As I was saying when the debate was adjourned, Deputy Briscoe mentioned that the financial worries of the Dublin Corporation had ended since the present Government came into office. I suggest to the House now that this scheme of things was commenced during the term of office of the inter-Party Government. There was a sum of £4,000,000 and all the necessary guarantees provided to the Dublin Corporation during 1956. The Dublin Corporation have not, since 1956, sought on the public market any loan for housing. The present Government are continuing the same system put into operation by the Minister for Local Government during the inter-Party régime. Since approximately 1947 the Dublin Corporation borrowed something in the neighbourhood of £26,000,000. It was, as I said before, obvious to anyone who had his ear to the ground and who had any interest, direct or otherwise, in the building programme of the country that we were approaching saturation point. Deputy Briscoe also mentioned——
Housing (Amendment) Bill, 1958—Second Stage (Resumed).
I said that?
No, I did not say that. The Deputy was not here when I quoted him.
I thought you said "Deputy Briscoe also said".
I said that Deputy Briscoe also said that——
Does not that imply I said what was previously quoted?
Wait for the comment.
Deputy Briscoe also mentioned during the course of his speech that the builders in the City of Dublin at the moment have plenty of financial aid to enable them to sell or to get loans for their clients. I suggest to Deputy Briscoe that there are fewer builders left in Dublin in comparison with the number that were there from 1947 onwards. The majority of them have emigrated to Britain and particularly to Rhodesia.
Whose fault is that?
The Deputy gave them notice.
The Deputy when he closed down on the S.D.A. funds.
You closed down on them.
Deputy Briscoe had plenty of opportunities during the course of his speech to raise all these points. At the present time there are plenty of vacant houses in Dublin, houses which might be called small dwelling houses, principally through the inability of the people who bought those houses to meet their commitments. I would suggest to the Minister that something should be done in the City of Dublin to provide adequate sewerage and water facilities for houses, good houses, which are still without these facilities. I admit that the majority of these houses are privately owned. I would suggest that something should be done where you have small schemes within the city boundary such as the Sailors and Soldiers Land Trust houses, which are still working on dry privies and on a public fountain on the roadside. One in particular comes to mind, at Raheny on the Howth Road.
That would seem to be more relevant to the Estimate debate.
I appreciate that but this will probably come under the heading of sewerage and sanitary services. I would also suggest to the Minister that approval should not be given to many new houses, in whatever part of the country they are built, unless adequate sewerage and water facilities are available. We hear a lot at various times about emigration and the causes of emigration. I think that one of the greatest causes of emigration in this country is the primitive services, if you can call them services, which are available to rural farm houses and rural cottages.
The Deputy is going beyond the scope of the Bill. This is a Housing Bill and has nothing to do with sewerage and water.
I should like to mention something on page 3 of the explanatory memorandum in relation to this Bill about the remission of rents. It is suggested in this Bill to give ten years' remission of rates on a sliding scale. Heretofore purchasers of new houses received two-thirds remission of rates for seven years. If these two items are broken down it means that the purchaser of a house benefits to the extent of one-third of a year's rates over the period of ten years. I would suggest to the Minister that he should give serious consideration to granting 20 years' remission of rates.
The remission amounts to one-half over the ten years.
Two-thirds remission of rates for seven years is equivalent to four and two-thirds years' full remission. Ten years' remission of rates, paying one-tenth the first year, two-tenths the second year and so on up to the full remission after ten years, is equivalent to five years' remission of rates. The benefit that the purchaser would be getting would be the difference between four and two-thirds and five years which would be one-third remission of rates. I suggest that the Minister should give serious consideration to granting 20 years' remission of rates on a sliding scale as existed a number of years ago.
I should also like to mention something about small dwelling loans in relation to second-hand houses. Anybody connected with a local authority can appreciate what is meant by a second-hand house. It is a house that was previously occupied. It might have been occupied only for a year or two or it might have been occupied for 25 years and even though I approve of this section I see great difficulty arising when it is put into operation. The difficulties are going to arise when the appointed valuer is required to make a proper valuation to see if the property would be adequate security for a local authority.
These second-hand houses cannot benefit by way of grant or supplementary grant or by any remission of stamp duty. If I take, for example, a house which we would call type A., a new house selling at £2,000. Under this the purchaser will benefit to the extent of £300 local government grant and possibly £150 supplementary grant, plus a remission of stamp duty which can amount to £70 or £80. In all, that purchaser would be deriving a benefit of something over £500. The valuer must consider these things when valuing the house. Where the substantial selling value of such a house would be £2,000 the valuer must consider it in the region of £1,500. He further has to take into account the reasonable deposit that can be expected from an intending purchaser, say, £150. The valuer valuing that new house will not value it at anything more than £1,300. A similar house built on an adjacent housing scheme, of the same type and possibly built by the same builder two or three years earlier, would not derive any of these benefits for an intending purchaser and could not be valued by the valuer at anything more than £1,100.
Surely in that case the house would have to be built for four years or more?
Strange as it may seem that is what will happen.
The second house would want to be built somewhat earlier than that.
I believe that great difficulties are going to arise under this section even though I agree with it in principle. You can go back to the 1948 Housing (Amendment) Act, when valuations tumbled down within the space of two or three months because local authorities did not appreciate the operation of grants on the saleable valuation of a house. The valuer must value a house in relation to what he will get for it on the public market.
Surely if a grant is paid by the Government towards the cost of building a house, it will go into the cost of building just the same as the purchaser's money? Is the house not valued on the total money spent on it?
That should be the way but unfortunately it does not work out that way. We all have experience of the flaws exposed when the 1948 Housing (Amendment) Act was put into operation. One of the reasons that the 1950 Housing (Amendment) Act was brought in was to straighten out these flaws.
One last point which I should like the Minister to clarify occurs on page two of the Explanatory Memorandum regarding the repairs of houses. I should like to know if the grant in that connection would include decoration of such a house. Quite substantial houses are put on the market and sold as they stand and the decoration of a subsidy house could come to a good deal of money.
No money will be provided for decoration of houses.
I would suggest to the Minister that he might consider including decoration of houses in that section. I think the decoration is a most essential factor in the preservation of a house.
There is one point which I omitted to mention when dealing with the question of the remission of rates, and I think I could take Deputy Briscoe up on this point. He mentioned that several residents' associations were quite satisfied with a ten years' remission of rates on a sliding scale. I attended a meeting of A.C.C.R.A., the Association of Combined Residents' Associations, the biggest organisation of the type in the Dublin area, and I never heard the period of ten years mentioned, but they were all in favour of a period of 20 years. I shall conclude on that note. I welcome the introduction of this Bill but I do not agree with all sections of it.
My contribution to this very important debate will be confined mainly to the housing activities of the Dublin Corporation in so far as they affect the people of Dublin South-Central. The Minister is to be complimented on bringing in this Bill, as any effort which will speed up the housing activities of local authorities and private builders must surely be welcomed on all sides of the House. The problem of bad housing, the legacy left to us by a foreign Government, has been tackled by successive native Governments until now we are in reach of our goal which is nothing less than a decent home for every family. The only sites available in the beginning were outside the city area and the movements of people to these outlying areas created enormous problems. The depopulation of our city proper has resulted in loss of business to traders and businessmen especially in the South-Central constituency.
The Churches, too, complain of losing touch with large numbers of their people. All in all, and I think it is agreed, every effort should be made to keep people in the area in which their social, business and religious lives are, and have been, centred for generations. The solution of course is flats. It is to be hoped that the building of flats in the City Quay area will soon commence. There are sites available on one side of Townsend Street which could be used for this purpose and, as far as possible, these flats should be given to people already living in the area and badly housed there.
Many of these are dockers and Gas Company shift workers to whom a flat near the quayside would be welcome. Old-established schools in these areas would also benefit. They can maintain the traditions and continuity which they were in danger of losing.
