of living is not so high so? The time has not come?

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Brennan is speaking on the Estimate. He should be allowed to do so without interruption.

Mr. J. Brennan

The increase of £200,000 would be barely sufficient to meet the increased cost of wages. Those who really know something about the wages of road workers and who are in a position to know will agree with me. I am sometimes amazed at the people who stand up in this House to make a case for road workers, who know nothing about road workers except to drive past them when they are working on the road. If the wages were a living wage under the present high cost of living, we would need another £500,000 to keep the same number in the same amount of employment. But we trudge along giving a bare minimum wage to the workers on the roads and at the same time clamouring to have more road work carried out. The only solution for that is more money and instead of the outlook for more money being good we find the Road Fund raided this year to the extent of £500,000. I have yet to hear the Secretary of the Rural Federation of Workers protesting in this House seriously against that.

Mr. James Tully

He will make his contribution when the time comes.

Mr. J. Brennan

I would expect more than a contribution from Deputy Tully on this matter. I would expect him to have led a deputation to this House three weeks ago.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister for Local Government is not responsible for that.

Mr. James Tully

What about the Deputy leading a deputation from the Donegal County Council?

Mr. J. Brennan

It is easy to talk about leading a deputation when the Deputy supports a Government that prevents the money being granted for the purpose for which I am seeking it.

Mr. O'Leary

What are the wage rates of the County Donegal road workers?

Mr. J. Brennan

We are not the lowest on the list. We have led you a dance though we are one of the poorest counties.

Mr. James Tully

No, you are not.

Mr. J. Brennan

I would not like to deprecate or belittle any of the Minister's work—I think he is just as earnest about his work as any of us and perhaps more earnest than some of his colleagues—nor would I like to suggest he did not pull his weight in the Cabinet when the credit squeeze came on. But I hope that next year we will not merely have the full amount of the Road Fund for the road workers but that the £500,000 used to tide over the emergency of this year will be restored to the fund. That is not hoping for too much. The impost of about £19,500,000 on local rates is a heavy burden. It is not merely an indication of the rising costs of local government but it is also an indication of the growing volume of work which is administered by local bodies to-day.

If one looks back on the history of local government in the old days of the Baronial Presentment Commissions, down to the days of the Poor Law Guardians, the district councils, the county councils, and the present managerial system, one would say the people of those days could hardly believe that local government would reach the pitch it has reached to-day. I do not think it is all so wrong, as some people would lead us to believe, because local autonomy, local government, is older than central government. In fact it is from local government that national government derives, and the day we lose local autonomy, we are moving far in the direction of the dictatorship, if one would put it that way. If local government is to be administered efficiently and with the approval of local people, if the confidence of the local electorate is to be reposed in the elected representatives, a more equitable system of producing the revenue required to finance the local body must be arrived at. That is the big task that must now be undertaken by any Local Government Minister who hopes to rise above the average of what one would call a reasonably good Minister.

Mr. Desmond

I can agree with Deputy Brennan on certain points and it is a good thing, seeing that we are discussing an Estimate which is of primary importance to the people in local areas and to the local authorities concerned. There are, however, some points on which I cannot agree with Deputy Brennan. I cannot agree with him when he says that the Minister has always a convenient scapegoat in his predecessor. That may be correct from the viewpoint of Deputy Brennan but, as far as I am aware, the discussion on this Estimate was proceeding on a fairly even keel until the Minister's predecessor entered the fray. He cast his net upon water that was not troubled but by the time he had concluded it was very much troubled. He drew attention to what he considered was the backward tendency in our attitude to local government. It would be unfair not to remind Deputy Smith of a few items of his own past misbehaviour——

Mr. J. Brennan

As a Minister?

Mr. Desmond

We will leave the private side out. Any of us would not get through that. Deputy Smith was apparently very worried about the financial side. He apparently believes that the policy now is a go-slow one. It is only a few years ago, when Deputy Smith was himself Minister, that we had the difficulty, as members of the Opposition, that any suggestion we might offer in the way of constructive criticism was the subject of admonishment by Deputy Smith. He admonished us most severely because we had a different line of approach from his to the various problems.

One of the most grievous political sins of the then Minister for Local Government was his attitude and the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Government to the supplementary housing grants. I remember trying to discuss the question and drawing attention to the fact that, while the inter-Party Government were in office between 1948 and 1951, legislation was introduced to give benefits to people through supplementary housing grants. Deputy Smith suggested that the only way the grants could succeed was by making it harder for applicants to secure the grants and by applying a rigorous means test. That automatically meant that the income of applicants could not exceed about £4 a week. The maximum income they could have in order to qualify would be £320 a year. Surely that legislation, applying that means test, was anything but an advance in local government.

If we criticised that legislation, we did so in the belief that the introduction of such a measure meant less housing. It ill-becomes an ex-Minister, a member of the House, to object to a policy at the present time solely because, as he says, he has had time to reflect on what he would do, if he were in office. I am more interested in what he has done and the mistakes he has made, particularly through his interference with the legislation in relation to supplementary housing grants. The Minister referred to the whole problem dealing with housing legislation and said that he intends to introduce new legislation within a few weeks. I intended mentioning this, because I believe such legislation does not come before its time. March 31st has long gone by and it is about time we knew where we stood.

One of the points which should be closely considered in relation to the attitude of Deputy Smith and Deputy J. Brennan is the direct labour building of houses. Do we all not remember the prominence given in certain journals in this country to this matter when Deputy Smith, as Minister for Local Government, made it quite clear that, unless direct labour were much cheaper than the contract system, he would not advocate building by direct labour by local authorities? Apparently, even if it worked out 50-50, even if direct labour completed on an even keel with the contract system, Deputy Smith made it clear he would not accept it, notwithstanding the fact that people who had experience of it as members of local authorities knew that houses built by direct labour were far better finished, that far better material was put into them, and that, in many instances, they were better constructed. For that reason alone, I cannot agree with the approach of Deputy Smith to this Estimate.

Deputy Smith, in a lonesome kind of way, drew attention to the tragedy in relation to the finances which he said were not there. I shall not enter the fray in relation to Dublin; there are enough Dublin Deputies to deal with the Dublin side. However, I will take Deputy Smith up on this: when he was Minister for Local Government, he refused to sanction a housing scheme in Carrigaline. His reason at the time was that the site was unsuitable. Later, the most senior officer in the Department of Local Government considered it an excellent site, so good that there are 25 or 26 houses built and occupied on it now.

It is well to know that the money was made available for the building of these houses, even though we had to wait for the term of the present Minister. I do not wish to relate my remarks any further to the suggestions of Deputy Smith, except in regard to one item to which I shall make reference later. Many members have spoken at great length in relation to the question of our roads, whether they be main or county roads. I will have very little to say in relation to them, for the reason that I believe that whatever comments I have to make would be more appropriately made on the Estimate for the Department of Justice, because I am convinced that if we had roads from here to Cork in a dead straight line, it still would not help us, because of the blackguardism of certain people using the roads.

Deputy J. Brennan spoke of the raid on the Road Fund. We are aware that while a reduction has been made in regard to the main roads, increases, in many instances, have been given in respect of the county roads. That, in my opinion —and I am sure it must be the opinion of Deputies on all sides —will be money well spent. In fact, some of the money spent on main roads could be much better utilised on the county roads. Deputy Brennan remarked that, while there has been an increased allocation for county roads, it has been eliminated because of increased wages. I do not want to twist the words of Deputy Brennan by saying that he objects to increased wages, but I think it is incumbent on me to draw particular attention to the fact that, in Cork, we will not suffer from less employment on the roads because we realised that, if we were to increase the men's wages, we must provide for that increase in our estimate. We made that provision and, therefore, there will not be less employment.

I should like to say to the Minister that he should closely examine the problem in relation to any requests that may come from many county councils for the purchase of machinery. I am in favour of machinery. It has its uses, but too much machinery can have its abuses as well. I am convinced that in many parts of the country we have gone machine mad. I am also convinced that if we were to consider the overall cost, plus interest charges, maintenance, utilisation and so forth—I am not speaking now of the ordinary machinery in day-to-day use by county councils but rather of the colossal sums expended on certain types of machinery—I think there would be a case to be closely examined in the Department to see if, in the long run, we are spending money in a sensible way or merely spending money without getting what we should ultimately get, namely, a genuine return.

When dealing with other Estimates here we have always, in all Parties, considered the desirability of protection for Irish industry. It has been put to the people and accepted by them that, if necessary, it would be our duty from a national viewpoint to pay a little more for the Irish-manufactured goods because that policy keeps people in employment. Surely, if such an approach is a common-sense one we should be entitled also to say that, in relation to road machinery, we must also take into consideration the problem of unemployment if machinery is to replace men to a certain degree. In many parts of rural Ireland we realise there is no employment for many men except either in agriculture or on the roads. In numerous areas many men depend for their livelihood on their earnings from road work. I would ask the Minister to examine the matter closely from this point of view bearing in mind that there is no alternative employment available in these areas. If we are going to become machine-mad and spend huge sums for the purchase of these machines, it will automatically mean, ultimately, more unemployment for many men. Unfortunately, for these men, it will mean home assistance, because if there is no alternative employment and if their stamps are exhausted, they will not be eligible for unemployment benefit and will have to resort to home assistance which will itself have to come out of the rates.

I, therefore, believe it incumbent on us, not only to state the case but also to ask the Minister to examine the position as to whether there may be a danger in many counties of outstepping ourselves in the desire to have something better than they have in the other counties where county council machinery is concerned.

I would like to mention one particular point on which, if my memory serves me right, I had a little clash with the Minister not so long after he had been appointed Minister for Local Government. I must say that the problem is still unattended to, but I would hope that the Minister will consider this and look at it more closely. I believe it does deserve that consideration. The point is that we should switch back to the system put into operation by the late Minister for Local Government, who knew everything about local government, the late Deputy T.J. Murphy, God rest his soul. He found it necessary to adopt an alternative system to that which had been in operation prior to 1948 in regard to housing grants. Prior to that, everyone who wished to avail of a housing grant had to write to the Custom House and eventually, after many delays, that person got forms which he had to fill in and send back again. As I say, the Minister for Local Government in the 1948 period, the late Deputy Murphy, realised that a sensible approach to the matter was to take the power from the Custom House and give it to the local authority so that the applicants could apply to the local authorities. That meant, not alone the speeding up of the applications, but also more satisfaction among applicants for supplementary grants.

In 1951 or so, officials from the Custom House were sent down by the Minister for Local Government, at that time Deputy Smith, and they brought back from every local authority to the Custom House the power of dealing with these applications for housing grants.

Mr. Kennedy

And rightly so. It was a complete failure.

Mr. Desmond

If the Deputy across the House admits it was a failure in his county, thanks be to God I can say that even the officials of the Custom House had to congratulate the young lady in the South Cork Board of Health Office who was in charge there. That gives the answer to any allegations that may have been made by Fianna Fáil members who want the power to continue in the Custom House. If, as the Deputy opposite would suggest, the local authorities had been a failure in that respect, I believe it would be the duty of the Minister for Local Government and his staff to find out why they failed in such a duty. I am not so sure that the local authorities have failed in it.

After all, we all know that the staffs in local authority offices, just as in the Custom House, are well educated people; there are no "duds" in these places, and I do not believe that that system which had been in operation between 1948 and 1951 was ever a failure, but was so described as a pretext for getting back to the Custom House the system which had been in operation prior to 1947. I believe the pre-1947 system should not have been in operation, and I would ask the Minister to ensure that we will revert to the system which had been so successful, at least where we are concerned in Cork. It is admitted, as I say, by the Minister and his Department that it was a success there, and I believe that the sooner we get back to that system the better it will be for applicants who are so long awaiting the results of their applications.

Some members mentioned—I think they were justified in doing so—the many delays in relation to sanction for various plans submitted by local authorities. Many of us will agree on this particular subject, and I fail to understand why so many delays occur in the Minister's Department in relations to sanction. After all, even in local authority offices—I can speak for one area, at least—the county architect has been appointed on the recommendations of the Appointments Commissions and surely we can assume that means he is a highly competent man, because there was plenty of competition against him. Nevertheless, every set of plans that he sends up to the Custom House is questioned. He is treated like a little boy going to school who has to answer questions on this, that and the other thing. The trouble is that months elapse before any satisfaction is obtained.

The Minister should realise that it is essential for him and his Department to understand that where competent officials are employed by local authorities, and where an application for sanction in relation to the building of houses or some other scheme is sent up to the Customs House, there should be no ups and downs or queries about this, that or the other. We are determined, despite what Deputy Smith may think in relation to housing, even though the housing problem may have eased up a bit, to keep on full steam ahead until the problem is completely wiped out. Sanction for housing should be speeded up in the Minister's Department.

