I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £2,863,700 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1958, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Local Government, including Grants to Local Authorities, Grants and other Expenses in connection with Housing, and Miscellaneous Grants.
The sum which I have now moved to be granted together with the amount voted on account involves a net expenditure from the Vote for Local Government in the current year of £4,728,700. The total shows a net decrease of £113,270 on the net amount voted for the year 1956-57, when account is taken of the Supplementary Estimate for that year which was voted last March. That is the position as revealed by the figures prepared under the previous Administration. I should, however, inform the House that I have provided for further savings of £500,000 in the Vote as I propose to administer it. These savings comprise sums of £270,000 from sub-head (I) 2 and £230,000 from sub-head (K). I shall explain the considerations affecting these items later, but I may say now that the sum of £500,000 is offset by nearly three times that amount which the Government has authorised me to expend from the general capital pool over and above the amount previously estimated to be available for roads, housing and sanitary services.
It is usual to review periodically the progress made in satisfying the post-war housing needs of the different areas. The progress made to the 31st March last represented completion by local authorities of 72 per cent. of these needs. A further 6 per cent. was in progress and 2 per cent. at the stage of entering into contracts. Thus 80 per cent. of the total needs estimated to be required ten years ago, increased or modified by subsequent experience, have now been met or are in course of being met. When we subdivide these figures we find that the county councils have in fact completed 96 per cent. of their housing needs; urbans (including Cork, Limerick and Waterford) 75 per cent.; and Dublin City 53 per cent. The number of dwellings in course of erection on the 1st April this year was 4,091 as compared with 6,017 a year before. It will be of interest to the House if I read out the details of dwellings in progress on the two dates I have mentioned and also on the corresponding date in 1955.
|
1/4/55 |
1/4/56 |
1/4/57 |
|
|
Dublin City |
2,020 |
2,045 |
1,377 |
|
Other Urbans |
1,734 |
2,270 |
1,575 |
|
Rural Areas |
1,818 |
1,702 |
1,139 |
|
TOTALS |
5,572 |
6,017 |
4,091 |
It is of importance also that the House should hear particulars of the number of dwellings in tender on these three dates. They are:—
|
1/4/55 |
1/4/56 |
1/4/57 |
|
|
Dublin City |
761 |
815 |
222 |
|
Other Urbans |
858 |
652 |
374 |
|
Rural Areas |
1,410 |
1,747 |
837 |
|
3,029 |
3,214 |
1,433 |
Deputies will see from the figures which I have given that, as pointed out by my predecessor in introducing his Estimate last year, the position on 1st April, 1956, both as regards dwellings in progress and dwellings in tender was more satisfactory than at the corresponding date in 1955. The position as at 1st April, 1957, is, however, less satisfactory in both categories than either in 1956 or 1955. The decline in the volume of housing work being carried out by local authorities is, of course, to a considerable degree related to the fact that in a number of areas the needs on which the post-war housing programme had been based had been satisfied in full. This is already the case in 23 county health districts and in 21 urban districts. In 14 other urban districts the post-war housing requirements quoted in 1948 were found to have been inflated and the actual needs of those towns were satisfied by the provision of lesser numbers of houses, or were in course of being met in full at the end of the last financial year.
There was, however, another factor contributing to the decline in activity as shown in the figures for 1st April last and that was the hold up, for financial reasons, of the commencement of new works between last summer and the spring of this year. That has had the effect, not so much of considerably reducing the number of dwellings completed in 1956-57, as of diminishing those in progress and those ready to be undertaken now. This in turn will probably have the effect of reducing the number of dwellings which we may expect to have completed in the present financial year.
The global amount proposed to be provided for local authority borrowing is being increased to a figure which will be sufficient to initiate at successive stages in the present financial year the whole of the housing and sanitary services schemes which were held up at the end of the last financial year as well as some schemes at present maturing. It will also enable local authorities to continue operations under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts and to meet commitments already entered into under these Acts and commitments already entered into in respect of Supplementary Grants.
I have also issued a circular letter to local authorities inviting them to submit their proposals in regard to future operations under these Acts within the increased provision which it has been found possible to make for financing such proposals.
Since assuming office, I have recommended the issue of £1,340,000 to liquidate the obligations of local authorities outside the Cities of Dublin and Cork, to banks, to contractors and to persons awaiting payment of approved grants and advances for private housing. The position in this regard is that local authorities may now apply in the normal course for instalments of approved loans to meet the firm commitments already entered into by them, according as these commitments become due to be discharged.