I should like to compliment the builders and architects on the designs of new flats in Grenville Street and Hogan Place. They are a great improvement on the old barrack type of flat. They are colourful and pleasant to look upon and add to the beauty of the city. My concern is of course with Dublin, but I am sure that all will agree that our capital should be the show piece and an example to the country as a whole. Well planned, beautiful and airy blocks of flats in the city centre must leave a profound impression on visitors. They will give the lie to those who say that the Irish are a careless lazy people to whom the niceties of civilisation are unknown.
I would ask the Minister not to encourage the building of mammoth garages in densely populated areas, especially in South-Central Dublin. These sites should be used for housing. Furthermore, the movement of cars in and out and around these places are a danger to school children in the areas.
Improved grants for repairs to existing houses are welcomed and the section dealing with resetting of condemned houses is also a step in the right direction. There is a need on the south side for a great number of one and two-roomed flats for old people similar to those on the north side of the city.
All in all, I hope the main effect of the Bill will be to galvanise the local authorities into greater activity. It is to be hoped it will no longer be said of the authorities responsible for the affairs of the city and country areas that they have no money to press on with this most important project, namely, the housing in proper surroundings of all citizens.
In so far as this Bill indicates that the Minister has decided there is need for a continuance of the housing drive, I am very pleased to welcome the measure. It indicates that we have not reached the point of finality in housing for the working classes, under the appropriate Acts, and for the ordinary people under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. I am particularly glad to note the increase in the various grants and the grants for the installation of water and sewerage.
I do not intend to speak at any great length on this Bill. I want to ask a few questions on matters in which I am personally interested. I want to know if a house built six or seven years ago under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts and which, normally, prior to this Bill, would not qualify for a grant for the installation of sewerage and water as a private supply will now qualify for an additional grant for such supplies where no piped supply is available. My interpretation of the Bill is that it does qualify. When he is replying, the Minister might make that point clear for my benefit.
There are one or two omissions from this Bill which if these matters were included would have strengthened it. I regret the Minister has not seen fit to insert a section to minimise the amount of legal costs in respect of small dwellings. The late Deputy Martin O'Sullivan was pretty well recognised as an authority on housing in Dublin. I remember him speaking here in 1948 or 1949 and suggesting to the then Minister that he should introduce standardised costs in respect of legal fees for small dwellings in a Bill. The Minister would be well advised to examine this Bill from that point of view. It may not be completely acceptable to certain people but, in the interests of the promotion of small dwellings, he should consider the matter. The legal costs amount to anything from £50 to £80 on very many houses. That is a serious imposition on the ordinary man who has to provide capital to meet that and to meet it almost immediately.
In one section of the Bill the Minister indicates that local authorities may now provide supplementary grants up to the full amount of the new grant. However, they also may not. So far as I know, many local authorities are now reducing the grants they formerly gave and in some cases they are not giving any supplementary grant at all. The Minister should consider including a section to provide that it be mandatory on local authorities to provide grants. It is ridiculous that, in one area, you will have a local authority giving the maximum grant, the same as the Government does, while in another area a means test of some sort is prescribed by the local authority or a reduced grant.
I want some information on housing grants and reconstruction grants and inspection in general. One would imagine that when a local government inspector visits an area and passes a house, say, for the maximum grant, the house is solid in construction, is likely to have a certain lifetime and complies with our housing requirements. It is a natural assumption that when a local government inspector comes out to certify a house as fit for the grant, it would meet these conditions. In the local authority area in which I am resident it is very strange to find the urban engineer, on visiting a house, to investigate the possibilities of the applicant securing a loan, deciding, and apparently there is no appeal against his decision, that the walls of the house were not thick enough, that the life duration of the house would be only 20 years, while the loan would be for 25 years, and that the sewerage was completely inadequate. He added to that, that the market value of the house was a figure which the applicant considered was ridiculously low.
While it is true that in the last City and County (Amendment) Act provision was made for a right of appeal on market value, and it has been exercised in this particular case, there is no appeal against the decision not to grant a loan. Apparently the county manager, who is the person who grants the loan, gets the certificate of the local engineer before he grants the loan. If the local engineer decides that the house is of poor construction, or that the life of the house is not as long as he considers desirable, or if for any reason he decides that the length of the sewerage pipe outlet is not sufficient, or is not wide enough, he can hold up a small dwelling loan. Surely it is wrong that there is not a right of appeal to the Minister in that case. I am quite sure that that state of affairs is not common but I do not think it desirable that it should happen at all. I am quite sure the Minister will find, if he makes an investigation in his Department, that all the facts I have mentioned can be substantiated. That case has happened and it probably will happen again unless the Minister takes steps to see that it will not arise.
I should also like to know what functions the local engineer, or an engineer attached to the local authority, has in connection with reconstruction grants. Is it correct that he does not certify in any shape or form, that he has no business even to check what has to be done in relation to the supplementary grant? It has been claimed, in my local authority, that when the Government inspector passes a reconstruction job that the local engineer has nothing to do with it. It has been said that we have got to follow their lead and give out the same grant, if we adopt the scheme. I feel there should be some clarification of the duties which both inspectors have. It is quite clear that the local government inspector is representing the Minister. Surely then, the local engineer should be representing the local authority. If that is so I should like the Minister to indicate that my view is correct.
That is all I have to say on this Bill except to mention that I welcome it and to congratulate the Minister for introducing it. I trust the implementation of the Bill, and the encouragement it will give to housing, will meet the point that I believe the Minister has in mind, that is, the furthering of building by private individuals. I also welcome the fact that in the Bill attention is given to the rural position, and that we can now get the two-third grants for slum clearance in rural areas. That was formerly confined to city and urban areas. I hope that the Bill will give some much-needed employment in the rural areas.
It is pleasing that one of the main objectives of the Minister is the clearing away, as soon as possible, of existing city slums, irrespective of where they are. In the City of Dublin many of those sites have already been cleared and it is proposed to erect blocks of flats on them. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that those flats are not confined to three-or four-storey blocks. One must consider the prohibitive cost of the initial site acquisition, the cost of subsequent site works, the provision of water, sewerage, roads, paths, etc. All these are necessary for the blocks of flats of three or four storeys.
I am sure most of Deputies in the House, whether from outside the city or not, are familiar with a very beautiful scheme in Dublin, namely, Dolphin House. We have there blocks of flats of four storeys with very wide open spaces between each of them. One wonders why, after all the initial cost, they were not made eight storeys high. That would have created a saving on the acquisition of other sites.
I would also urge on the Minister that consideration should be given to the installation of elevators and central heating. That might be a municipal matter but eventually it would come before him for sanction. I am not suggesting that such flats should be termed luxury flats. Undoubtedly, a greater rent would be required, possibly up to 15/- a week of an increase might be expected, on their existing rents. One bag of coal costs in the region of between 12/- and 15/- for those unfortunate people and, in addition, they would be saved the prohibitive cost of transport. The wage earner has to travel four or five miles to his work in the centre of the city. There is also the question of the housework, and unfortunately education of the children, because we have not attempted to build our schools at the same time as the houses were built and consequently children have to be transported each morning in C.I.E. buses from such places as Ballyfermot to Whitefriar Street.
This Bill, to my mind, is a measure which is overdue. Town planners may say that the aesthetics of the skyline would be affected if these flats stick up in the sky. It is rather a pity that we have so much land available for purchase, or acquisition, because if it were not available we would have to build upwards. Deputy Briscoe stated that we have only 6,000 more sites available for building.
Sixty.
Sixty sites? I understood at any rate that that meant 6,000 houses.
If the Deputy would pardon me, I said 61 sites available for building flats, which would provide some 5,000 or 6,000 flat dwellings; and we had 6,000 sites available for the building of single houses under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts.
I thank the Deputy. That is what I said—6,000 houses. When those 6,000 houses have been built, the Deputy said himself he did not know where further sites would come from. However, we are dealing with denuded parts of the City of Dublin and thinking in terms of the statements that there has been no lack of money for the past two years or year and a half. Nevertheless, the building industry, which is married to the housing problem, has never been so bad. I hope the Minister will take that into consideration.