There is one thorny question in relation to grants. Speaking candidly, I would be very pleased if the Minister could see his way to increase housing grants. It is time that was done. While the full grant of £275 is helpful, the increased cost of building must be considered and an increase in the grant would be most welcome to those who are anxious to build their own homes.

There is another aspect of this problem that requires consideration. It is the letting grants. The benefits of the housing grants are as nothing in comparison with the advantages afforded to people who build houses for letting. In the period 1948 to 1951 according to the legislation, a person "may be entitled" to £40, but the legislation did not compel a local authority to pay £40. The local authority were in the position of having to pay anything up to £40.

I am glad to say that a member of the Opposition, Deputy Corry, who was chairman of the board of health, and I agreed, at least on one thing. We failed to see why we should compel the ratepayers in general to pay £40 a year for ten years, making a total of £400, to people who built houses and let them at £3 5s. and £3 7s. 6d. a week. It was fantastic that, in 1951-52, Deputy Smith, as Minister for Local Government, tied up the legislation so stringently that, instead of the local authority being in a position to pay such people what the local authority considered they were entitled to—in some cases, where they were charging the unfortunate tenants £3 7s. 6d. a week rent, we gave them 1/- a year— they had a right of appeal and Deputy Smith was the Minister who decided that the local authority would have to foot the bill and pay them £40 a year for ten years, giving to every individual £400, although they were charging well over £3 a week rent for the houses. It is up to the Minister to introduce whatever legislation he may think desirable, but I consider it is a glaring injustice on the ratepayers that they should have to pay this exorbitant sum in respect of houses built for letting.

A few Deputies mentioned the problem in relation to purchase schemes. I do not have to go into that matter in detail, because at present the full information in relation to purchase schemes in South Cork has been submitted by the South Cork Board of Health to the Minister. Our problem is that, while we must offer a purchase scheme to the tenants of the newly built cottages, we cannot offer them a 50 years' purchase, because, if we did, we would lose the interest on the loans paid by the Department from the 35th to the 50th year. I would ask, therefore, that this matter be considered by the Minister. Until the position is clarified, we will not be in a position to offer to the tenants the right of purchase of the cottages which have been built over the last five or six years.

Another problem that confronts the local authority in Cork, and, probably, the local authorities in other counties, is the cost of payment for the sites acquired for housebuilding. There is probably very good reason to be extra careful in regard to the acquisition of sites, but there is also the danger of red tape stifling the whole procedure. When members of local authorities who are members of a site committee go around trying to secure land, they are very often confronted with a landowner who informs them that he is still awaiting payment for land acquired from him eight to ten years ago. The members of the local authority are puzzled as to what reply they will make to that.

The local authorities may place the money in the bank for safe keeping, to be given to the owner when he can prove title. In most cases, the payment of rates has been accepted from the person who was considered the owner for years back. The Minister should consider the possibility of easing this legal problem and, if possible, allow payment to be made to the rated occupier, providing the Department and the local authority are satisfied that the rated occupier has been in possession of the holding all his life. I do not want to dwell on this subject, but it is one of the problems that we find it very difficult to surmount. We do not blame landowners for complaining that they are still awaiting payment for land already acquired

Reference has been made to the problem that arises in connection with derelict sites and Deputy Esmonde spoke very clearly on this subject. The problem may be solved by the intervention of the Minister in relation to the question of increased valuation consequent on improvement of houses. The Minister should interest himself in this question. There are a large number of houses in towns and villages which, for a small sum, with a reconstruction grant, could be improved and made habitable, but the owners fear that, if they improve the houses, the valuation will automatically increase and they will be faced with higher rates. Ultimately, that problem must be tackled and the Minister should tackle it now, both in relation to the building of houses by local authorities and in relation to the removal of eyesores in the form of derelict sites.

Deputy Brennan mentioned one matter with which I heartily agree. I have drawn particular attention to it on the Estimate for the Department of Local Government annually and it is about time there was an end of excuses in regard to this matter. I refer to the codification of local government law. From 1948 up to the present time, irrespective of what Government was in power, there has been merely a token provision under this heading. We are still awaiting the codification that is vitally necessary for the officials of every local authority and for Deputies. Day after day and week after week, various problems arise for every one of us because of the lack of such codification. The Minister should realise that this should be the last year when merely a token sum is provided for this purpose. If this matter is not by now almost cleared up, then I hope that, within 12 months, there will be so much progress that we shall have no more token sums after this year.

Deputy Smith mentioned the question of finance. He had the impression that the Labour Party were now explaining in a half-hearted manner that housing should be slowed up. Nobody in the Labour Party ever said such a thing or will accept it. One of the main reasons why we are supporting this Government is the importance of attacking the housing problem. I believe I can say with all justification that the Labour Party gave to this country the most successful Minister for Local Government we have ever had since the Treaty, the late Deputy T.J. Murphy. Let everyone know that the day the Government decide on a policy of restriction in relation to the question of housing in this country, that day sees our severance with the Government.

I understand the necessity for officials of the Department of Local Government to go down the country and examine the housing problem, as some of them did recently in South Cork. I am convinced they are quite satisfied that everything is above board, as it were, and ship-shape, in relation to the number of houses we are building there and the programme we want to put into operation there. Let every local authority put up a case that can be examined. We are for that policy. However, let no member of the Opposition, no matter from what constituency he may come, think that he will get anywhere by making a speech in relation to housing that may, in itself, be far from the truth. Housing must go on and, so long as there is a demand for it, we consider, as an integral part of this Government, that that policy must be continued, particularly in the areas where we know the demand is justified and the necessity for building exists.

The Minister has travelled the Twenty-Six Counties. During the course of his travels, he has met officials of various county councils. I am sure as a sensible man, he has studied their suitability, their ability and everything else. Because I know the Minister, I believe he would be the first to say that these people are highly competent, that they give careful attention to their duties, and are satisfactory in every way. While it is essential, on the one hand, that the Minister and his Department should give the utmost co-operation to the members of local authorities, it is essential, on the other hand, that they give it to the staffs of the local authorities, too. Representing the staffs of the local authorities, we have an organisation known as the Local Government Officials' Union. Like every other Minister for Local Government, the present Minister realises the importance of a full sense of co-operation between the Department and these members of their organisation.

I wonder if the Minister is aware— and, if so, why should it be—that many of these men who have of necessity to come to Dublin so many times during the year to try to bring about a closer touch and harmony between the staffs of local authorities and the Department must sacrifice their time and, for every day they are absent from their job on such work, must take annual leave, while other people can come up to Dublin and spend many days here and have not to take that time out of their annual leave? If it goes for one side, it must go for the other side as well. Consider the position of an official who is a representative of his union. He has to sacrifice a day of his annual leave to come to the Department and the Minister. County managers, as members of an association, should also take the time out of their annual leave. Such, however, is not the case.

The county manager will come to the Minister and his officials time and time again to plot and arrange a policy that very often is completely at variance with the views of the members of the local authority. He will come to Dublin and he will not lose one hour out of his annual leave. It is about time something was done in relation to this problem. I believe in the desirability of a full sense of co-operation between a manager, his staff and the local representatives. It can be admirable. In a recent publication of this organisation, it was made quite clear that they would have to see not the Minister but a certain official in the Custom House. There is an old saying that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If members of the staff, representing their colleagues and doing the best they can for their members and the local authority, must lose a day's annual leave every time they come to the Custom House to see an official of the Department of Local Government, the same must apply to the county manager and, if it does not, we will follow it up further.

Seosamh Ó Cinnéide

Baineann an Meastachán seo le rialtas aitiúil, le beatha muintir na tíre agus le formhór na Teachtaí sa Tigh seo.

This Vote concerns the life of the majority of the people in the country and, to my mind, after the Estimate for the Department of Finance, it is the most important Vote to come before the House. As individuals and as citizens, we can evade taxation. We can give up smoking; we can take the pledge and not take a drink; and in many other ways we can evade taxation. However, when the rate collector knocks on the door and gives the demand note for the rates, there is no evading the paying of the rates. It is the one thing we all have to do.

This Vote enters into the life of every citizen and for that reason, after the Department of Finance, it is the most important Vote to be decided in the House. The burden of the rates is going steadily up each year. There was a movement in France recently which represented the small shopkeeper, the self-employed and the individual with the small acreage and it astonishes the European who reads the results of the election to see the huge vote they got. When I hear the Labour Party talking all the time about the privileged class and an organised class, I do not wonder that their numbers are so small and that they will remain so small.

Mr. O'Leary

The Deputy——

Mr. Kennedy

I will not be interrupted by the Deputy. He will not draw me off the case I am going to make. The ordinary citizen, whether he is on ten acres of land, in the small shop, whether he is the local harness maker, the local undertaker, or the self-employed carpenter, constitutes the majority in this country. Did the Labour Party ever examine, in their glib talk, representing the few hundred organised workers whose demand is insistent and unreasonable, the fact that the money they pay these people has to come out of the pockets of these citizens? The wiseacre of a Parliamentary Secretary who was brought up on theory and in a white collar may smile. He never lived amongst the people, amongst the small farmers——

Mr. O'Donovan

I was born in West Cork.

Mr. Kennedy

——such as the small farmers of County Westmeath living on a £20 valuation and under. The best statisticians in Government, having examined the position, computed that, on the best run farm in the country, the maximum yield for £1 valuation is £12 and when you multiply 20 by 12, you have an income of £240. That is the income of the majority of the families in this country.

We hear glib talk about increases. A minute ago, we heard an advocate of democracy. He advocated that the Local Government Officials' Union in coming to Dublin to parley with the Custom House for an increase in wages or something else, must get time off. They must be paid for that. In fact, there was a case in Mayo in the past six months where they put down their expenses in going to and from Dublin and eating in Dublin to get increases in their wages. It is no wonder that a book was written recently on bureaucracy and how it leads to the destruction of democratic rule in a country.

I was reading recently about Sorge, the greatest spy in modern history. He was associated with a number of spies in Japan who gave the game away to Russia. One of these spies was caught and made a confession before his execution in Japan. He gave his reason for turning communist—that all the organised professional people and all the organised workers neglected the ordinary citizen and looked for privilege after privilege, while the majority went to the wall. That was his reason for turning communist.

I am not justifying it, but we have a state of things here in which there is no realisation of the burden of the rates by the local authorities, caused in many cases by orders from the Custom House to do this, that and the other thing. Therefore, we should give considered thought to this Estimate for Local Government which shows an increase of £16,000. The personnel in the office, in spite of what Deputy Sweetman, the Minister for Finance said, has gone up by six. Where has the increase taken place? Is it in the housing department, where there is a slowing up?

In County Westmeath, recently, in the month of August, we applied for sanction for £60,000 under the small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts, to give out loans. There was no increase in the bank rate then. We got the necessary mortgage papers down in a short time from the Custom House. They were duly signed and sent back to the Custom House on 23rd September and we were told, in the month of February, that the rate of interest had gone up and that the rate charged to the person building the house under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts must go up. In the interim, we gave out the loans at the old rate. We have to bear the loss.

Mr. O'Donovan

It will not break the Deputy.

Mr. Kennedy

Will it not? Every mickle makes a muckle.

Mr. O'Donovan

That particular mickle will not make a muckle.

Mr. Kennedy

I want to tell this great economist and financial expert who told us we did not want any extra money—that we had money in the bank although the Minister for Finance put on £8,000,000—that it will break us. These things will break the Government——

Mr. O'Donovan

The Deputy will not make that mole into a mountain.

Mr. Kennedy

The Parliamentary Secretary has a lot to learn in public life. He comes here with his theory, having a cushioned job in the university. If he had to live amongst the people, he would learn a lot. They gave the Parliamentary Secretary's oratory a lesson in Leix-Offaly.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. Kennedy

If I were not interrupted, I would go on.

Mr. O'Donovan

The Deputy talks about Sorge——

Mr. Kennedy

I heard many theses from the Parliamentary Secretary which were not very edifying. The great expert and Government discovery should leave me alone and remember his position in this House. It is not playing the jack-in-the-box he should be.

Mr. O'Leary

The ex-Parliamentary Secretary——

Mr. Kennedy

Let the Deputy keep quiet, too. I was developing the point that, in housing, there are six extra officials and there is no speed up in the sanction of grants and there is no speed up in the inspections. I should like to know from the Minister the justification for the increase in his staff. We would like him to relate it to the desire of the Minister for Finance to cut his staff. In how far is this related to recruitment for the Civil Service? Have we the same intake year after year in the Department of Local Government as we had before? Is there any further slowing down in collaboration with the Department of Finance in the recruitment every year? These are matters that needed answering.