As regards new works, it will be necessary to control the time of their commencement so that approvals to essential proposals now in hands and others accruing in the course of the year can be undertaken in progressive stages. In furtherance of this arrangement, I have already approved the undertaking of new works to the value of £300,000.
The Dublin Corporation has built 15,822 dwellings in the last ten years— 11,816 cottages and 4,006 flats. There was no practical alternative to the preponderance of houses on the outskirts of the city over the flats provided in the central city areas. The essential problems confronting the corporation was the clearance of the slums. Where it has been found possible to rebuild on the sites of slums only a small fraction of the original population could be rehoused there. Slum clearance was also essentially a thinning-out process. The largest families had to be rehoused first and the others left there for the time being. This involved deferring the final clearance of the slum areas until the small families and single persons residing in them could be rehoused. That position is now being reached in some important sites in central areas. The housing committee of the city council are giving special attention to the problems inherent in the clearance of, and rebuilding on, these obsolescent areas. The pace of housing in Dublin, according as a higher proportion of the programme is concentrated in the erection of flats, may prove slower than it was when the major portion of the annual output of dwellings was being provided by the erection of cottages.
As I have already mentioned, the sum of £2,000,000 provided in the Book of Estimates for grants under the Housing Acts has been reduced by a sum of £270,000 so that the net amount available for this purpose will be £1,730,000. This amount is calculated to be sufficient to meet existing commitments in respect of grants already allocated but not yet fully paid and commitments that will arise during the present financial year on foot of new applications. The total reduction of £440,000 in the provision for these grants as compared with the corresponding amount last year, less the saving in that year, has been found to be possible owing to the sharp decline, particularly in Dublin City, in the applications for new house grants. In the first six months of the last financial year grants for new houses were allocated in respect of 2,560 houses as compared with 3,089 in the corresponding period of 1955-56. In the second six months of 1956-57 the figures were 1,691 as compared with 3,006 in 1955-56, giving a total of 4,251 for 1956-57 as against 6,095 in 1955-56. These figures alone show a manifest reduction in private enterprise housing in the last 12 months which will clearly affect the amount of building of this nature to be undertaken even if the financial and other factors affecting the position were to improve.
The position as regards grants for reconstruction and repair and improvement is not so unsatisfactory. The applications for grants of this kind for 1956-57 were in fact higher than for 1955-56. I look forward to activities under this head improving still further in the present year and I consider it important that this should happen. These grants, the amounts and the scope of which were increased in the Housing (Amendment) Act, 1954, are an effective incentive to property owners to prevent the decay of houses which can be preserved and improved. This is obviously good social policy and it also offers a ready means of activity and employment by builders, builders providers and manufacturers.
The provision in the Estimates for the payment of contributions to annual loan charges of housing authorities has reached formidable proportions. It is placed at £1,835,000 in the current financial year as compared with £704,000 in 1949-50.
New loans sanctioned for water and sewerage schemes totalled about £2,060,000 in 1956-57 as compared with about £2,095,000 in 1955-56. Expenditure on these sanitary services schemes had been on a gradually rising scale up to the last financial year during which the commencement of a large number of schemes had to be temporarily deferred for the same reasons as those necessitating the hold-up in housing works. By arrangement with the Minister for Finance additional capital funds are now being provided to enable these schemes to proceed.
The loans sanctioned in 1956-57 included projects such as main drainage schemes in North Dublin City, Fox-rock, Killiney, Bishopstown, Lough and Togher, County Cork, and Mitchels-town, County Cork. Major loans were also sanctioned for a regional water supply for Lough Mourne, County Donegal, and the provision of a reservoir at Ballinclea, Dún Laoghaire.
Road Fund income from motor taxation, etc., during 1956-57 amounted to £4,767,190 as compared with £5,085,600 for the year ended 31st March, 1956. The decrease is primarily attributable to the effects of petrol rationing which put a number of cars off the road for a period at the beginning of the present calendar year and also resulted in a switch over to quarterly licences for the first quarter of this year. The outstanding liabilities of the Road Fund at 31st March, 1957, in respect of road maintenance and improvement grants and other liabilities amounted to £4,212,000. These liabilities were left at this unduly high figure on the date in question owing to the abnormally low proportion of the grants which had been paid in respect of the allocations for the preceding financial years. The amounts of the payments in these years were low mainly on account of (1) the allocation of a special grant of £500,000 in 1955-56 in lieu of the National Development Fund allocations that had been made to supplement the Road Fund in preceding years; (2) the "raid" of £500,000 on the Road Fund in aid of the Exchequer in 1956-57.