In that connection, I would have the temerity to suggest that he and his Cabinet give consideration to the immediate appointment of a new Minister —a Minister for Works or a Commissioner of Works—who would deal with this problem, as that is the only effective way in which it can be dealt with. I am not suggesting that the Minister or his Department are inadequate, but I suggest that owing to the exigencies of the situation through which we are passing, with the complete collapse of the building trade, this city is now in a state never equalled in the last 45 years, since 1913.
I read in one of the evening papers this week that in the year before last there were some 6,000 applications for housing, in the following year 7,000, and 19,000 up to April of this year. I may be excused for dealing with this case from the point of view of building, but that is the only industry of which I have personal knowledge. I have been associated with the building industry. I have worked in it and have been an employer in it. During the war, many of my colleagues were obliged to buy or secure petrol under means which might not have had the blessing of the Department. Now they have plenty of petrol, but they have to keep the batteries turned on in the garages.
I wish we could use the petrol going home at this hour of the evening.
We shall not keep you too long.
This is an important matter.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present; House counted, and 20 Members being present,
Many may say we have enough Ministries, but we are in a crisis and emergency powers should be granted. If the Government decide, in their wisdom, that a commissioner should be appointed, I hope he will have emergency powers. We created a Department of Supplies and people were able to override them. The suggestion I make might help in the acquisition of sites.
Regarding the facilities under the Bill for the repair of old houses, I believe the 1954 Act was a total failure, at least in the manner in which it was administered. Let us take an example. A person wishing to avail of that Act secured the necessary forms and then secured an estimate form from a contractor for, let us say, £300. They were submitted to the surveyors. The local authorities were working on a schedule which may have been a practical or operative one in 1939. They in turn make their assessment accordingly. One has to remember that the applicant in many cases is almost without any funds. He places the contract and it proceeds and eventually is completed. Six months elapse before an inspector will appear and perhaps another 12 months. I am not speaking at random; I can give details of cases under this Act which are over two years completed and no money has come forward yet. In such instances the contractors would need to add 25 per cent. to the normal cost. Consequently, it is not working out. I trust that the Minister will see that those defects are remedied, whether they are municipal or otherwise.
The previous speaker has said that the local government inspector must come along. Municipal authorities will tell you that they have to wait for action by the Department of Local Government. I agree that these benefits will be a great fillip to the building industry and I am sure that, in regard to any extraordinary powers such as a Minister or Commissioner would have, he would have no opposition and possibly it would be the one thing on which we would be unanimous here.
I want to reiterate that my remarks are in no way political or against any particular Department or any particular Government. It has been said on both sides that the situation which exists is blameworthy from one to the other. I would ask the Minister to keep in mind the necessity for doing something to alleviate the present housing situation. Deputy O'Donnell said he thinks the shortage is coming to an end. I wonder if Mr. O'Toole of the Dublin Housing Allocations Department subscribes to that idea. Only this morning I was informed that a man with a wife and three children could not be housed because the room they were living in was a very large room and if they were housed there would be a loss of £500. In spite of that some say we are coming to the end of our housing problem. We may be. Thanks be to God, everyone will admit that is so throughout the country, but certainly that is not the situation in Dublin. It is my belief that up to another 10,000 houses are needed and, while conditions are as described at a meeting of Dublin Corporation last Monday night, we shall still need houses. I wish the Minister every success in the implementation of this Bill.
I should like to welcome the Bill inasmuch as it represents improvements on legislation that existed already, but we should not become excited about it. There is nothing in this Bill that will bring any dramatic change to the overall picture of our housing programme. It is amending legislation and the emphasis is on the amendments which do improve existing housing legislation. There is nothing in it that is a radical departure, or that can lead us to expect that we shall see a dramatic change in the housing position of this country.
The Bill proposes to encourage private enterprise in the conversion and improvement of the existing stock of dwellings, and we must look at it in that way. That is the real purpose of the Bill. It is not designed to expand the production of houses in a positive way. Instead, it is designed to improve existing dwellings and, in that connection, I should like to mention one particular point. Those who are familiar with building technique will agree that the difference in cost between improving an existing house and building a new dwelling is often very small, and sometimes the cost of making a good job of improvements is nearly the same as that of building a new house. One difference at least is that the existing house is on a site, and a person does not have the trouble of acquiring a site.
This Bill, with the emphasis on the word "Amendment", improves existing housing legislation and, in so far as it does that, it should be welcomed by every member of the House. We have been given a useful memorandum showing us what some of the improvements are, and it goes to show that this Bill tries only to improve the administration and the application of existing legislation. I quote from a comment in that memorandum dealing with loans: "Statutory authority exists under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts but is not operated at present, empowering housing authorities to make loans for the purchase of previously occupied houses." We have had examples where a house was occupied only in a technical way, where a person applied for a loan and may have gone in before the loan was approved, and had to get out again. In a technical way occupation had taken place and, as this memorandum states, the power was there and was not operated. This Bill is designed to ensure that any misunderstanding that would arise in relation to the occupation of a dwelling in such a way, even for a few hours by a family who expected to get a loan, will be cleared up. I have mentioned that as an example that the real value of this Bill is to ease the difficulties and to remove the misunderstandings which were in existing legislation, at the same time recognising that the existing legislation had the powers mentioned.
It was stated that Dublin City can provide 12,000 homes. They have 6,000 sites for single houses and they have space in which they could accommodate 6,000 families in flats. We know that Dublin Corporation needs homes for at least 5,000 families at the present time. There is a great necessity for them and no one can say that the completion of our housing programme is in sight. It is certainly no nearer to completion to-day than it was in 1956 when the row began in regard to both private and public house building.
A sum of £400,000 was provided at that time and a great part of that money is still unexpended. I would blame the campaign that took place at that time for the collapse of the building industry in Dublin and in the rest of the country. Many building contractors have ceased business and 75,000 operatives and building labourers have emigrated. We have emigration at the rate of 1,000 people a week at the present time, and a great many of those people were engaged in the building trade during the past ten years.
I have always advocated that the City of Dublin should be built upwards instead of being built out, and I vigorously opposed the extension of the city boundary which took over fertile lands adjoining the city, land on which a vast quantity of the vegetables consumed by the citizens was produced. That fertile land was covered by concrete roads, footpaths, dwelling houses and back gardens, and I felt that positive effort should have been made to build up the city rather than have that happen to the land. Approximately 6,000 acres were taken from the county for Dublin City.
Another point I should like to make in connection with this Bill is that it does not, in a very positive way, encourage the owners of house property in Dublin City to improve, repair and make more fit for human habitation the houses which they have. Most Deputies, in recent times especially, have got to know the housing conditions which exist in the Dublin South Central area. Possibly that area is worse than any other area in the city. It is obvious that thousands of families are living there under conditions which make their homes unfit for habitation, and it is obvious that the improvement of housing conditions for the people of that area should be begun immediately, but I feel that this Bill will not meet that need. It will not transform the housing capacity and housing facilities which we found in the Dublin South Central area, apart from the building of very welcome flats on the available sites in that portion of the city.
I feel, if a new departure in housing legislation were contemplated, that an effort should be made which would encourage landlords to improve dwelling-houses in which so many families at present are living in squalor in Dublin. I think it is a grave omission from this Bill. It is possible, of course, that we could have housing legislation in the future to meet that particular need.
The remission of rates is a very live issue at the present time amongst thousands of families who have moved into new dwelling-houses and, indeed, among those who built houses on their own initiative in many cases in other areas. The Bill proposes to extend for a period of ten years the seven-year period which previously existed, but it certainly does not meet the wishes of thousands of families who are asking for 20 years' remission in this case.
They have a case for it and a strong case when we consider the valuation applied to their dwelling-houses during the past ten years in respect of accommodation equal to or even less than many families whose valuation was applied many years back. They are living in houses which provide better accommodation nearer to their work. They have also many other advantages.