Deputy Desmond dealt with the period 1948 to 1951. We are sick and tired of hearing that. The man who set housing going in this country now occupies the most exalted position in the State. He was Minister for Local Government here, and before his advent as Minister for Local Government, from before the Great War, there was not a rural house built in this country.

Mr. Rooney

That is a silly statement to make.

Mr. Kennedy

That is the truth. There was not one rural house built before the time of Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh.

Captain Giles

We had to build up the country, the bridges and everything.

Mr. Kennedy

There was not one rural house built in the country before the advent of Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh as Minister for Local Government. From that to the period in 1940, when the war stopped it, the country was dotted with houses, and they are a memorial for all time to his work. Anyone who succeeded him was only carrying out the programme he initiated and laid down. It was interrupted during the war when material could not be got. This thing of lauding the period from 1948 to 1951 as a period of local government is all moonshine.

Deputy Smith has been criticised here by the same democratic Deputy, Deputy Desmond, about the means test in the housing grants. What happened the first supplementary grant when there was no means test? I will speak for my own constituency, which I know, and will bet a shilling to a button that the same happened in Cork. The wealthy landlord, the wealthy possessor of a big farm, got into his limousine and went into the county council with his solicitor, and before the poor man had time to turn round he had his application in, and in one four months the £50,000 was used up for these gents. Some of them boasted openly in the fairs of Westmeath "I gave my son that to get a car," or "someone else belonging to me went to the South of France on a holiday." That is the liberty, equality and fraternity, we got from labour. But when we came in we made it applicable to the poor man, to the man with the small wage or on £20 valuation, to the man who needed it. In that way we made it stretch and did not let it be burned up in a few months by people to whom it was only pin money and who did not need it.

Mr. O'Leary

You are chancing your arm all right.

Mr. Rooney

You are chancing your arm.

Mr. Kennedy

It is nothing to Deputy Rooney, but I cannot help stating the truth. Then we come to the road grants. Deputy Smith has dealt with this whole matter in very much detail. I do not know of anything that gives more employment than road work, and here this year this Government takes from the Minister for Local Government £500,000—five weeks' work for 10,000 men at the time they will most need it, around the winter months. There is nothing facing them this winter as a result of that but unemployment in every county. There are no factories in many of the rural areas, and they look to road work as a means of existence.

Deputy Smith in the last period of the Fianna Fáil Government committed our Government to the principle that every yield from the Road Fund would go into the roads. That is done away with now, and we hear discussed the relative merits of county roads and main roads. In my own county, which is not nearly the biggest county, but a small county which does not justify a separate constituency, there are 900 miles of county road to be made. At the present rate of wages and grants, it will take 90 years to make them, because all we make is ten or 12 miles of road a year. We are told about the £200,000 increase, but, as has been pointed out by other speakers, that will be absorbed by wages.

We contend that the child going to school in County Westmeath, and its parents going to Mass are entitled to as good roads as children and parents in Dublin or any other city. The child in Dublin walks out to go to school and steps on a cement or tarmacadam road, but the child in Westmeath steps into a puddle of water six months of the year. Surely he is entitled to the same amenities as the other child. If ever there was justification for the amortisation of a fund, that fund should be the Road Fund. It should be pinned down to the increased yield from motor taxation, and, goodness knows, the people who pay in taxation on petrol and tyres and parts, taxation which does not go into the Road Fund and which is a big portion of revenue, are entitled at least to get the amount of the Road Fund back to give them as good roads as they have in the towns and cities. There was nothing in the Government programme to say that they were going to take away from the Road Fund. We pointed out to the people, and they did not believe it, that they would raid the Road Fund. They raided the Road Fund before.

Mr. O'Leary

You know that is not true.

Mr. Kennedy

Of course it is true. The Deputy ought to know the value of words. The Road Fund was raided to the tune of £500,000.

Mr. O'Leary

Keep saying that and the people will believe you.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy O'Leary should cease interrupting.

Mr. Kennedy

One of the Deputies in the course of this debate referred to the appointment of rate collectors and rent collectors. I have nothing to say to the system of appointment, but I do say that there should be a salary basis and not a percentage basis, irrespective of the number of houses— salaries, say, with increments and pensionable rights. I think that there is provision for that, but it should be emphasised and enforced.

In regard to purchase schemes for houses, I think we have gone far enough as far as rural cottages are concerned. I am very glad that the people in the Custom House have not got a scheme, and I hope they do not get one, for the recent houses for the time being. There are a great number of people without proper housing in my county, and we have sold a lot of cottages under the purchase schemes, running into a couple of thousand. Those cottages are being sold with the consent of the council. A nominal sum passes, but we know, though we cannot prove it in a court of law, that instead of a nominal sum of £50 or £60, £300 or £400 has been passing into the hands of these people.

I know one case where the individual went to live in a condemned house after selling the purchased cottage. If purchase goes on too rapidly, and more than overtakes the replacement of houses, you will have the same problem all over again. As far as the five, six or seven schemes in County Westmeath are concerned, I hope there will never be a purchase scheme for the next 50 years, because, if there is, we will have no houses for the genuine labouring man. There is more trafficking in these houses than we would like and that trafficking will increase.

Much has been said about the relative merits of main and county roads, though possibly it is not very pertinent to this debate to develop that matter now, owing to the cut in the Road Fund. Last year, I was in a small European Country, Denmark, and I noticed outside the towns there a path for cyclists and pedestrians. Mark you, that is very desirable. On the main road out by Chapelizod, there is a tramline and I think that could make the beginning of such a venture here. It is used at the moment by campers and I think it could be developed into a cycle track. That would make for greater safety on our roads. Anyone using a motor car knows that one of the main causes of accidents is a cyclist, particularly at night without a red light, coming out suddenly before a car when another car is approaching. Very often accidents occur in those circumstances. Now this might possibly be a long-term policy project. Possibly it may never be completed. But it would be very desirable if we had such a path developed for cyclists and pedestrians. It would help to reduce the number of casualties on our roads.

There is another matter I should like to raise in connection with main roads. We did an excellent job of work on the road from Kilbeggan half way to Tyrrellspass. I do not know why that scheme should be abandoned with one half of the road left unfinished. Traffic is increasing on that road. It carries all the heavy traffic from the West. I do not believe we have yet reached peak-point at all, so far as traffic is concerned. Our roads will need to be made wider and wider to carry this increasing traffic. I do not believe in the present policy of taking over a piece of land and not using it. I do not believe it should be given back to the farmer. I think that piece of land should be planted. It is dangerous to regiment the motorist on too narrow lines, either where the road is dead straight or where it twists. There should be some break in the landscape because, if there is not, the safety of other road users is imperilled. Where there is a break, because trees have been planted, or for some other reason, the psychological reaction will make for greater road safety. The planting of trees in such areas should be encouraged by the Department of Local Government.

In the course of this debate, we intervened, perhaps wrongly, and we were accused of talking about standstill Orders in wages. What we want in this country is a standstill Order on prices. If we had that our wage problem would solve itself very quickly. In conclusion, there is one thing which stands to the credit of Deputy Smith, the Minister's predecessor; that is his fight for the roads in rural Ireland and his application of the full yield of the Road Fund to the country roads in general. This House should unite in the coming year to ensure that the fund which is collected from all the people using the roads, whether they be farmers using farm machinery, motorists or autocyclists, should be devoted to making our roads at least as good as roads elsewhere in Europe.

Mr. R. Barry

On the debate for the Estimate for the Department of Local Government, much can be said and much useful criticism can be offered to the Minister, irrespective of who he may be. I want to refer first of all to Deputy Kennedy's concluding remarks wherein he complimented the ex-Minister for Local Government, Deputy Smith, on his approach to the road problem. Many Deputies have already raised this matter, but I think it bears repetition. Indeed, the more we repeat it, the better it will be for the country: the Minister and his Department should turn their eyes more to the county road problem and forget about major improvements on the trunk roads.

I do not know if the Minister has been in Cork City or county of late, but I want to instance a case now where, last year, an improvement was effected in a dangerous turn. That was on the road between Fermoy and Cork City. A good job was done. Everyone who travelled the road thought it was a good job, a bit too good perhaps when they came out off the by-roads, having travelled over pot-holes and so forth. Having improved that corner last year, they started this year to undo a lot of the good work they did last year by taking in another three-quarters of an acre of arable land to give a little better vision on that corner. Deputies should bring such extravagant "goings-on" to the notice of the Minister for Local Government.

That is not an isolated case, but I mention it because it is a glaring example of the way in which money is being wasted on these major road improvements. Rural Deputies know what people have to contend with living along the by-roads adjacent to our main roads. The Minister has given an earnest of his intention to put more money into the by-roads, but I am not at all satisfied that that lead is being followed from a financial point of view. The only way in which effect can be given to these proposals is by directing the money into the by-roads rather than into the county roads.

The Local Authorities (Works) Act was an excellent Act. I believe—I mentioned this on the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture—that there should be more cohesion between the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Local Government in relation to the Local Authorities (Works) Act. If the Department of Local Government directed more of its attention and more of its funds to the implementation of that Act, the rehabilitation project, which we all believe is good for the country, could more easily be carried out. The problem is that there are many rivers which could be drained under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. If they were drained, the adjoining lands could then he reclaimed under the land rehabilitation project; but the rivers are not being drained at the moment because the Department of Local Government will not sanction the schemes. This Act brought relief beyond measure to small farmers, but much more effective use could be made of it, if my proposal were accepted.

I join with my colleague, Deputy Desmond, in appealing to the Minister and his Department to speed up the sanction of tenders, and so forth, for housing schemes and sanitary schemes. It is rather annoying for members of local authorities to have to ask at different meetings of the local authority if there is any account of a particular scheme and to be told month after month that it is pigeonholed in the Custom House in Dublin. Members of local authorities in this House should appeal to the Minister and his Department to expedite the sending out of sanction for those schemes.

We had experience recently in Cork County Council in regard to the arbitration awards for land taken for the purpose of building houses and cottages. It took long enough to get the arbitrator to sit on these awards, but, when he had done so, it was nearly another 12 months before we got the decision of the arbitrator. I do not know whether or not the Minister is directly concerned in this, but I think it is his business and the business of his Department to make the results of these arbitration courts known at least within a reasonable time of the sitting of the court. People whose land has been taken from them feel that, if they had withheld their rates, they would be told very soon that the rates were overdue and that they had to pay. If we, on the other hand, demand something from them, then let us give back something to them with the same promptness we demand ourselves.

With regard to roads, I do not know if this comes within the ambit of this debate, but I feel that a certain Sunday newspaper should be congratulated on its appeal for a road safety programme. I think that all of us in public life should add our voices in asking for a little more care on the roads. That little bit of care and caution, which we can all give so easily, might be the means of saving many lives.

I do not intend to go into this Estimate in any detail, but I have mentioned two or three points which, I believe, deserve the attention of the Minister and his Department. The only thing I would say in conclusion is that we should get a little more speed up in that Department. The suggestion that county councils could do a lot of work also deserves to be considered by the Minister. The practice of sending up proposals from local authorities to the Custom House and having them come back again for information can only be described by any reasonable person as a delaying action. Much of that work could be done by the local authorities themselves and I would appeal to the Minister to examine that possibility. It would also be an effort at decentralisation. It would help in speeding up the work and it would probably keep many people out of the city and, much as we may like the city, I think many of them would be better off in the country.

Mr. O'Leary

It is rather strange that the mover of the motion to refer back this Estimate is not the ex-Minister for Local Government. To my mind, the ruination of local government in this country was brought about by the Fianna Fáil Government when they introduced the County Management Act and put it into force in 1942.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Legislation may not be discussed on the Estimate.

Mr. O'Leary

That was the ruination of local authorities, because all their powers were taken away from them. That was the cause of the increase in the rates.

Mr. Allen

The Deputy voted for an Act the other day.

Mr. O'Leary

I never voted for the County Management Act. The Labour Party never did that. Deputy Kennedy attacked the Labour Party here. I thought his contribution was very poor, from an ex-Parliamentary Secretary. He said the Labour Party did not want direct labour. He gave all the praise for the housing drive to the President and former Minister for Local Government, Mr. Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh. In 1948, when the first inter-Party Government was set up, for the first time in the history of this country, a Labour man, with experience of local authorities in his native County Cork, started a housing drive by direct labour throughout the Twenty-Six Counties; and more houses were built during that time than for the 16 years of Fianna Fáil rule.