Road Fund income for the current financial year is estimated at £5,250,000 but fixed charges on the fund will reduce the estimated amount available for payment of road grants to approximately £4,787,000. Payments in respect of the existing liabilities of the Road Fund to road authorities will be the first charge on that amount. These amount to approximately £2,600,000. That leaves available for the payment of new grants a sum of only £2,187,000. Last year the grants allocated amounted to over £5,000,000. If the same allocation were made this year the amount available out of the net resources of the Road Fund would be quite inadequate to enable a reasonable proportion of the allocations to be made in the financial year.
The position, therefore, as I found it, was that if reasonable interim payments were to be made to local authorities the total of new grants should not exceed £3,000,000—a reduction of £2,000,000 with a consequent drop in employment of up to 4,000 men. Neither an increase in the overdrafts of local authorities nor a further drop in the amount of employment afforded on road works would be desirable. In these circumstances and after consultation with the Minister for Finance, the Government has agreed that the funds available for road works in the current year should be supplemented by a sum of approximately £900,000 to be made available from State capital and to be repayable from the Road Fund over a period of years. This will enable the allocation for the current year to be maintained at the same amount as that allocated last year.
The most important bridge construction work is the erection of the new bridge over the Slaney at Wexford. The contract was signed a year ago and work on the construction of the new bridge is now in progress. The estimated cost of the work is now £421,000.
I have been inquiring about the present position in regard to that much-debated project—the proposed new bridge at Youghal; and I am informed that my technical advisers have the detailed plans for the structure under examination but that further technical data and detailed contract documents are required before finality is reached in the long history of the preliminaries to undertaking actual work in this case.
The amount provided in sub-head K for grants towards the cost of schemes undertaken under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, 1949, is £400,000— the same as that provided for the past four years. In three of those years, the voted provision was supplemented by grants from the National Development Fund amounting to £100,000 in each of the years 1953-54 and 1954-55, and by £250,000 in 1955-56. The total grants allocated in 1956-57 amounted to £630,000, including a sum of £200,000 by way of supplementary allocation. The voted sum of £400,000 was supplemented by savings from another sub-head of the Department's Vote and by a Supplementary Estimate of £120,000 passed by this House last March.
The accumulated liabilities to local authorities in respect of the Works Act grants allocated in the past amounted to £220,000 on the 1st April, 1957. Payments in respect of these liabilities in 1957-58 are estimated at £170,000 which left only £230,000 to meet payments in respect of any new grants allocated. I decided that, with the restricted capital resources available, I should advise the Government and the Minister for Finance that it was more advantageous to apply this small sum towards the increases in the allocations for housing and sanitary services than to allocate it amongst county councils and some urban district councils for new schemes under the Works Act.
On this occasion I do not propose to go into any detailed review of the general administration of the Department or of local authorities. The matters which I have already reviewed constitute the major problems confronting me at the moment. As every Deputy is aware these problems are in essence financial problems and mainly arise out of restricted capital. The total net indebtedness of local authorities increased in the last financial year by about £11,000,000 and now stands at about £130,000,000. As regards revenue, the total annual revenue expenditure of local authorities is now up to £50,000,000 and in the current financial year may increase to about £51.8 millions. This amount is estimated to be met by State grants amounting to £22.4 millions, rate receipts of £20.1 millions and miscellaneous receipts of £9.3 millions. It is now a regular feature of local authority finance that a higher proportion of the expenditure is met by way of State grants than from rates.
There was some decrease in the rates struck in several counties for the present financial year, but the average county rate which is calculated to be 36/2 shows a slight increase over last year's figure of 36/–. The rate collection continues to be satisfactory.
Before I conclude, I wish to mention road traffic, not so much to make any statement of policy as to indicate that I am not unmindful of the amount of public attention that is focussed on the hazards of the roads. A new system of traffic signs was prescribed in regulations made by my predecessor on the 24th November last. The responsibility for providing them now rests with the road authorities in consultation with the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána. A new road safety booklet, entitled Rules of the Road, was also published by my predecessor and is being distributed free of charge to every person who got a driving licence within the past 12 months. Preparation is also being made for a more comprehensive distribution. The copies to be placed on sale to the general public will be at a nominal price of 2d. I am satisfied that these measures represent all that can be achieved administratively under existing legislation, so far as my Department is concerned, in the efforts to promote public safety and public convenience in connection with road traffic. I do not propose to make any comment on what further effective steps can be taken by way of legislation, as I have not yet had a full opportunity, since assuming office, of considering in a detailed manner the heads of legislation on this matter which it had been proposed to sponsor in the last Dáil, but which are not yet drafted in any complete form. I want to apologise now for our failure to provide copies of this statement. Our failure arose——