I feel that the Minister should have attempted to bridge the gap between the seventh year and the twentieth year instead of dealing with this matter for the first ten years. Deputy Belton has shown that although this change in the period of rates remission recognises the problem which exists for all these families it does not properly meet them. In fact, it is a very small concession when one puts down the figures and calculates over the period of ten years what the rates remission would be on this new scale compared with the two-thirds rate remission for the seven years which previously applied.
I feel that the people who are agitating for a better approach to this question of rates remission will be disappointed by this section of the Bill. They will have to admit that their problem has been recognised by the inclusion of this section in the Bill, but I think they will have to complain that their problem has not been properly met. No proper attempt has been made in this new legislation to provide some kind of a substantial easement of the rates position for many of these families. Any member of the corporation or county council recognises only too well the hardship which many families are experiencing now to meet the very high rates on their dwelling-houses. It was something which they did not expect would become so difficult for them. Their responsibilities have increased. When going into the houses they had not calculated what a blow these rates would be when the seven years had expired.
I should like to know from the Minister—possibly he would be able to assure me—whether, in fact, people who moved into these houses at any time since the war, since 1947, will now get the benefit of a further three years compared with people who have gone off now after nine years living in these houses and after paying rates for two years since the seven years have expired. I should like to know would it be possible for those people to get the advantage of the three years' extension. Of course, it is not three years' extension when we come down to the figures. I should like to know in what way are those people going to be met. It is a general problem in relation to the post-war housing.
I believe an investigation has been carried out regarding the cost of building flats. It seems to be a frightening cost when one considers that one of these large buildings which might accommodate up to 20 families is costing £3,000 per family. It is hard to believe that a building with only four walls and one roof would cost approximately £3,000. I should like to know if any serious effort is being made to put the microscope on those costs to see where exactly the real cost is and how does the cost of providing a flat amount to £3,000.
County council cottages are being provided by Dublin County Council for a figure of £1,500 or even much less. Those cottages or council houses provide far more accommodation and better accommodation than the £3,000 flats into which many families have moved in Dublin City. The cost of providing these flats is very important when one considers that it is related to the rent to be paid by the families moving into them. The rates of corporation and county council houses are live issues. They cause considerable hardship to many families. For that reason, I feel that an inquiry into building costs, particularly in relation to flats, should be carried out. I am quite sure that the matter has been considered several times by the technical officers of the various Departments but the ordinary man and, indeed, the family who moves into the flats find it difficult to believe that the flat costs £3,000.
Inasmuch as this Bill will make easier the administration of existing housing legislation and inasmuch also as it will encourage the improvement of existing dwellings, I welcome it. I am absolutely satisfied that the Bill is not going to bring a new housing drive. I believe that if a new housing drive were needed and that it did not take place under the legislation existing already, a new departure in housing legislation would have been necessary.
Up to the introduction of this Bill, the position in relation to housing was no different than it was a couple of years ago, when a very vigorous campaign was carried out by the Fianna Fáil Party which caused, in fact, the collapse of house building in Dublin City. Somebody seems to be amused by that but I can point out that money which was there in 1956 is not yet spent. At that time the Fianna Fáil members of the Dublin Corporation, in particular, carried on a very bitter campaign which caused considerable confusion in the city.
Surely that has no relation to the Bill before the House?
It has, Sir, because the Bill deals with legislation under which housing was carried out at that time.
The Bill does not relate to what happened years ago.
What happened years ago happened under the legislation that is being amended by this Bill. However, I do not intend to persist in that matter. I welcome this amending legislation because I think it has certain advantages. In relation to new and reconstructed houses the normal extension is taking place under this Bill and the grant is being increased by £25 for serviced houses. We also have an improvement in respect of the grants payable in respect of serviced houses.
There is one point I should like to mention in connection with a reply made by the Minister to a query when he said that grants would not be paid for the decoration of houses. Perhaps the Minister's definition of the word "decoration" would be different from mine. I understand that existing legislation does permit the payment of grants for reconstruction and decoration.
When I did intervene earlier it was on the question of whether grants would be paid for decorating, not decoration. It makes a slight difference to me.
Somebody is back pedalling.
The Minister is not in the habit of doing that if Deputy Dillon is. The question of decorating is all I intervened in.
Would there be a grant for the decorating of a house?
I did not say that. I do not like being misquoted.
Now he is going backwards.
I consider it is necessary to get that point cleared up. There is another question I should like to take up with the Minister. I had a question down to-day asking him whether he is prepared to introduce amending legislation in relation to Section 16 of the Housing (Amendment) Act, 1948, which would enable housing grants to be paid in instalments over a period of over 15 years or ten years since many persons cannot afford to carry out work which would enable them to qualify for payment of the full grant at one time. That may seem to be a peculiar question but it is one which arises frequently. Take the example of a person of very limited means who decides to carry out certain property repairs and improvements. He gets an estimate and is given a proportionate grant as the work he proposes to carry out is not as much as would involve the payment of the full grant. Say he would get a grant of £120 if he did a certain amount of work and, if he did half that amount, he would get a grant of £60. The difficulty is that if he gets a grant of £60 for doing half the work he cannot get another grant within 15 years. I feel that such a person, within 15 years, should be entitled to qualify for the full grant in relation to the various regulations which apply to his case.
The Minister replied: "I would direct the Deputy's attention to the terms of the Housing Bill which is before the House, in which provision is made for increased State and local grants for reconstruction work and for loans repayable over 15 years to persons carrying out such works". That does not answer my question. That reply would seem to make out that I was getting a favourable answer but I have searched the Bill and I cannot find in any part of it where a man having got portion of a grant can get the remainder of the grant within a space of fifteen years. There are quite a number of people who are able to do a little job every five years but if they do a little job and get a grant for it they cannot get another grant for 15 years.
Take for example a man who wants to put a room on his house and who has already done some improvement work. He cannot get a grant to put the room on his house if he has already got a grant for improvement. I hope the Minister will find a way of straightening out this matter. I welcome the Bill. It is an improvement and I hope it will do something to restore building activities. There is at present no building in progress in a general way and I cannot see in this Bill any encouragement which will bring back a building programme such as we knew in the years before 1957.
Naturally I welcome this Bill. Deputy Rooney has been attacking it one moment and applauding it the next. Deputies in Opposition blame Fianna Fáil for all their ills. The former Minister for Local Government is here and both he and Deputy Rooney have blamed Deputy Briscoe for the collapse of building in Dublin. I have never heard such hypocrisy in this House since it was first established. I took an active interest in that housing crisis and did everything I could to point out at that time why the housing programme was collapsing. All we wanted from the Minister and the Government at that time was an honest statement telling the people as a whole what the trouble was. We could not get that statement from them.
The Deputy's remarks have no relation to the Bill.
I am replying to allegations made against a colleague of mine who is not here to defend himself. I want to contradict all these statements because they are complete rubbish. Everybody knows that the shilly-shally methods of the Coalition Government put a number of contractors and a number of applicants up to their necks in debt.
Perhaps the Deputy would now come to the Bill.
The first thing Deputy Smith did when he became Minister for Local Government was to try to help a number of people who were turned down for loans. In County Dublin, 350 people were turned down for loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. He tried to honour the obligations of the previous Government so far as these people were concerned. Now, at the eleventh hour, we find people blaming Deputy Briscoe, in his capacity as a member of Dublin Corporation, for the collapse of the housing system.
We have had a number of deputations from A.C.C.R.A. It is an organisation of residents in County Dublin comprising approximately 5,000 or 6,000 householders. Some of these people are in a very bad way and cannot meet their commitments when they go on full rates. A number of houses have been declared vacant. I had to try to get some of these people housed by the Dublin Corporation and otherwise. I take this opportunity of telling the House about that problem in County Dublin and on the borders of the city so far as houses purchased by the aid of loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts are concerned.