This Estimate is the most important one for members of local authorities. There is a good number of members of local authorities in the Dáil, but I find that members of local authorities here speak with two minds. They criticise the Minister for Local Government and his Department in the House, but they adopt a different attitude in their respective local authorities. I always believe that the more money we put up in the local authority, the more grants we get from the Central Fund; but that is not the policy of the members of Fianna Fáil on Wexford County Council. We find that to-day they do not want houses, they do not want roads, they do not want anything done. They tell us the rates are too high and we cannot afford it. Deputy Kennedy spoke of 70,000 small farmers in Westmeath——

Mr. Kennedy

7,000.

Mr. O'Leary

7,000—but he does not want the local authority to build houses for these people. I always understand that local authorities build houses for the working class, and the small farmers can get grants and loans and build their own houses. I do not know why he brought in that.

There is no use saying at present that there are sufficient houses in the country. That is not so, in either the city or the rural areas. Every member of a local authority knows that when a house goes up in a rural or urban area, there are 50 or 60 applicants for it, agricultural labourers and so on. Then we are told that the housing drive is coming to an end. The person who says that is not in touch with the people——

Mr. Allen

The Minister said that.

Mr. O'Leary

——because there is a demand for houses and there always will be. If you could get direct labour schemes going, instead of trying to play with contractors, houses could be built cheaper, because, naturally, the contractor is looking for a big profit——

Mr. P. Brennan

We cannot do it in Wicklow where direct labour was initiated.

Mr. O'Leary

It is the fault of somebody. You have been doing it in Wicklow for years.

Mr. P. Brennan

It is a failure there now.

Mr. O'Leary

If it is, it is the fault of somebody.

Mr. Allen

Fianna Fáil and the Irish Press?

Mr. O'Leary

Yes.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order!

Mr. O'Leary

We are told that the rates have gone up. We know that, but why have they gone up? Because we had to honour the award to employees of local authorities and because we had to meet the provisions of the Health Act. That is why the rates have gone up. These are the things that the people in the Fianna Fáil Benches are evading.

I have been a member of a local authority for over 20 years and I have seen Governments change and chairmen and Parties change. I find that one section of a council does not want anything done when "Dev" is not in power. They are all for slowing up. I can criticise the Custom House as much as any other Deputy for delays in sanctioning proposals. I know of schemes that have been held up for months. Anyone who is a member of a local authority knows that we have difficulties and they will know that the delay in building some houses is because there is not title to go in on the land. I defy any Deputy in the Fianna Fáil Party to deny that. There are many cases where people have not taken out title and where the county council cannot go in until they get title.

Although we have our freedom, we have not got the authority to acquire derelict sites which may belong to some landlord in Britain. These people look for their pound of flesh before they give up their derelict sites. There was a mistake made many years ago when ground landlordism should have been got rid of. In Enniscorthy alone we had to pay £200 for derelict sites.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy will get an opportunity of dealing with that matter on another occasion.

Mr. O'Leary

The right time to deal with it is when the Minister for Local Government is here. If the ground landlords had been put out, instead of dealing with the land annuities, a good job would have been done for this country.

Mr. O'Donnell

There is an odd one of them in this House.

Mr. O'Leary

Deputy Kennedy and the Deputy from Donegal spoke about the wages of our road workers. The place to talk about that is in the local authority itself. It is the local authorities that deal with the wages of the road workers and the quarry workers. Yesterday evening, in my own area, notice was given to the employees of two quarries. I went to the county engineer and he told me that it was the first he had heard of it. I want the Minister to take up that matter immediately and to find out what is behind all that. The county engineer knew nothing about it but the men are still under notice. I want to know what is happening.

Mr. O'Donnell

I was through Enniscorthy to-day but the hedges were so high I could not even see the quarries.

Mr. O'Leary

I saw the Minister passing but he passed me very quickly. I believe that the purchase scheme for the cottages is a very good scheme. Every man should have a chance to purchase his own house because it gives him an interest in his house. The cheapest houses in this country were built by the British for 8d. a week. They are still standing throughout the country.

Mr. Allen

What were the wages per day paid to the people?

Mr. O'Leary

The houses were built. There is no use in saying that Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh built them all. We know the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party with regard to the day's pay.

Mr. Allen

They gave more than the British.

Mr. O'Leary

Deputy MacEntee would not sanction 2d. a day for the Tipperary workers. We had a Fianna Fáil Government for 16 years and their Minister for Local Government did nothing but build roads for C.I.E. It is only since the change of Government that the county roads, about which Deputy Kennedy was crying, had more money spent on them. All down through the years it was a question of money for the road from Dublin to Waterford and that from Cork to Dublin. The Government were making roads for C.I.E. Everyone welcomed the change. I think that the country roads should be made passable for the man who is walking and the man on a bicycle. The person in a motor car does not mind a bad road. He has got tyres for getting over it.

Mr. Kennedy

The tyres get the works.

Mr. O'Leary

The man in the motor car gets over the bad roads better than the man with the bad boots or the young child who has to walk four miles to school. I do not want to see the Road Fund raided but I want to see the money going back into the roads. We are all paying taxes for our motor cars and we want to see our roads properly maintained. Deputy Kennedy mentioned several times during the Minister's absence that he had raided the Road Fund. I suppose the Deputy did so in the belief that if he said it often enough people would believe him.

Mr. O'Donnell

He wanted to take off the corners with what we took out of it.

Mr. Kennedy

I said that the Minister for Finance raided the Road Fund.

Mr. O'Leary

I am also glad to see that the pension scheme for road workers has been amended. That action was long overdue. That was a bad Act and we are now trying to improve on it for the sake of the road men. That amendment in the Act is welcome to every worker under a local authority.

A number of things could be mentioned on this Estimate. This is my thirteenth time to speak on it so that my contribution has now almost become a hardy annual. There are many things wrong in local government. Every member of a local authority knows that but one has to be a member of a local authority to know what is wrong. A person who is not a member of a local authority knows nothing about the problems with which these bodies are faced.

The housing needs are still there, no matter what anybody says about them. Houses are needed in the rural areas, in the villages and towns and in the City of Dublin itself. Money spent on building houses is money well spent. Our local authorities are becoming the biggest landlords in most towns because now they own the most houses. However, we should try to build cheaper houses.

I advocated, on several occasions, that we should leave out the bathroom in certain schemes and then we could sell the houses at a cheaper rate. The bathrooms are running up the cost of building houses. There are thousands of people living in slums who have not got lavatories or a water supply. They would be glad to get a house with toilets and water and forget about the bathroom. We have been told that it costs £150 to put a bathroom in a house. This amounts to a considerable figure when the housing scheme is finished and that is the cause of the high rent of certain houses. I believe that the rent of houses for agricultural labourers and forestry workers has come to its peak to-day at 6/- out of small wages.

Another problem that has to be dealt with is that of electric light which we all want to see provided in the rural areas. I do not know whether the Minister for Local Government can do anything in this matter but the two months' bill for electricity is a heavy one. Six shillings a week for a cottage is also a large sum out of £4 a week and any further expense would be a hardship on these people. Perhaps some other system could be adopted in order to lessen this hardship.

No one will grumble, I am sure, no matter how much money is spent on housing and roads. The ratepayers in my own area do not mind paying rates, but they do object to having bad roads to travel over in view of the high rates they pay. It is time that more attention was paid by the officials in the Custom House to the schemes which are submitted to them so that those schemes will not be delayed. Of course there is a certain amount of capital to be made out of that. There are certain people making capital out of the delays, but delays have always been there no matter what Government was in power. The same officials are there, and it is the Minister's duty to see that, when housing schemes and other improvement schemes are sent up to the Department, the local authorities will get the authority to proceed with the work as quickly as possible. We must give credit to the last inter-Party Government for having brought our tradesmen back to this country to build houses for our people. When they went out of power in 1951 and when Fianna Fáil came back they put the brake on housing and the men had to go away again. Delays occurred in relation to schemes in my own area. I might say that sometimes there were deliberate. Probably an official was told: "Take your time." Now that is good tactically, of course, for the Opposition.

We must do our utmost to see that housing is provided for the people, to see that schools are erected and good roads constructed. We will not be here in another 50 years. Many Deputies have passed away since this House was formed. The same thing goes on day in and day out; the same speeches are being made here year after year. I want to see progress. Above all I want to see housing for the people. That must come first, because you will have no country unless you have housing and we have not sufficient decent housing accommodation in the city or in the country.

Take the case of Dublin. In spite of all the talk we hear about houses being built for this man and the other man, it is very difficult to get a house here and they are badly needed. There are houses needed also in the rural areas to keep the agricultural workers at home. There are many men working in England who had to leave home because they could not get a house and had no prospects of geting married. If they had a house in which to settle down many of those men would be at home to-day working on farms. I appeal to the Minister to give every assistance to local authorities in connection with housing schemes and other schemes which are essential to the well-being of the nation.

Mr. Gilbride

It is not for the purpose of prolonging this discussion that I take part in the debate on this Estimate but to try to get some information for constituents of mine who are aggrieved by the present state of affairs. I have in my hand a letter from one of my constituents who built a house under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. He contracted with the building society for £2,000. The papers were signed and were in order and even the mortgage was executed with the Sligo Corporation at a rate of 5 per cent. He was quite agreeable to that. This man was earning a certain wage and he built what he could afford. Although the mortgage has been executed and all the deeds are in order, he now finds himself faced with a demand from the corporation for 5¾ per cent. I would like an assurance from the Minister that this man will get the house, to which I think he is justly entitled, at the rate for which he contracted.

Mr. O'Donnell

If that rate was set out in the mortgage and was a condition of the mortgage, he can only be charged at that rate.

Mr. Gilbride

That is the case. The information I have here is that the rate of 5 per cent. was set out in the mortgage and contracted for and all the deeds have been executed.

Mr. O'Donnell

I take it there was no provision for variation in the rate?

Mr. Gilbride

No.

Mr. O'Donnell

I think he should consult his solicitor.

Mr. Gilbride

The corporation, I understand, are depending on some section of the Act that allows the local authority to charge a half per cent.——

Mr. O'Donnell

A maximum of a half per cent.

Mr. Gilbride

——over the rate at which the money has been borrowed. But this man had the mortgage executed before that came into force and I would like an assurance from the Minister that that man will get his house at the rate he contracted for.

Mr. O'Donnell

Provided the facts are as stated by the Deputy.

Mr. Gilbride

The facts are as stated. I know all about this man and he would not tell me a lie about it. I feel he has a grievance because it would mean an extra burden of £10 a year on him, or £350 over a period of 35 years, which I think is very unfair.

Mr. O'Donnell

Provided a proper mortgage was executed and there was no variation clause, then I think he should consult his solicitor if he is being pressed for the higher rate.

Mr. Gilbride

I will convey that information to him and I am glad to have it. I would like if the Minister would deal with the different corporations on this question because there are other people involved as well. They may not have gone as far as this man and had the mortgage executed, but they signified their intention to the building society of building a house. I was listening to Deputy Smith here tonight stating that when he was Minister any man who had in writing signified in any way his intention to build a house was granted the old rate of interest. I would like the Minister, when he is replying to the debate, to make it clear to those people that he will give them the same facilities as were given by his predecessor.

It is not a small matter for a man to build his own house. For a man who puts £2,000 into a house, a rate of ½ per cent. means an additional £350 over the years. Very often he finds great difficulty in getting people to go surety for him. I will leave that point but I am glad to have the assurance of the Minister that such a man is quite safe.

There is one other point I want to bring to the notice of the Minister. In rural areas, houses are reconstructed and new houses built on very low valuations. I know of a man with a valuation of £13 on his land and a valuation of 15/- on his old house. The total valuation was £13 15s. He built a four-roomed bungalow-type house and he now finds himself saddled with a valuation of £4 10s. on the house.

Mr. O'Donnell

That is a matter for the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Gilbride

The point I want to make is that the country people do not understand. They regard one Minister the same as another. They believe there is collective responsibility between the two Ministers. It is the Minister for Local Government who deals with houses.

Mr. O'Donnell

The Deputy will explain that.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should not discuss on the Local Government Estimate a matter which pertains to the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Gilbride

I agree, but this excessive valuation is going to kill housing in the country. I hope the Chair will not think I am endeavouring to get in my say in this matter. I want only to point out that this excessive valuation will kill housing.

Mr. O'Donnell

It is going on all down the years.

Mr. Gilbride

Something ought to be done. If the man in question had been told that this excessive valuation would materialise, he would not build the house. A farmer with 24 acres and a valuation of £13 cannot bear a valuation of £4 10s. on a small house, having regard to the rates at the present time. They are practically £2 in the £1 and that means a rate of £9 on the house. For that reason, I think the Government should do something about the matter. I am sorry for bringing in this point. I know it is a matter for the Minister for Finance.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has succeeded in making his case.