These people pay only one-third of the full rates for a period of seven years, after which time they go on full rates. The section introduced by the Minister for Local Government in this Bill is most acceptable. In future, tenants will not feel the increase of rates so much as in the past when they came on to the full rates after seven years. This is a social problem, too. A number of people are in a very bad way. Some of them cannot meet their commitments. They have young families. At first, the interest rate on loans was 2¾ per cent. but now it has gone up to 6¼ per cent. People who wanted to get married, to have a home and to rear a family were faced with growing difficulties. Such people are assets to the country. A number of them have emigrated and have been forced out as a result of the high interest charges. They had to repay the loan, pay ground rent and rates. The outgoings for the average householder are about £3 10s. a week. In a great many cases they are drawing only from £9 to £10 per week and if they had any trouble or illness they immediately felt the pinch. Hardly a week passes without my having to do something about these problems.
The low interest charges in the Housing Bill, 1947, were very acceptable to everybody. The present high interest charges really have an international bearing. In some cases, too, the valuation of houses is very high. We have a social problem on our hands, in my constituency and I do not know how to surmount it. In Ballymun, a number of houses are idle because people could not carry on and just left them. Some of them have been housed by the Dublin Corporation. I am not asking the Minister to wave a magic wand but to do everything in his power to alleviate the position. I have discussed this matter with him and I appreciate his difficulties.
The Fine Gael Party now want a 20-years' remission. If they had done that while they were in office we would have appreciated their feelings a great deal more in that respect than we do now. Being in Opposition, I suppose they feel that they have not the same responsibility. This problem arose, too, during the term of office of the Coalition Government because when people were coming on full rates the same difficulties were there. The Fine Gael Party have gone to town to-day on this Bill and in their demand for a 20-years' remission.
This Bill will not affect the people about whom I am concerned now. We cannot introduce retrospective legislation because we do not know how far back we would have to go.
Would the price of tea, butter and bread have anything to do with it?
I did not interrupt the Deputy while he was speaking.
Deputy P.J. Burke was not even here.
What about milk at 1/- per gallon?
The reconstruction grants introduced in this Bill are a wonderful advance. A number of persons whose houses are in a state of decay will apply for those grants and some employment will be created. Unless the present high interest rates are reduced, I believe that, as time goes on, there will be fewer applicants for loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. For that reason alone, the Minister has made a good advance even in giving loans for the reconstruction of houses, thus helping people to put and keep their houses in perfect condition and also creating a certain amount of employment.
I welcome the provision to increase the amount of money for water and sewerage facilities. Some householders in County Dublin, though near a water and sewerage scheme, are not in a position to pay for the installation of these services. In a number of cases, the landlords will not do this work. There are a number of places in my constituency where the water and sewerage is passing by the doors of the houses but the people cannot afford to do the work of installation and the landlords will not do it for them and, in certain cases, the local authorities will not do it. I was wondering if it would involve the Department in a big outlay if they considered attending to that problem.
Finally, I wish to compliment the Minister on this very advanced legislation and to stress that in the past there were certain cases where householders applied for reconstruction grants and there was a type of means test applied to them. The means test took the form that Paddy Murphy was not a worker and did not come under Section 12 of the Housing (Amendment) Act, which dealt with reconstruction grants. I had a number of these borderline cases which I brought to the Minister's attention and to the attention of his predecessor. The present Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Smith, dealt with a few of them when he was Minister for Local Government. During the consideration of this Bill, I should like the present Minister to look at these borderline cases of people who were deprived of reconstruction grants in the past.
On a few occasions I confessed that I was rather green when dealing with certain matters discussed here. On this subject, however, I think I can claim to be something of an authority. I am vice-chairman of the Housing Committee of Dublin Corporation and we meet every week. In three years I have missed only four meetings, during the by-election and during the general election, and therefore I think I have some factual knowledge of the housing position in Dublin.
The building of houses in Dublin, except under the Small Dwellings Act, has been finished, or will be finished within the next 12 months. The position at the moment is that there are approximately 6,000 applications with our allocation officer. It is proposed to build 6,000 flats in the city so that they will absorb all those whose names are down for allocation. Most of the people to whom flats will be allocated will come from the tenements which we now propose to reconstruct or renovate. Therefore, there may be a surplus of houses. Those people who are to be put into flats are at present living in tenements. That is the factual position.
There are no facilities in Dublin for house building at present. Deputy Briscoe referred to 6,000 sites but he was referring to sites outside the city, not within it. There are no housing sites within the city. It is not proposed to build houses and I do not think very many will avail of the opportunity to build houses, or to get loans for houses under the Small Dwellings Act. It has been my experience that hundreds are not able to pay their way and are begging the corporation to give them dwellings under the Working Class Acts. I had two cases of people who were evicted during the week.
Much has been said during the last month or two about the building of flats and all the employment which such building would provide. The building of flats does not provide more employment than the building of houses. It is not expected that at any time we can build more than 600 flats a year in the City of Dublin. Where you have virgin sites building can proceed at once but when it comes to the building of flats there are such matters as compensation to be looked after; there is legal action and there is demolition. All kinds of plans are turned down, both by the Housing Committee and the Minister. Many promises were made about improving the flats in Vicar Street, but prior to that, approval was held up by the Department. If we can build 600 flats a year we shall be very lucky. At that rate the maximum number employed will not be more than 400 so that there is no question of large numbers being employed.
I want to congratulate the Minister on this Bill because I am very interested in the question of preserving old tenements. Some years ago I put down several motions in the city council regarding this question, but they got very little sympathy because the people there wanted to keep on building houses. I warned them that the people would not go out to the houses and they are not going out. Three out of every four people refused to accept an allocation in Finglas or Ballyfermot. They would rather stay put until flats are built or perhaps they will be satisfied with houses which are reconstructed. The situation is so bad that our allocation officer has decided to give no transfers, no matter how just a claim might be, from the Ballyfermot area.
The renovation or reconstruction of those old dwellings is rather belated. If it had been done ten years ago we would have saved a couple of million pounds. We average it out that four families could live in a tenement with two or three rooms apiece. If £500 were spent on each dwelling, amounting to £2,000 for a tenement, you can judge how much the authorities would save. With the cost of flats at £2,600 the housing authority would be saving a very large sum of money in preserving the tenements. A very large number of people living in our housing estates would gladly go back to those tenements if they were renovated. There are 1,200 applications for transfer back to the city and dozens are leaving those estates every week because they cannot pay their way and because of the high cost of transport and foodstuffs.
This is a good Bill because it will enable people, who due to economic circumstances can only afford so much for rent, to live in the city. They will now be in a position to save money by going to cut price shops and perhaps getting employment. Hundreds of people in those out-of-town areas are not able to come into town. I know the position. Many things are hidden from the general view but they are not hidden from me. I made application for approximately 1,500 people in the past three years to be transferred. There are actually 400 people in the courts every year because they cannot pay their rents and most of them would gladly avail of this opportunity either to get back to a flat or to a renovated tenement.
Much has been said to the effect that something should be done about erecting flats. The reason why they have not been erected is simple enough. Before you build a flat you must acquire ground and ground in the city is very costly. In the country it is a different matter; you buy the land and you do not have to compensate anybody. You have to compensate every one with a little hill of his own in the city, including the man with a stable or a shop, when the house has to be demolished. All those come into the cost of a flat.
In regard to the question of doing something about the cost of flats, everything has been done. The Minister himself has repeatedly turned down plans and then we have had to replan. I am quite certain that half of our dwellings built in the last ten years will not stand up another ten years. Grenville Street is a case in point. Deputies should take a good look at it. The railings are well painted but they will bend quite easily. That is all due to the Minister's drive for economy, in an endeavour to bring down the cost of flats.
The renovation of old dwellings will give poor people an opportunity to live in the city, where the rent may be 10/- or 12/- and where they will not be subject to differential rents. That is a bogey; it will be a never-ending sore. It is the cause of all the trouble in the courts that one never hears about— every month, 200 decrees over on the Quay, but nothing in the papers about them. For that reason, I welcome the opportunity the Minister is giving poor people to get into the town where they can find their own level.
In connection with the renovation of old tenements, we want speed. In the past we took a year, but this new Bill gives the green light in many respects. In the past, one had to be a member of the working class in order to get a grant. Now, so long as a dwelling is capable of being used for the working class, it gets the grant. That means there is the green light right away.
Dublin Corporation say that in the past they had not sufficient qualified personnel to deal with claims for grants, but they say now that they have the staff. There are other snags, partly their own fault, partly the Department's fault and partly the fault of the people themselves, who send in wrong applications and wrong estimates. The corporation say now that they can deal with a flood of claims and can expedite any claims they get.
Two years ago I had a motion down to ask the Dublin City Manager to request the Minister to bring in legislation to compel the landlords to apply for the grants. In the past, the vast majority of owners refused to apply for grants. It seems that we have power now to walk in and carry out the repairs ourselves and either collect the rents or sue for the cost. There is a snag still. It appears that, in the section dealing with our powers, the landlord is bound only to carry out repairs which are "reasonable" repairs. The corporation officials fear that if they carry out the repairs and then submit a bill of costs, they will be challenged in court, because while the repairs may be in accordance with the opinion of the medical officer of health, the owner may say that what was carried out was beyond what was reasonable. In view of that, some phrase should be used, to cover reasonable repairs in accordance with the conditions laid down by the medical officer. That would help the corporation to go ahead without fear.
This is a good Bill and it appeals to me, but we do not want any hitches afterwards, either in the holding up of claims or in the making of payments, nor do we want the actual repairs challenged by the owners. We want speed all the time, if anything is to come out of it.
Another matter is that the corporation ask that Section 23 of the Housing Amendment Act of 1948 should be amended to include housing operations in the case of unfit rooms or premises where prohibition orders are obtained in the District Court because of the general unfitness of such rooms or premises under Section 113 of the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878. I shall explain the position. In all cases under Section 23, it seems that the local authorities can get the full subsidy, but in the cases under Section 113 of the 1878 Act they can get only a lower subsidy. It appears that there are difficulties and long delay in getting possession under the 1878 Act. Therefore, they want Section 23 amended to include the matter to which I have referred.
Much has been said about the rents of corporation dwellings not covering maintenance costs. That is a complete falsification of the facts. It has been admitted by corporation authorities on cross examination, that maintenance costs for corporation houses of 40 years' standing are not any greater than the maintenance costs of housing built in the last ten years. To the Minister's knowledge, a great many of those houses and flats built in the last ten years have been the subject of many complaints by tenants and owners under the Small Dwellings Acts. In the old days there were good brick houses built without speed, but in the past ten or 15 years the builders have been anxious to build on the cheap, their whole concern being to finish the job and to get their money. We shall pay for that in years hence, when it comes to maintenance work.
Whether one agrees with Deputy Sherwin or not, one is constrained to concede that he is a man talking about something he knows. It is a very interesting comment on this Fianna Fáil Housing Bill that we have reached the stage when a Bill is introduced into this House to promote our people from houses into tenements. For three generations, we have worked in this city to eliminate tenements and to put our people into decent houses. Now Deputy Sherwin, knowing the conditions in which people are living in Dublin Corporation and Small Dwellings Acquisition Act houses, rejoices that there is a prospect of many of them getting back into houses for which they can afford to pay, back into the tenements of the slums. Deputy Burke, whose heart was bleeding for his constituents who, he said, could not afford to pay their rents and could not afford to pay the transport charges——
The Coalition did that.
I wonder does he and the Fianna Fáil Party begin to realise the consequences of raising the price of bread, butter and bus fares to the people of the city? It is only beginning to produce these results, and Fianna Fáil's remedy is that if people cannot afford to live in corporation houses then Fianna Fáil will recondition the slums for their accommodation. I wonder now—cross his heart and hope to die—does Deputy Booth welcome a Housing Bill designed to recondition tenements for the accommodation of the working people of the City of Dublin?
I think that a Minister for Local Government who comes before Dáil Eireann with that purpose is a figure of fun, but it is tragic fun, and I am happy to think that it is an obscene joke that will not be long allowed to disfigure the City of Dublin. When I think of the shrieks of Deputy Briscoe, about the zeal he was yearning to display to increase the numbers of houses that could be built, and then look at the figures provided by the Minister in introducing the Estimate for his Department yesterday—7,000 houses a-building in 1956, 5,000 houses a-building in 1957 and 4,000 houses a-building in 1958—it seems to me that Deputy Briscoe's zeal has vanished as completely as has his chain and plaque and, perhaps, there is a connection between the two things. They found him out.
Do not start your nonsense now. It is a bit late in the evening to start it—the moon is not out yet.
Do Deputies remember the allegations that the existing legislation was inadequate, that it was designed to arrest building, and that it had the result of creating unemployment in the building trade? Do Deputies remember that Fianna Fáil were straining at the leash to put that right? Look at the result: 7,000 houses, 5,000 houses, 4,000 houses, and a Bill to facilitate the transfer of our people from houses back to the tenements on conditions they can afford to meet.
The Minister for Local Government knows nothing of Dublin. If he did his blood would run cold to hear himself saluted as the Minister to recondition tenements. There is not a city in the civilised world that would not hang its head for shame in contemplation of such a programme. I am proud and happy to recall as a result of the housing policy of the Government of which I was a member——
You never had a policy.
——that Deputy Sherwin is constrained to say to-day that the truth is that in the City of Dublin we have reached a point from which we can see the end of the housing problem, and that there is close upon us the day when nothing but the policy of the present Government will prevent adequate housing being available to everybody, if they had not had their incomes reduced by the increased cost of living pressed down upon them by the increases in the cost of food.
Caused by the mess left by the Coalition.
People would be able to pay their rents had they not been robbed by the increased bus fares——
Caused by the Coalition.
——by the increased cost of butter and the increased cost of bread. If those increases had not taken place, houses would not be standing vacant in Finglas, and in other building estates that have been constructed over the last 15 years. It would not be necessary to send the tenants back to the reconditioned tenements which our fathers set out to eliminate 40 years ago. Certainly we have travelled full circle but I am happy to think not for long. I want to direct the attention of the House to one absurd anachronism in the present situation. There are, in this city, a very considerable number of large Victorian houses which are quite useless for individual occupancy under modern conditions, because nobody could afford to staff them. There are a number of enterprising people in the city who have been buying these houses and converting them, at their own expense, into flats, and very good flats too. These people have been informed by the town planning officer that they will not be allowed to convert them for the extraordinary reason that their conversion into flats may unduly densify the traffic in the particular districts in which they are. Is that not draft? I know people——
I never heard of that.
——and the Deputy happens to know them too, who were actually carrying out the work at their own expense, as a legitimate investment, and who have been told to stop.
For other reasons.
That is the reason alleged to me.
Ask them to put it in writing.
If you go into the suburban roads in Dublin, as well as places such as Merrion Square, into the suburban roads in Ballsbridge and other places, surely instead of letting these large houses fall away, if you can find people who are prepared to invest their own money on the conversion of them, they should be allowed to do so.
When we in Dublin Corporation ourselves are doing that to houses we are not going to stop other people.
There is no use in saying you are not going to stop other people. I have seen the prohibition order. If it should not happen, let it be stopped, or otherwise authorise me to say to these people: "Apply to the Lord Mayor and the city manager and they will cancel the order." I am now alleging that in Dublin City enterprising citizens are prepared to invest money, in the conversion of substantial vacant houses into good, modern flats, and they are being prohibited from doing so by the planning authority, not on the ground that their conversion is unsuitable but that it will create excessive concentration of population into the areas where they are situated.
"Density of population"—that is not what the Deputy said before.
What do you mean?
He said density of traffic before. There are laws of the State under which the local authority has to deal with density of population in a particular space of ground.