Mr. Gilbride

The Minister should make a case with the Department of Finance.

Mr. O'Donnell

This has happened for the past 100 years and nobody made any effort to do anything.

Mr. Gilbride

Not on this scheme. I never came across a case where there was a rise from 15/- to £4 10s.

Mr. O'Donnell

That is the position down through the years.

Mr. Gilbride

This is my first experience and if something is not done about it, it will kill reconstruction and building. If I had to build a house and was told I was going to be rated so highly, I would not build the house.

I must say that we were very disappointed when the Minister, in introducing his Estimate, gave no indication of his intention to reduce the rates. The rates, as the Minister knows, have gone very high in practically every county in the western areas. Some of them are over £2 in the £1.

Mr. O'Donnell

I do not strike the rate. Councillors do that as members of the local authority.

Mr. Gilbride

I know they do.

Mr. O'Leary

They blame the Minister for everything.

Mr. Gilbride

I am asking the Minister to do something about it. I want him to fulfil the promises that were made.

Mr. O'Donnell

By whom?

Mr. Gilbride

By the Minister's colleagues, the Minister for Defence who spoke at Sligo town on the 30th March, 1954, and said that Fine Gael stood for a reduction in taxation. The Fine Gael Party stood for a reduction in local rates. Fine Gael, if returned to power, would take steps to see that the Central Fund would undertake responsibility for all future expenditure and for some of the existing expenditure which was at present being met by the local rates. The undertaking that the Central Fund would meet further expenditure has not been honoured in any way.

Mr. O'Donnell

We gave you extra money out of the Road Fund.

Mr. Gilbride

How much?

Mr. O'Donnell

I will give the Deputy the figures when I am replying.

Mr. Gilbride

It was £16,000. I was listening to the debate on the Budget and I think the Minister for Finance and his Parliamentary Secretary berated this side of the House for attempting to stop the Government from getting money. How much extra has the Minister for Local Government got out of this Budget?

Mr. O'Donnell

Nobody has got anything out of it yet.

Mr. Gilbride

The people would want to know that and I think the people are entitled to know it.

Mr. O'Donnell

They got nothing out of this year's Budget yet.

Mr. Gilbride

One of the arguments used to get the Budget passed was that money was needed by the different Departments. Now we find that there is not one shilling in the Minister's Department for the reduction of the rates although the promise was given that the Government would vote money out of the Central Fund for the relief of rates. It is needed because the rates at the present time have gone too high.

Deputy Desmond spoke about road workers' wages and told us what they did in Cork, but what was done in Cork was not done in other counties where there are Fine Gael majorities. All the road workers were granted increases, but no money was made available to implement the increases and we now find that the road workers are idle.

Mr. O'Donnell

I warned every local authority in that respect.

Mr. Gilbride

I do not want to make political capital out of this but never since I came into public life have I seen so many looking for work. The road workers' wages were increased and nothing was put in to meet that increase.

Mr. O'Donnell

The county councils should have done that.

Mr. Gilbride

We know that it is the Minister's colleagues that have done it.

Mr. O'Donnell

This is not the council chamber.

Mr. Gilbride

No, but we are talking to the boss of the council chamber. I was listening to the news at 1.30 on the radio and I was delighted to hear the Minister talking about libraries.

Mr. O'Donnell

I might compliment the people of Sligo on the magnificent library they have got there.

Mr. Gilbride

The Minister complimented the libraries and the county council on the work they were doing. I should like if he would furnish a copy of that speech to the representatives on Sligo County Council and stop them cutting down the estimate by £1,500.

Mr. O'Donnell

I thought the Deputy said the estimate was too high. Now he is trying to say it is too low.

Mr. Gilbride

I do not want the Minister saying one thing and in the next breath saying another. I want to point out that they could save in other ways if they wanted. I do not know how. The delay in dealing with schemes was mentioned by some Deputies. I thought no one was treated as we were until I heard Deputy Desmond talk about the way the Department and the local councils were playing ball with these schemes. In Sligo we set up a rural water scheme nearly two years ago and it is as far away from being completed to-day as then. I wish something could be done to speed up these schemes. If the schemes are to be given, let the Minister give them and if not, let him turn them down. We should not keep the people waiting years and years for these schemes.

Mr. O'Donnell

I think I know the scheme to which the Deputy refers.

Mr. Gilbride

It is going on a long time and the Minister ought to do something to speed it up. As Deputy Desmond, I think, said, this business of playing ball between the council and the Department with the people looking on is not a fair way of dealing with the matter, to say the least of it.

There is very little else I want to say, except that we are disappointed with the Minister for allowing the Road Fund to be raided to this extent, because, with the increase in wages, half the amount of work will not be done on the roads this year that was done last year. I think the Minister is well aware of that fact and he should have made a stand there. When the increase in taxation on motor cars went through this House some years ago, as Deputy Smith pointed out to-day, a demand was made on him that all that money would be used for roads and he on his part gave that guarantee, but he promptly said he could not give that guarantee for his successor or any other Government.

The Minister should have insisted that the money collected for that purpose, and some of the money collected from the present petrol tax should be reserved for the upkeep of the roads. I am not going to embarrass the Minister in any way, but I want to tell him quite plainly there is a great amount of unemployment among road workers. The Minister can see that for himself. Some of them are working half-time. In some cases, I have come across gangs of men and, where there used to be ten or 12, there are now only two, and when you speak to the county surveyor about it, the answer you get is: "We have not got the money." The Minister should deal with that situation, and go back to the Government or to the Minister for Finance, and at least get back that £500,000 that has been taken from him.

I am glad to have the assurance of the Minister that this man who had contracted for his house will get the grant at the old rate——

Mr. O'Donnell

Provided the facts are as stated.

Mr. Gilbride

If he gave me wrong facts, I cannot help it, but I am giving them to the Minister as I got them.

Mr. Barrett

I should like to associate myself with what Deputy Gilbride has said about family men who obtain loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. The Minister, I think, is aware of the situation in my constituency; he has quite a sheaf of correspondence on the matter pointing out the difficulties with which these people — generally young married couples—have to contend as a result of the change in the rate of interest. If these people felt and had reason to believe they had contracted at an ascertained and definite rate of interest, then I think, if there is red tape to be cut in this matter, the Minister would be justified in cutting it. He would be only doing justice to these unfortunate people who now through no fault of their own find themselves in difficulties, which to them are very grave difficulties, and which will repeat themselves each year in which these people have to meet the demands on their capital sums.

Last year, quite a number of people on all sides of the House indicated to the Minister their disquiet about what appeared to them to be a waste of funds on the main roads. When the Budget was being introduced here a fortnight ago, the Minister for Agriculture mentioned, in passing, that he, for one, did not at all agree with the expenditure on main roads as it is being carried out at the moment. I should like to tell the Minister, who was not in the House at the time, that there was a chorus of "Hear, hear!" from these benches in which we are sitting. Since last year, I do not think there has been any diminution whatever in expenditure on public roads. It is agreed that a certain amount of expenditure is necessary, but on any main road on which I have to travel, I think you will find evidence of colossal——

Mr. O'Donnell

Of course, the Deputy knows expenditure is down by £200,000 this year?

Mr. Barrett

It is not down on the roads on which I travel, or if it is down by £200,000, judging by the expenditure that is going on now, it could be down by £300,000 if county councils prudently conducted their business of the construction and repair of main roads.

Mr. O'Donnell

I quite agree.

Mr. Barrett

During the course of the debate, reference has been made to the type of house being provided for the working classes. Deputy Lynch, of Cork, last week said he felt that the houses that were being provided in Cork City were not an ideal type of house. I entirely agree with that attitude and I have been trying to impress on the Minister and his Department for a long time that the type of house which tenants in Cork want—and I know the minds of many of them on the matter—is the terrace type of house. I have been in, and I have been shown, bedrooms in working-class dwellings in Cork where you could comfortably fit two double-beds and a single bed. I do not believe that is the type of room which the working-class fathers and mothers want. Such rooms are difficult to heat, difficult to furnish and, above all, the construction of houses of this nature is so expensive that the economic rent is the type of rent which the working-class family finds hard to pay.

You find also in Cork that development costs of working-class schemes are large because we ourselves believe that the roads which are provided are too wide, that footpaths are too wide, and I would ask the Minister seriously to lend ear to those who speak the minds of the tenants. I feel that the Minister's advisers in this matter are out of touch with the tenants and out of touch with the type of house which is necessary. It may be true to say— I think it is true to say—that, architecturally and otherwise, they are ideal houses, but when we in Cork find ourselves faced with the position that we have 3,000 families still to house, we feel there is a condition of emergency appertaining in Cork which could best be met if we were satisfied to build the terrace type of house which would give comfortable, cosy and healthy conditions to those families who at the moment are living in tenements or slums.

I should also like to draw the Minister's attention to the signs which are on the main roads. Some uniformity should be reached among county councils and I think the Minister should take steps to lay down certain regulations under which roads could be posted with danger signs and signs of that nature, because you do find, driving from one county to another, there are different standards of danger. In one county, coming to quite a gradual bend, you will see a warning "Dangerous Corner" while, in the next county, when you are coming to a really dangerous corner, there will be no danger sign whatever.

I think there might be an extension of the Town Planning Acts to prevent hotels and licensed premises and others from putting up notices such as "Stop," which looks like danger signs and which engender in the minds of motorists a disregard for all notices that appear on the roads.

There is one thing in particular to which I should like to refer the Minister. In Cork City, there have been gravely disturbing rumours regarding larcenies from direct labour building schemes in the city and allegations that workmen engaged on direct labour schemes, while being paid by the corporation, actually left their work and went to help in the construction of other private buildings which were not part of the corporation scheme. Whether these rumours are correct or not, I do not know. I have been told by men who were working on the scheme and who are still working on the scheme that there is truth in these rumours.

When the Cork Corporation approached the situation, they asked their officials to make some inquiries and investigations into the matter, and we were surprised to find that the attitude of our officials appeared to be that it was in the hands of the Garda authorities and that, therefore, the officials of the Cork Corporation should not make any investigation into the allegations that quite a substantial portion of their property was the subject of larceny. The Cork Corporation set up a sub-committee to go into this matter and we found ourselves at one stage in the position that the city manager informed the corporation that he would not allow any of his officials to give any information to that sub-committee. He changed his mind at a subsequent stage. I am gravely disturbed, inasmuch as I feel that the allegations which are widespread in Cork were not investigated at the time they should have been investigated.

I am glad to know that the Minister has an interest in this matter and I would ask him to have it investigated as fully as possible, so that, at some stage, the people of Cork will be told whether there is any truth in these allegations or not, because I and other members of Cork Corporation and other public representatives in Cork are disquited by the attitude of laissez-faire which was adopted by our officials towards these very disturbing rumours in the city.

Mr. Allen

There are just a few matters arising from the Estimate to which I should like to refer. One is the question of the raiding of the Road Fund. That matter has been adverted to by other Deputies, but it could not be stressed too often. From the pronouncements by the Minister when he became Minister for Local Government, one would have expected that there would be a vacancy in the Cabinet early this year when a decision was made to raid the Road Fund. This House would have some respect for the present occupant of that Ministry had he resigned the Ministry when the Road Fund was raided. The seriousness of that matter is not appreciated by the House. It is no excuse to say that the Road Fund has increased this year over last year and had increased last year over the previous year. We are well aware of that. We are also aware of the fact that there are many thousands of miles of road, on which the people who pay the Road Fund must travel, that are unsuitable for any type of traffic, apart altogether from motor traffic.

Five hundred thousand pounds is a considerable sum of money. Each year for a number of years past the Dáil has been called upon to provide out of borrowed moneys sufficient to keep a certain number of men employed in a slack period of the year. Notwithstanding all that, the Minister for Local Government allowed £500,000 to be filched or stolen or taken from the Road Fund by the Minister for Finance. For what purpose will the Minister for Finance use that money? The Minister for Local Government did not explain that to the House.

Mr. O'Donnell

For capital investment.

Mr. Allen

The £500,000 is for capital investment? That is the first we heard of that.

Mr. O'Donnell

I think the Minister for Finance made it very clear in his Budget statement.

Mr. Allen

I do not think so. He said it was to pay extra salaries for civil servants, I think.

Mr. O'Donnell

He said no such thing.

Mr. Allen

I think that is what we heard. This is the first time we heard that it is for capital investment. That £500,000 would give 100,000 workers a week's employment at the current rate of road workers' wages or would give 2,000 men work for a whole year. I wonder are the Labour Party satisfied——

Mr. James Tully

At the rate at which Wexford are paying, it would give them employment for a longer period.