Look, I lived in these houses when, between the family and the domestic staff, there were 14 living in the house. Their conversion into flats involved the installation of three families which between them would not amount to 11 people. If it was not excessive density when there were 14 living in the house, why is it excessive density when we have three families living in the house with facilities we never dreamed of in our days when we had no water above the ground floor? Now there is hot water on every floor, lavatory accommodation and everything else.
I am told that this Bill is meant to facilitate the operation of bringing four or five families back from Ballyfermot and Crumlin and ramming them into tenement houses in Gloucester Street. If that is not absolute insanity I do not know what is. If any order of that kind submitted to the city manager is cancelled by some responsible person then my case falls to the ground. If I am to be told that this Bill is to facilitate the corporation to accommodate families to come back from Crumlin and Ballyfermot and at the same time that you cannot convert large houses in Ballsbridge into flats, then I say this legislation is haywire. The fact is that neither the town planning authority nor anybody seems to be able to control it. We are now reaching the stage in the city where the corporation is trying to do one thing and the town planning authority is doing the opposite. Nobody has thought of trying to make the two march together.
I can assure Deputy Briscoe that if he could turn his mind to inquire into the question he would do a great deal more useful work than when he was roaring and bawling from this side of the House trying to precipitate the situation which involved the unemployment of hundreds of workers in the building industry in this city and enforced emigration to Great Britain.
I welcome any legislation directed to procure good houses for our people. I sympathise with Deputy Sherwin's sentiment in aiding people who are in embarrassed circumstances and who yearn for housing accommodation less burdensome in the matter of rent and rates than they have at present. That is not the real remedy. You may say what you like. You may recondition tenements whatever way you like. They are the slums. They will revert to slums if they have entrusted to them four or five families for which they were never designed and for which they were wholly unsuitable.
I am puzzled to hear it said that the differential rent system is operating to make it impossible for families to keep their houses. I understand that the whole purpose of the differential rent system was to ensure that poor persons with heavy family responsibilities would have a low rent and that well-to-do families would pay an economic rent and that between those two figures there would be various gradations to meet the individual circumstances of the family. How that system can operate to drive people out of their houses for want of the money to pay the rent is a mystery to me. I thought that the system was that rents would be related to family income. I am astonished if Deputy Sherwin's version of the facts is true. I do not profess to know as much about the City of Dublin. There have been vast changes since I lived in Dublin.
The differential rents system is one that operates more intensively in Dublin than in rural Ireland but it ought not be allowed to operate to put people out of their homes. I do not think it was intended to do so. Deputy Briscoe shakes his head.
Humanely operated.
It is between the Deputy and Deputy Sherwin. It is the duty of the Minister for Local Government to see that equity and justice are done, but I hope, when he finds out and reviews the impact of the differential rents on the residents of this city and when the Estimates are being prepared, he will bear in mind that their incomes have been abated by the increased cost of living which his Government has put upon them. Regard must be had to that when the differential rents are being measured. The housewife with seven or eight children has a very heavy additional burden to bear when buying bread and butter under the conditions now obtaining.
I should like to point out——
Deputy Briscoe made his statement and he should allow Deputy Dillon to make his.
I listened with attention to Deputy Sherwin. I am prepared to listen to anybody. I want to make a few general observations for the good of Deputy Briscoe's soul. I am particularly horrified at the prospect of reconditioning tenement houses. I hope the Minister will have second thoughts on that. The sooner we pull down the tenement houses, wipe them out and provide for those who have lived in them too long, clean, decent, modest houses, the rent of which shall be measured to their capacity to pay, the better it will be for us.
I rejoice to have this to record. I was speaking recently to an international observer who visited countries all over the world. He said to me: "Mr. Dillon, since I have come to Ireland I have been puzzled because in every other country to which I was summoned in an official capacity I found myself confronted with the problem of an acute housing shortage and a greater or lesser absence of passable roads. Ireland is the first country to which I have come where it appears to me you have too many houses, if anything, and too many roads and most of them too good." I was happy to say to him that we had known our period of poverty and when we got the means we knew how to use them. It is our proud boast that, alone in Europe, it is almost true to say, we have satisfied the housing needs of our people and provided that every citizen of this State shall have a decent roof over his head.
I exhort the Minister not to hold out before our people the objective of reconstructing tenements for the accommodation of the people of this city. It is an ignoble objective and if Deputy Booth does not feel free to say it in public then I hope he will approach the mighty behind closed doors and tell them that it revolts his soul to have his name associated with any such contemptible programme.
I shall be very brief on this matter but I should like to compliment the Minister on this Bill. I think that in its own way it will prove a very welcome asset to our housing policy. I was surprised to find, when going through the Bill, that a certain section of the people in which I am interested will not qualify under it. The people I refer to are people who live on small farms within a certain valuation. We, in north Tipperary find that we can build houses for labourers but we are not empowered to build a house for a small farmer within a certain valuation. When I say a small valuation, I mean a valuation of £7, £8, £9, £10 and £11.
I am elaborating on this point only to see if the Minister can justify that injustice to those people. If you take a small farmer of £12 or £13 valuation who is living in a small and very old house, and they are quite common all over the country, under this Bill that farmer will not qualify for a grant. Most of these old houses are built on the mud wall system and the inspectors will not pass such houses for reconstruction due to the thickness of the old walls.
That means that if the farmer cannot get a reconstruction grant he can only build a new house. When he starts to do that he finds that his total grant will be between £400 and £500. The house will cost him between £1,700 and £2,000. Therefore that farmer is completely out. In North Tipperary we find that farmers who have applied for loans are faced, after meeting all their commitments, with the payment of from £60-£80 a year each on the loan already received from the county council. You can imagine any small farmer in Kerry, Donegal, Leitrim or anywhere else paying that amount year by year for any house.
You have the difference between the worker earning a good wage and the farmer with a good income from his big holding but the small type farmer of the kind I mentioned has never been catered for by any Government. If you take a small farmer who gets a loan of £1,400 or £1,500 from the county council, he has to pay £80 a year on that loan. For a loan of £1,500 to be repaid in 35 years he will have to pay in interest alone £1,000, plus the original £1,500. I may be wrong in that figure. It is a guess.
It would be more than double.
So we have a type of small farmer in the country who is not able to build the house he would like to build and we have had Governments down through the years who have not been able to give him these concessions. Would the Minister consider allowing county councils to build a house for such a man on the same terms as they can build houses for labourers?
It has been done already in County Limerick.
In North Tipperary houses are built for people with valuations up to £5 or £6 but on valuation over that the county council cannot build for them. I should like the Minister to take note of this. The type I am referring to is the person who comes between the labourer and the average farmer of £30 or £40 valuation. That person is in as bad a position to-day as he was 40 years ago. He does not get a grant for reconstruction because the old type of house is so poor that the reconstruction inspector will not pass it. To build a new house is too great a liability for him because he knows he will not be able to pay the money.
This type of person has been left out all through the years and I would ask the Minister to give a person in that position some concession if it is in his power to do so. He could give a direction to the county council to build a house for such a person. If he is not able to do that, would he reduce the rate of interest to those farmers so that, after meeting their commitments to the authorities, they would be able to pay the interest plus some of the capital? Despite all the Housing Acts passed by this House we still have a type of people who are not qualified for a grant of any kind.
Listening to the debate, it was rather hard to discern whether the speeches made by Deputies were Estimate speeches or ones concerned only with the Bill before us. To go into detail on the innumerable points raised by various Deputies, some relevant and some not, would take a very great deal of the time of the House. If, during my reply now, I seem to miss out some of the points that have been made, it is only because very many of these points are more relevant to the Committee Stage than to this debate this evening. Indeed, some of them will be dealt with, if not on the Committee Stage, on the closing speech on the Estimate to which, as I said, many of them really refer.