Mr. Allen

I wonder are the Labour Deputies satified. Two thousand men, rural labourers, who have no employment at the moment, could be put into employment, if that sum were devoted to the purpose. It is unfortunately true, as was pointed out here already, that, in the past 20 years, there have not been as many men in rural areas seeking employment in the month of May as there are this year. That £500,000 would have given employment to 2,000 men. That is a considerable number. It would have given them full employment at £5 a week for the whole year.

Mr. James Tully

£4 17s. 6d. is the rate in Wexford.

Mr. Allen

The Labour Party can still remain in Government; the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government can still sit beside his Minister and not a blush comes to his cheek or to the cheek of any of his colleagues. Deputy Tully, who is concerned to increase wages, is not a bit concerned about maintaining the pool of money that belongs to the road workers of this country. Rural workers, who have no other employmen, if they got six months' work or three months' work, would remain in benefit. Even at this late stage, the Minister should do something about this matter. I would ask the Minister's colleagues of the Labour Party, on whom this Government depends for a majority, to exert themselves and to see that those 2,000 rural workers who could have got full employment for a whole year out of this £500,000 will not have to emigrate, along with all the others.

An Ceann Comhairle

Repetition does not add anything to the argument. The Deputy has said that three or four times.

Mr. Allen

I should like the Minister to advert to the fact that the payment of reconstruction and housing grants is very much in arrear and there is a whole chorus of complaints on that score. The sooner the Minister checks up on that, the better. Grants that have been outstanding for the past 12 or 18 months should be paid. In some cases, people tell you that they have reported that the house is completed, that there has been no final inspection and that the grant has not been paid. That is a fault in administration, whether it is deliberate or otherwise, in the Department. If there is a necessity for a new Housing Act, it is the Minister's neglect that he has not introduced the Bill. It is two or three months since the Minister told us that he proposed to introduce the Bill in a fortnight's time. The people are held up and merchants, many of whom gave building materials on credit, are held up. We hope the Minister will speed up the payments of these housing grants.

In this year's Estimate the contributions towards housing loan charges of local authorities amount to £1,665,000 and there is £2,250,000 for housing grants—a decrease of £25,000. We just wonder if that decrease is justified or if this £2,250,000 will pay the housing grants that are outstanding—the housing grants that have been stalled and stalled for many months now—in addition to the ones current in the present year. I take that matter very seriously and the Minister should take it more seriously than his Department have been taking it for some time past. If an announcement were made that funds were exhausted and that no money was there—which was generally felt in the country—it would be all right but a large number of people are not satisfied about the delay.

I come now to the administration of local authorities. I heard an estimate made some time ago that local authorities, taking an ordinary county council, maintain from five to 12 extra persons on their staff because everything must be referred to the Department of Local Government and there is endless correspondence. The average item that needs the sanction of the Minister involves correspondence at least 12 times on the average before sanction is obtained. If an ordinary local authority has to maintain a minimum of six extra persons on the staff how many extra persons must be maintained on the Minister's staff in order to deal with the endless correspondence that goes on with all local authorities all over the country?

I respectfully suggest to the Minister that there is nothing in any Act that I know of in this country that compels him to demand in respect of every single small item with which a local authority must deal that it must go up for his authority and sanction. It is time an end were brought to a lot of that. Last year, the Minister took steps to bring an end to one matter, that is, the sanction formerly required for the acquisition of plots for single cottages. There are many other activities and many engineering activities in that branch of the Minister's Department so far as local authorities are concerned that could be brought to an end.

In 1956, with local authority administrators, secretaries, accountants and a staff of officials of a very high standard—of just as high a standard as the officials who work in any of the Government Departments—surely they should be able to deal with local administration, aided by a local authority. The local authorities and staffs should not be treated as minors. It is all right for the Minister and the Government to call policy. It would be all right if a local authority were told on the first day of every financial year that a loan of £X would be provided in that year in respect of a certain number of houses and that they could work to the best advantage on that amount. Similarly in respect of sanitary and other services: they could be told that they would get a certain amount by way of grant in a particular year. That would be the Minister's policy and, while we might disagree with it, he would be entitled to call policy.

All the red tape and a lot of the unnecessary correspondence to and fro between local authorities and the Minister's Department should come to an end. It would save tens of thousands of pounds and the time of many hundreds of staff. When they are looking for economies, which are overdue, in the public administration, that is one fruitful source for economy.

I want to protest in the strongest possible manner against the attitude of some of the Minister's officers with regard to local authorities. Last year, the county council of which I am a member, had a scheme for the improvement of roads. With the Minister's sanction, they raised a loan for the improvement of roads. On the advice of their own engineers, the county council decided that certain widths of road were sufficient—that, with such a large number of badly surfaced miles of roads, they would be quite satisfied if certain roads were improved and steam-rolled to a certain width. Over the heads of the local authority and everybody else, the Minister's officers came down and forced the local engineers to agree to their widths of roads.

Mr. O'Donnell

When was that?

Mr. Allen

Only last year.

Mr. O'Donnell

Give us the date.

Mr. Allen

Probably the same thing will happen this year. The council had raised their own money by way of loan. While nobody could say that the Local Government engineers were wrong in insisting on 16-feet or 18-feet roads, that would be all right for some years to come. The council felt that they had a very serious grievance in the matter.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should direct his complaints to the Minister. The Minister is responsible to this House.

Mr. Allen

It is the Minister whom we blame. He and nobody else must take the responsibility. I am sure, too, that' he would take the blame, if there is any blame in the matter. These things should not happen, because the local engineers and the members of the local authority, who were all drawn from rural areas, were absolutely unanimous——

Mr. O'Donnell

Was last year a departure from precedent? Can the Deputy answer that simple question?

Mr. Allen

The local authority has been trying to get agreement on this for two years.

Mr. O'Donnell

That is better.

Mr. Allen

They had a letter from the Minister's Department last year saying that, subject to such and such a condition, the Minister approved in principle. In the end, we found we had ten miles less of roads reconstructed because of the fact that there was no single mile in the county on which we could put the narrow width of road. We were prepared to spend the money over a larger amount of road in the belief that by putting in a bottom and a good centre the road could be widened in the future. The Minister should give liberty to local authorities in such a matter, if their engineers and the members of the council are satisfied that there is nothing wrong with it. You can take it for certain that members of local authorities are as meticulous and as careful about spending the public money as the Minister could ever be. They are on the spot and they carry the responsibility. They raised this money out of their own pockets and those of their neighbours. The Minister should have far more confidence in the local authority than appears to be the case.

I hope that, in the economy drive, the Minister will remember that one direction in which there could be economy would be less correspondence and that local authorities should be given more liberty to make their own decisions on many minor matters in respect of which there is no reason in the world why the Minister's Department should enter at all. Local authorities are sufficiently grown up now to be well able to administer the local authority funds, without having to seek sanction for every single thing that crops up.

More flexibility in local administration is overdue. Either that must come or local authorities should be done away with altogether, because we are getting to the stage when there is scarcely justification for them because their viewpoints count for very little at all in the present local government machinery. Where the principal officer of a local authority is concerned, he is like Mohammed's coffin, suspended in mid-air, between the Department of Local Government and the council. It is the council who pay him, though he is not responsible to them; but that is another day's work and I suppose it will provoke discussion for years to come.

Those are some of the weaknesses in local administration and they become more apparent as the years go on. When Deputy Gilbride was talking about the high rates and suggested to the Minister that he might do something about them, he was told that the council could strike what rate they liked. It is a fairly well-known fact that there are limits to which the council can go in that respect. Their chief officer or manager may decide that a rate is adequate or that it is not. I suppose there is something to be said for that. Recently, there were increases given to local authority officials. There were no two ways about these increases. The councils were told that if they did not give the full amount the managers' association had decided, that was that. The Minister's Department wrote to the local authorities pointing out where they got off. One local authority with which I had a connection, while they conceded the full amount to the lower paid officers, thought they would put a maximum on the amount they would pay the higher officials. The result was that the lower paid officers were not paid the increases, though the councils granted them the full amounts. They were told by the Minister where to get off.

Last year, councils thought they were getting back a lot of their democratic powers. I do not know where they came back. Several members on this side expressed the view, and we have seen it proved within the last month, that no powers were given back by last year's amendment of the Management Act.

An Ceann Comhairle

This seems to be a discussion on legislation passed by the House.

Mr. Allen

I am not discussing the legislation, but pointing out that the claims made for that legislation——

An Ceann Comhairle

That is discussing legislation. The Deputy will discuss the Estimate.

Mr. Allen

I am pointing out——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may not discuss legislation.

Mr. Allen

May I point out again——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister has no power to deal with the results of legislation passed by the House.

Mr. Allen

I am talking about the administration.

An Ceann Comhairle

I have said the Deputy may not discuss legislation passed by the House. It has already been approved.

Mr. Allen

The weakness of existing law——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may not do it.

Mr. Allen

I do not want to disobey your ruling, but I would like you to further clarify whether an Act——

An Ceann Comhairle

Any Act passed by this House is an Act of the House and discussion on it may not be reopened. Would the Deputy please resume his seat? What may be discussed on the Estimate is administration, not legislation.

Mr. Allen

I am not discussing legislation.

An Ceann Comhairle

I have ruled that the Deputy is endeavouring to discuss the results of the recent County Management Act.

Mr. O'Leary

And he voted for that Act.

Mr. Allen

I was not proposing——

An Ceann Comhairle

If the Deputy persists any further in this discussion, the Chair will have to take the appropriate action.

Mr. Allen

I will get away from it and on to something else. I should like to know from the Minister a few points about road grants. I should like to know if councils will be notified promptly if their plans for road reconstruction, which they forward to the Department, have been approved, or if there will be any hold-ups in that regard. I should like to know if local authorities will be notified early if the Department will sanction their applications to raise loans to supplement road grants, so that the engineers can go on with the preparation of material? It is important at this time of year, when the weather is good, that there should be no delay in the forwarding of such approval, because materials to be used next October and November could be prepared now. I hope these matters will get the Minister's attention in the very near future.

When the Minister is replying, I should like him to give an indication of what is the future general policy of his Department in the matter of water supply schemes. I think the amount of the grant was changed some time ago. We do not know what the amount of these grants are now, because it is a matter for the Minister to determine from time to time. The proportion of the grant in relation to the cost of these schemes would seem to be small. Water supply and other sanitary schemes are absolutely necessary in many areas which are still without water or sewerage and I suggest that the Minister give increased grants for this very necessary purpose.

While on that subject, I should like to refer to the provision of grants for bridge-building. Wexford County Council recently signed a contract for the largest amount provided for any bridge built in this country this century. They are dissatisfied with the amount of the grant. They have recently asked the Minister to reconsider it, and are awaiting the decision. We can see no reason why our neighbouring County Councils of Cork and Waterford, who propose building a somewhat similar sized bridge that will cost no more money, and possibly somewhat less, were offered a grant of 15 per cent. more than Wexford. We think that is unfair, and the only reason it is claimed that Wexford was not entitled to it is that for Cork and Waterford it is going to cost ½d. or 1d. in the £, but it is approaching 8d. or 9d. on the rates in Wexford. I think we should have got a bigger grant from the Road Fund than Cork and Waterford. Some consideration should be given to the amount the local ratepayers will have to pay. Wexford Corporation are a very poor body. Their revenues are very small and their rates very high, but they have offered to contribute 1s. in the £, which, in my opinion, is beyond their resources.

I am speaking now about the grant towards the new Wexford bridge. The Minister was down there this morning and saw the need for it.

Mr. O'Donnell

It was not the first time I have been there.

Mr. Allen

I know that you were there often, and I am glad that you got safely across that bridge.

Mr. O'Donnell

It is no worse than Youghal bridge.

Mr. Allen

No, much the same. What I was pointing out was this: you have offered a much larger grant to Cork and Waterford for Youghal bridge than to Wexford County Council for their bridge. We think it is unfair that, while the bridge at Youghal is only to cost the ratepayers of Cork and Waterford something like a halfpenny or a penny in the £, the Wexford ratepayer will pay 8d. or 10d., and Wexford Corporation are being mulcted in 1/-in the £.

Mr. O'Donnell

I saved them a good penny by waiting for pre-stressed.

Mr. Allen

It was not you. It was the Swedish firm who waited.

Mr. O'Donnell

I do not think so. I could have sanctioned the original scheme.

Mr. Allen

I understand all the details of it all right, but, however, I am claiming, just as all Wexford people will claim, fair play, and that is all. The road this bridge is on is the shortest road from Rosslare to Dublin —about ten miles shorter than any other road; and while the claim of the Local Government Department is that it is not a trunk road like the Youghal road, it is just as much a trunk road. It is a main road, designated as such for the past 30 years. I hope that the Minister will give favourable consideration to the application of Wexford County Council for an increase, and at least bring the grant up to what was offered to Cork and Waterford, where the charges will be one-sixth or one-tenth of what they will be on the ratepayers of Wexford. Wexford town, in paying 1/- in the £, which they are unable to do, are trying to help the county council to finance the building of this bridge because it happens to be in Wexford town. Waterford and Cork Corporations have got off very cheaply.

Mr. O'Donnell

You were offered the grant you asked for.

Mr. Allen

So I admit, but that was the grant we asked for about ten years ago.

Mr. O'Donnell

A few years ago, you asked for 60 per cent. and we gave it.

Mr. Allen

Ten years ago, we asked for a grant for the bridge when it would cost us about a quarter of what it will cost us now, but the Minister offered Cork and Waterford, in order to bribe them or cajole or coax them——

Mr. O'Donnell

It was not I. It was my predecessor.

Mr. Allen

It was the Minister, anyway. The sins of his predecessor are on the Minister's head now, whatever they may be, and he has good deeds and bad deeds. I give him credit for both. The Minister must accept the whole lot of them, and when the Minister leaves office, someone else will accept the evil he did and the good he did. I have not a bit of doubt about that. I hope there will be someone found to take on his mantle and even all of the evil deeds he does while he may be Minister. However, subsequent to that, the Minister offered Cork and Waterford a 75 per cent. grant from the Road Fund. There is no question about that. Wexford County Council for the last four or five years have been asking the Minister to reconsider the matter and to give the same grant as given to Cork and Waterford.

Mr. O'Donnell

The present Minister has not held office for four or five years past.

Mr. Allen

As a matter of fact, four years ago we were told to wait until we had received a firm contract. The firm contract is now signed and, for better or worse, we have to go on, and we are going on with it, and we only plead now across the floor of the House——

Mr. O'Donnell

It was signed a week ago.

Mr. Allen

They are working at the moment, anyhow, and we are pleading for fair play across the floor of the House, and we hope the Minister, with his big, generous heart, will give us that fair play.

Mr. James Tully

Since the debate on this Estimate opened, we have had quite an interesting selection of views from people on both sides of the House. Some of them are, in my opinion, quite sensible views with which I would be very much inclined to agree. Some of them are mostly the feather-brained kind which are trotted out for no apparent reason, and some have got such muddled views that it is very hard to be sure on what side of the fence they should come down. I was very interested in Deputy Allen's views on the County Management Act.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair ruled them out of order.

Mr. James Tully

The Chair ruled him out of order, but I wonder on which side of the fence he would come down on.

Mr. Allen

It is quite plain.

Mr. James Tully

As far as employment and the raid on the Road Fund, as it has been described by my colleagues opposite, are concerned, I feel that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Deputy Joseph Brennan was inclined to take the view that I should have led a deputation somewhere or other several weeks ago on this point, because of my position in a trade union. I feel that the time to lead that deputation is when the money which has already been granted is expended and people are being laid off. For that reason, I would suggest to this House and to the Minister that something should be done now, not by me, but by the Department of Local Government, to see to it that the money which has been given to local authorities for the purpose of carrying out works on roads is expended, first of all, for the purpose of getting the job done, and, secondly, and very important, in giving employment to people who normally are employed as county council workers.

I must register a very strong protest against the practice which has grown up over the past few years, and seems to be encouraged now by county council officials, as well as by the Department of Local Government, of doing as much work as possible by machinery. We are told that, as a result of wage increases, some councils claimed that there will be less work done and less employment. I suggest that as a result of the excess use of machinery on jobs which could be much better done by hand, there is unemployment, and there will be growing unemployment, unless something is done to stop it. I am not trying to do what some people did a few hundred years ago in seeking to stop the march of progress. I do not want to stop, or see stopped, the use of machinery, if it is for the good of all concerned, but surely nobody can suggest that it is for the good of all concerned, if a bulldozer costing £15 per day is used to do a job which could be equally well done, in perhaps a little longer time, by ten men who would not cost more than £7 or £8 per day.

The Department of Local Government must examine its conscience; and I suggest that examination should take place immediately because in certain counties unemployment is growing, for one reason or another. It is growing in some counties because so much machinery is being used, hired machinery in some cases, to do work which could be done better by hand. There are occasions admittedly on which this machinery more than pays for itself. I do not want to stop the march of progress but I do not want to see some get-rich-quick merchant buying machinery and getting contracts from the county council, and in some cases no contract at all, at an excessive fee while the men who should be doing the work are forced to line up at the local labour exchange or emigrate. If the money which is granted is properly expended, there will be no need for anybody to talk of the necessity for giving extra money because of wage increases.

It is not wage increases which are causing unemployment. It is the excessive use of machinery. We know that over the past few years there has been a tremendous improvement in the type of machinery used for road making. We have no objection to the use of such machinery if it is doing a job which cannot be done equally well by manual labour. Surely it is going a bit too far when we find whole areas in which men are being left off in order that some machine can be brought in, a machine sometimes bought by a local authority as an experiment and, if the experiment proves unsatisfactory, is promptly hung around the necks of the ratepayers. At other times the machinery is borrowed or hired. I know the Minister is a reasonable man and I appeal to him now to examine into this matter; he will find that what I am saying is perfectly true. If, later on in the year, I find, as the Jeremiahs across the way are predicting, that there is unemployment because there is not enough money available, then I will take whatever action is necessary.

On the question of wage increase, we were very glad this year to be able to avail of the Labour Court on behalf of road workers. It is regrettable that one or two local authorities, after agreeing to have the case investigated by the Labour Court and after having attended there, sought then to intimidate the road workers by notifying them that, if the wage increases which the Labour Court had recommended were paid, there would be less employment and suggesting to them that they should take a smaller amount. I protest strongly against that action. A Government sponsored Labour Court was set up and surely the least we can expect from local authorities is that they would respect that court.

There is another matter which arises in relation to employment and the Minister should take cognisance of it. At this time of year, certain officials of local authorities seem to go a little bit mad because they cease to recognise the normal working hours. They expect men to start work at eight o'clock in the morning and continue working so long as there is light.

Mr. O'Donnell

At this time of the year?

Mr. James Tully

From this time of the year on until the surface dressing operations are finished. One finds this craze in very many counties, a craze on the part of officials who do not themselves have to have their noses to the grindstone for 15, 16 or 17 hours per day. I suggest these people are breaking the law and the Minister should put an end to this practice forthwith.

Mr. O'Donnell

Are the workers paid overtime?

Mr. James Tully

They are paid time and a quarter, which is the minimum rate.

Mr. O'Donnell

I was not aware of the practice.

Mr. James Tully

The practice has grown up during the years and it is very widespread now. It has become worse over the last few years. I would like to see it stopped and stopped quickly. The trade union I represent could stop it. We could stop it at grave inconvenience and loss of wages to the men concerned. I suggest the Minister should be able to stop it without any loss to anyone.

Mr. O'Donnell

There may be an answer to it. Possibly the work that is being done could not be done in the winter or in wet weather. That may be the answer. I do not know.

Mr. James Tully

The work that is being done can only be done in fine weather but, if in former years, this work could be done at a much slower rate over a few months, and without this excessive overtime, surely with up-to-date machinery the work could be done equally well inside the summer period without any hardship on anybody. I might add that, except on very rare occasions, the men concerned do not want to work overtime, much as they need a fatter pay packet, because it means they are out of work as soon as the job is finished.

I would like the Minister to examine this system, which has grown up in many counties, of using contract material in preference to direct labour. The excuse is given that the former is cheaper. While that may be true in some cases, in most cases the difference is very slight and I suggest there is no reason at all why county councils should not be able to get the work done just as cheaply if the machinery is of the proper type. Men should not be left unemployed so that some contractor may reap a very rich harvest. There is no use giving a big employment grant if the result is that the workman gets even less than he was receiving ten years ago. Despite the increased grants, there is a smaller volume of employment. I suggest that matter should receive immediate attention of the Minister.

A few months ago somebody said that direct labour on housing had not proved a success. I know that 30 years ago the county councils decided they would carry out road works by direct labour. That has never been altered but, in defiance of that, officials are attempting in some places to have the work done by contract.

Many of us were wondering what was happening in relation to the housing grants and we were glad to hear the Minister's announcement of the introduction of a new Bill inside the next fortnight. I am sure that when that Bill is introduced those who have been building in the interim period will be catered for and no losses will be incurred.

Mr. O'Donnell

The Deputy may rest assured of that.

Mr. James Tully

In some counties there is trouble in relation to the erection of labourers' cottages. In one or two counties, the position has been that only a few contractors are prepared to tender for these houses for some time past. In some cases, the work is very badly done. Possibly we can blame the engineers and say that they should see that the work is properly carried out; but, when the choice is so small it is very hard to know whom to blame. Definitely the ratepayers and the people who will live in the houses suffer. The greatest encouragement should be given to any council that is anxious to carry out building by direct labour.

Another problem which is affecting a number of counties, and which is affecting my own in a very big way, is the question of cottage repairs. I do not know what has happened over the years but I do know that, at the present time, it is almost impossible for any local authority to find easily the amount of money required to keep in repair the cottages they have. There is a legal obligation on them to keep these houses in repair. It looks as if they will not be able to keep them in repair in some cases and what is going to happen then I do not know. There will have to be some system devised by which money can be made available to local authorities to have their cottages repaired so that they can be purchased by the tenants. It would not be reasonable to ask a tenant to take over a cottage in a bad state of repair. If these cottages could be handed over when they are in good repair, the scheme would work out in a much better way.

There is another point I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister. When making a vesting Order would it be possible, instead of setting out a fixed rent which cannot be altered until a new vesting Order is made, for the Minister, instead of saying the rent is now so much and that it will be reduced by 50 per cent. to lay down a regulation that the existing rent can be reduced by 50 per cent.? That would simplify the matter considerably because at the moment some local authorities are very badly tied up and people cannot purchase their houses because of this legal bar.

One other matter that deserves consideration is that in some cases the records of county councils seem to have gone astray. In my constituency we have a case of two cottages built together under the one roof but according to the records one was built in 1897 and the other in 1908. It would have been physically impossible to build these houses eleven years apart. However, the result of that is that one of the tenants has bought out his cottage on ten years purchase and the other man has had to buy out his under 15 years purchase. All that is due to a clerical error and the county council officials have not got the power to alter the vesting Order. They have to carry out the regulations as they are laid down. I would ask that, in a case of this kind, something should be done to set the matter right.

We have heard the question discussed, over the past couple of days, as to whether money ought or ought not to be spent on county roads or on main roads. I think there seems to be little doubt in the minds of Deputies that the proper way to spend the money is on the county roads and that the accent should be taken off the main roads. I suppose I travel more through this country than any one else in this House. That may be a tall order but it is true and I, for one, am satisfied that the present standard of our main roads is so high that it requires very little alteration. There is still a tremendous number of county roads in a deplorable condition. Even if we were to suspend the expenditure of money on main roads and spend the whole lot on the county roads, I think it would be advisable.

We have a problem in County Meath where the county council decided to deal with the matter of these county and byroads in a particular way and it did not work out so well. We have, in County Meath, a number of boreens and lanes. These lanes and boreens serve quite a number of houses. It was decided by the county council, in order to make proper roads of them, to declare them as county roads and then repair them. This was done but the county council found that it was responsible for the maintenance of them and they also found that the Department was unwilling to assist in any way. Some of the critics of the scheme suggested that something should have been done long before that. It was all right to say that was the way to do it but the idea was that the job should have been done many years ago. Since many of the main roads have now been brought up to a very reasonable state of repair, perhaps all these lanes and boreens could now be converted into county roads. At some time or other we must reach the end of the work on the main roads and I suggest to the Minister that the Department should find some means of helping councils who give an indication of their willingness to help themselves by drawing up such a scheme. I think that the Department should make available some type of grant to such councils.

Even in County Meath, a sum of £30,000 represents a very sizable figure. To carry out a full programme, five times that amount will have to be found and councils are not too anxious to embark on such programmes. The Minister might put aside a certain sum that could be spent to help councils anxious to help themselves in this matter.

There was a complaint about the delay in having houses inspected. This is a matter which is true of one county as well as of another. In some cases we are told that the appointed officer had too much work on hand or that he had been ill for some time. I do not think this is a matter that ought to be passed over lightly. It surely is a bit thick when you find that houses, reported for inspection two years ago, have not yet been inspected. I think we can go back to the two years before that and find that the same thing happened then. The same thing also happened in the previous two years. The inspectors in many cases are not living close enough to their areas and for some reason, apparently, some of them do not want to carry out their job. I think that this is something about which the Department ought to take some action. Houses, whether for construction or reconstruction, should not be allowed to lie for years without being inspected. If everybody carried out the regulations and decided to wait until the inspector had reported the scheme as O.K., many of the houses would not have been touched yet. I think this is a deplorable state of affairs in view of the fact that very many of the people need the money so badly. In many cases people do not qualify for grants simply because somebody who is paid to do a job is not doing it.

There are very many matters which can come under discussion in this Estimate but there is one which, I think, should be referred to, and I did not hear it referred to earlier. It is the question of the Local Authorities (Works) Act grants. I think that those grants should also be raised to the amounts at which they stood four or five years ago. Very useful work has been carried out under those grants. As a matter of fact, since the arterial drainage schemes are in operation, the Local Authorities (Works) Act grants can be far more effectively used than they could be when the drainage was directed into already waterlogged and overloaded rivers. I suggest that this is something which the Department should examine, and I suggest that the grant should be increased.

I also suggest that the work should be notified much earlier than at present. At present the system seems to be that the road grants are expended during summer and autumn and the drainage grants during the winter. Would it not be more sensible if the order were reversed and the drainage grants expended in a period when people can work on drainage without undue hardship, and leave the road grants to be expended during the winter period?

There is one other matter which I would like to bring to the notice of the Minister—the question of approval of grants. I have been informed by a number of county managers this year that, while they have been notified of the amount of the grants, they still have not got approval for the spending of any of them. I do not know whether that is correct or not but it is rather peculiar that it should arise in more places than one. I think if the Department agrees to grants being expended, and have approved the works on which they are to be expended, it is surely reasonable that authority to spend should be given to the local authority concerned so that the work can be put in hand if the men are available and the work can be done. One problem on which I would like the Minister to give me a decision—I do not know if it would be possible for him to do so-is this. Out of the entire allocation which is given to county councils and local authorities generally from the Road Fund, would the Minister be able to say how much is spent on labour?

Mr. Bartley

It is very difficult, reading the items of the Estimate, to know exactly what is relevant. There have been a few brushes between speakers and the Chair already this evening. I take it that legislation is out, but it also seems to me that a good deal of the discussion is about topics which are almost exclusively the province of the local authority. Reading the information given to us in the Book of Estimates it does seem to me that we are discussing things about which there is the minimum of information or a complete absence of information in the details supplied in the Book of Estimates.

Take for instance all the references that have been made to roads. One would have to search this Estimate to get any information about road expenditure. Another criticism I have of the form in which the Estimate is presented to us is that, in the beginning of the book, we are supplied with items under the summary of capital services; and in the part of it that deals with local government, the sums mentioned are exactly the same as those mentioned under the relevant headings in the Estimate itself. The question I would like to have answered is whether the sums mentioned under the capital heading are additional to the sums mentioned in the Estimate itself?

In any event, whether they are additional or merely explanatory of the method by which the money is to be found, I think that they should appear under the Estimate itself where the two separate statements may be seen at the one glance. It does seem to me that the items in the capital summary are not additional but that it is just an indication to us that the sums are to be raised by way of borrowing. I do note that the entire of the sum to be provided for works under the Local Authorities (Works) Act is to be borrowed. Whether that is good financial policy or not is questionable. We do know that the expenditure on this service is very closely allied to the expenditure out of the Road Fund itself, and a great part of the work undertaken under the Local Authorities (Works) Act is immediately ancillary to the reconstruction or improvement of either county or main roads—in any event roads which are financed out of the Road Fund.

One may not, as has been clearly demonstrated by the Chair, refer to legislation, but I take it I will be permitted to advert to the effect of a particular piece of legislation to which references were made in passing by a number of Deputies. I refer to the effect of the Managerial Acts on the exercise by the Minister of his functions——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Administration may be discussed but the merits or demerits of an Act may not be discussed on an Estimate.

Mr. Bartley

I recognise that I have to keep within the limits set out by the Chair, but what I want to refer to specifically is the obligation which rests upon the Minister in regard to the exercise of his ministerial functions. That obligation is now heightened by the fact that a very larger number of the duties formerly carried out by elected authority are now, in fact, within the executive category, and that the council is only aware of what the executive authority does by way of question and answer, such as we have in this House.

I had occasion last year to refer to what I looked upon as a very grave dereliction of duty on the part of a local authority. When I referred to it the Minister came back with his usual defence: "Did that not happen before I came in? Was it not a Minister of your own Government who was mainly responsible in the matter?" That sort of attitude is not good enough for a Minister. If there is an evil to be remedied, if there is a dereliction of duty to be corrected, surely a Minister, having squelched the complainant here in the Dáil, is not entitled to wash his hands of responsibility in the matter. No matter who the persons are who comprise the Government or Opposition, the Minister responsible should see that the public duty is carried out.

I spoke in great detail last year on a matter about which I had cause to complain and which lasted for ten years. In my opinion—and I hope I will not tempt Deputy O'Leary into any irrelevant and unpermissible remarks about the managerial system —it would not have happened in pre-managerial days; I will concede that much to him. However, it had to do with the provision of a water supply scheme in a Gaeltacht area. The law, I understand, is clear enough, particularly for those upon whom the duty rests of carrying it out—the county legal advisers, the county councils and the county officials generally, who should be experts in the Acts which they have to administer. It does seem and it did seem extraordinary that any set of officials should so misconstrue— and I have to be charitable and conclude that it was an innocent misconstruction—the Acts of Parliament that a very urgently needed water scheme was completely muffed and muffed over a period of about ten years.

If the Minister were here—I am sorry he is not—I would have expected to get the glib interruption: "You yourselves were there when it happened." I am conceding that to him straight away but, when the matter came to my notice, as a representative of the area I took all the action I could to ensure that finality was reached in this matter. The Minister recapitulated the history of the case for the benefit of the county manager, pointed out again in his final letter the legal objections which the scheme contained in the view of the departmental advisers and, because of the local authority's insistence on the legal soundness of the scheme, gave his sanction with the addendum that the local authority would itself be responsible for any consequences if in fact it was not as legally sound as he said it was.

Having got this official intimation from the Minister, the local authority then dropped the scheme like a hot spud which convinced me and must have convinced the Minister and the Minister's advisers that they were doubtful about the soundness of this scheme at any time. A well-known firm of engineering consultants was then consulted and they were sent off on a wild goose chase to find water about five or six miles away over undulating granite country. They discovered a supply of water in a place that was already being tapped for another community. The report of the consultants was duly presented and it expressed doubt as to whether the supply would be adequate for the existing needs plus the new ones proposed. In any event it indicated that the cost of the scheme would now be £43,000 as against the original £16,000 and, of course, the local authority, the elected authority in this case, felt themselves compelled to drop the scheme.

I do not wish to go back over the whole ground this year, as I did it last year, but it is relevant and pertinent this year again because the subject of wells is now a matter of current local administration and, therefore, proper to be referred to on this Estimate. I want to ask the Minister—it does not matter from which side of the House or from which Party he is drawn— what does he regard as his obligation, having given his sanction? What does he now regard as his obligation when he finds that his sanction is nugatory or when he finds, as happened in this case, that he was being asked by a local authority, with its tongue in its cheek, to give sanction to a scheme that they apparently knew was not sustainable or water-tight against possible objectors?

When I refer to the managerial effect in this regard, I am not referring to the Act itself. What I want the Minister to take cognisance of is the fact that there is a greater obligation on him in respect of this function of sanction of his in respect of proposals which are submitted by the executive authority. I understand the word "reserve" in relation to functions indicates the category of functions exercised by the elected authority. I do not know exactly what the others are referred to as unless they are managerial functions. However, where the function is a managerial one and where it has to do with an important public project such as the one to which I am referring, the Minister is not entitled to sit on his hunkers when he finds that his sanction is ineffective.

It is bad enough to have the ending of the scheme plus the additional cost of the exploration work carried out by an important body of consultants but, to try to compensate the community to be served for the disappointment, the futile search for drinking water in solid granite that has been tapped in other years without result is now being undertaken again. I will put a question to the Minister here. It seems to me if one asks for information across the floor of the House from the Department of Agriculture as to what goes on in any particular council one cannot get it, even in regard to the expenditure of grants that the Department themselves have given to a local authority. I put a question to the Department about the knowledge gained through the sinking of pumps in granite in search of water 20 or 25 years ago. The Department told me they had no information on the subject.

Mr. O'Leary

Why did the Deputy not go back a century?

Mr. Bartley

I feel sure the Wexford County Council would be able, even after 25 years, to dig up information on what was at that time a sort of pioneer scheme. I am certainly satisfied the Galway County Council could do it, but apparently the Department cannot.

Mr. O'Donnell

Why did the Deputy not ask the Galway County Council?

Mr. Bartley

That is the Minister's attitude always. Does he want to shed all responsibility as Minister for Local Government? There are certain items set out in this Book of Estimates for which the Minister, as far as the public are concerned, is responsible to Dáil Éireann.

Mr. O'Donnell

I think it ridiculous to take up the time of this House by asking here questions to which the replies could be given by the local authority down in Galway.

Mr. Bartley

I want to tell the Minister across the floor of the House that I put to him a question about the allocation of road grants made by him to the Galway County Council. In reply, he referred me to the county council for information. I applied to the county council for the information but did not get it.

Mr. O'Donnell

Do it through a member of the council. He will get it for you.

Mr. Bartley

I then went to a member of the council and the member did not get it.

Mr. O'Donnell

The Deputy should not blame me for that.

Mr. Bartley

If the Minister would let me make my statement of the facts and not try to bawl me off by these intelligent suggestions we would both get on much more quickly. I assure him I am not speaking here to-night for the purpose of having my voice heard or because I think I might get some publicity in the morning. Last year when I raised the same matter I did not get any publicity. I myself gave the account to the people who were really concerned. In case the Minister did not hear my remarks here this evening——

Mr. O'Donnell

I will read them.

Mr. Bartley

I want the Minister to bear in mind what I have said in relation to the exercise of his function of sanction. That sanction was a great safeguard in pre-managerial days. I have not been a member of a local body since the advent of the managerial system but I was a member in pre-managerial days. When Deputy O'Leary refers here to the managerial system I should like to tell him we had just as many serious reservations about it as he had.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Discussion of the County Management Acts is not in order on the Estimate.

Mr. O'Leary

It was a bad Act.

Mr. Bartley

Deputy Allen, who is a very experienced local administrator, complained, and rightly so, of the contact between the Department and the managerial offices in every county on matters of detail. I understand that complaints can be made against the local administration of practically every one of the 27 councils in the country. It does seem to me that, having regard to the fact that the phone is so much in use since the managerial system came in and that, to our own knowledge, it is availed of to such an extent both in the Department and in the council offices, it is ridiculous that a matter such as I have mentioned should have been allowed to continue for ten years without somebody having been able to expose the snag and bring the tomfoolery to an end. The people are being fooled by the spectacle of elaborate machinery being sunk into 900 ft. of granite on the edge of the sea in an attempt to get fresh water. However, there is more cynicism than optimism in the minds of the people.

Mr. Corry

Who are the consultants?

Mr. Bartley

I am not going to advertise or criticise any firm of consultants here in Dáil Éireann. The Minister has spoken a good deal, more outside than inside the House, on the question of the main roads or, as he called them once in my hearing, the autobahns for the plutocrats. He may have been putting his little bit of political snobbery standing on its apex, but we forgive him for doing that in a by-election.

As far as the congested districts and the Gaeltacht areas are concerned, the Gaeltacht Office under the administration of Deputy Jack Lynch laid the foundations of this scheme for the development of all the roads in the Gaeltacht areas, and when I personally made representations that a beginning should be made on the county roads in these areas and work on these roads out to the main approaches to those tourist areas, I was told that all the authorities—Local Government Department road advisers and county council engineers—had, as a result of long examination, decided that the main approaches should first be improved and that at the end of three years the county roads which I had in mind would follow automatically. That policy is in fact being carried out and I do not think the Minister can claim the entire credit for it. In so far as he adheres to that policy I give him all credit, but I should like to point out that he did not initiate it.

On the question of criticism of the amount of money being spent on main roads, is it not a fact that the standard of the work is in fact imposed from above? When it comes to improving the main roads with the help of Government grant, plus the local income from the rates, are the proposals not subject to the approval of the Minister's road engineering advisers? I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 30th, 1956.