It would appear from the general tone of speakers from all sides of the House that the Bill as presented, while not going all the way to meet the wishes of all Deputies in the Opposition, is welcome. No matter what criticism any of them may have made on its shortcomings, at some stage or another all of them welcomed the provisions of the Bill even though they may have made reservations as to the actual operation of the various sections when enacted.
Starting almost at the tail-end of the speakers, in order to clear the fog that has been created, I think I should refer very briefly to Deputy Dillon's contribution. He gave us the type of speech that it is not unusual for him to make in this House. Those of us who have had experience of his aberrations and entertainments here in the past were not surprised. In my case, so far as this Bill is concerned, so little real criticism was made of its terms until Deputy Dillon got up that I began to wonder, sitting here, whether or not that in itself was something which should give me cause for fear— fear lest the Bill was not a good one and that the Opposition were feeling that in the future we would learn to regret it.
I was very pleased indeed to find Deputy Dillon having one of his mental aberrations and going to great extremes to condemn the terms of the Bill, basing his condemnation on a misreading and misunderstanding of the views expressed by Deputy Sherwin who spoke before him. Deputy Dillon spent his time endeavouring to put it across here and, I take it, outside this House that Fianna Fáil are now trying to bring people back into tenement and slum dwellings after spending 30 years getting them out of them. Nothing could be further from the truth, nor could Deputy Sherwin's contribution be any more misconstrued, no matter how deliberately one tried to do it. I have sufficient regard for. Deputy Dillon's intelligence to realise that it was scarcely a mistake on his part that that misconstruction of another Deputy's remarks should have taken place. However, these mental aberrations are not unknown to us. In this case, it was a source of gratification for me to know that the terms of the Bill so upset Deputy Dillon that this type of attack should have taken place. It gives me reason to believe that the good in the Bill and the good it will do was the cause of his upset.
From there on, I think we shall forget about Deputy Dillon except to say that, while he made the very vicious charge that we were bringing back tenement dwellings and slums into the city by deliberate action of this Bill, he at the same time found fault with the planning authority of this city and the Dublin Corporation because, in some case or another which came to his notice, they would not agree to slum conditions being created where they do not exist. I think that is Deputy Dillon's sole contribution—attacking Fianna Fáil and this Bill for bringing back tenement conditions and then finishing up his speech by berating the local authority in Dublin City for not allowing them to be created where they do not exist. The inconsistency of the Deputy is well known. I want to put on record just how inconsistent he can be when he may be trying either to get a point across in the House or possibly to entertain some of the distinguished friends whom he brings into the House to listen to him and admire his oratory which, undoubtedly, is first class, if you disregard what he is saying.
Moving from there and in order to try to short-cut the closing speech on this stage of the Bill, I think it might be well to take, generally, the provisions and additions which the Bill, if enacted, will in my estimation bring about. New housing grants, as we knew them, will continue at no less a rate than they have been obtaining in the past and up to the present. In one case, there will be a decided increase for the section of the community living in an unserviced area without sewerage or water schemes serving in their district. Where those schemes are not likely to be made available in the future, an additional new house grant of £25 from the Department of Local Government will in all cases be made. Provision is in the Bill to enable the local authority to pay an additional £25 supplementary grant in appropriate cases.
Water and sewerage grants will not only continue in the future as they have been in the past but the grant of £40 will be increased to £50 in the future for water and from £20 to £25 for sewerage. Where both jobs are done at one and the same time, an over-all compounded grant of a maximum of £75 will be allowable, with the enabling and permissive provision for the local authorities to do likewise in so far as supplementary grants to the same amount are concerned, as and how they themselves decide how to operate it.
Loans are one of the big advances, I consider, in this new legislation— loans for reconstructing buildings and for doing improvement jobs to our houses. These loans will be available, under Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts code, from the local authority. What is more important, the money will be made available to the local authorities from the Local Loans Fund, thus enabling them to finance any borrowings that may take place under reconstruction or improvement schemes in future.
Another change that has taken place in regard to repair and improvement grants is that in future the suitability of the dwelling for reconstruction and repair will be the deciding factor as to whether, in a particular case, a reconstruction or repair grant will be paid. In the past these houses had to meet certain requirements as to their being suitable for a particular class of person and also that they were of a certain type. The main point is that in future if a house requires repairs to provide suitable living accommodation then that will be the test as to whether or not a repair or improvement grant will be paid. That then may have the effect of bringing into the scope of housing grant aids persons who in the past were left out, such as farmers whose valuations exceeded £50. Such people whose houses conform to the general conditions that I have already mentioned may in future get these grants.
In addition to that they may also apply and obtain loans to help them out with their repairs over a period of 15 years. Letting grants, which were a feature of past legislation, are continued and there is no change in so far as they are concerned. One feature which I think will be most appreciated —apart from the question of farmers, who are over a certain valuation and who were not catered for in the past, being brought in—and which makes this not only a rural Bill, as some Deputies have suggested, but also a city Bill, is the provision which covers houses in the city. These may possibly be in terraces, or whole streets, and owned by landlords who, due to rent restrictions, lack of capital and other reasons, have not been able to preserve these houses in proper condition in the past and who formerly were not able to get any assistance from the Government through the various Acts. They will now come under the scope of this Bill where assistance is required to provide suitable living accommodation. That I think is going to confer a very big benefit on Dublin and other cities, but particularly Dublin. All of us who come to Dublin occasionally, realise the vast number of houses in that category which exist here and which, if allowed to deteriorate further, will only add to the burden of work which will have to be done in the future.
Some Deputies welcomed the Bill but at the same time made reservations. One such reservation which was made by several Deputies on the Opposition benches, was that no matter what good was in the Bill it would not have any effect on improving the employment position, so far as the building trade was concerned. If we succeed in repairing, reconstructing, or building additional houses as a result of any or all of the provisions in this Bill, and as these people have admitted there will be some increase, surely it is completely inconsistent to allege that having carried out more work and possibly built more houses, there will not in fact be an increase in employment in the building trade.
Who is to do the work? Are we to call in some of the legal profession to build the houses for us? Are we to ask doctors to reconstruct them for us, or persons in some such category who have no connection with the building trade and could not do anything about it? Quite obviously if there is to be additional money available by way of loan and grant, both in this year and in the years to come, then building operatives must of necessity gain substantially by way of increased employment during the course of those operations. It will not stop there. The provision of materials must in turn give additional employment in various parts of the country. I feel satisfied that if those various improvements, whether they be large or small, take place they will result in more employment. There will be more operatives working in the future than in the past and other workers will be engaged in providing the materials.
Deputy O'Donnell, who was in the Department of Local Government himself, started off, as indeed did some of his colleagues, by saying it was an admission on my part, on the part of Fianna Fáil and the Government, that building was practically finished, that house building had reached the stage where we did not need any more building. Some of his colleagues even went further and made it more definite. They said that we had reached the point where we did not need a single new house at all. I am not making any such admission. I have not admitted that in the past; I do not intend to admit it now. I shall go even further and say that, apart altogether from the evidence that has been produced from various Deputies, on both sides of the House, for the need for further building in some parts of the country, and even in Dublin, apart from that immediate demand for building new houses and flats, one must realise that once built they do not last for ever. Unfortunately I would say that the houses which have been built more recently will last for a much shorter time than the houses built many years ago, when times were more leisurely, and labour was practically slave labour.
Taking it all round, if we realise that there are somewhere in the region of 700,000 dwellings, and even allow for the fact that the life of many of these should be around 100 years, the annual replacement of obsolescent dwellings should be in the region of 7,000 houses per year. Even if they last 200 years it would still mean that the obsolescent houses to be replaced would amount to 3,500. We are, in fact, building fewer than that number, or somewhere around that number allowing a 200-year span for the life of a house. It would be a very happy matter for all of us if we could feel that the houses with which we are familiar would last 200 years. We know that is not so. We also know, that being so, that we are going to continue building houses in the future, year after year. As long as any of us is alive and kicking, houses will continue to be built and must be repaired at a rate certainly not less than that approximating to one-third of those repaired after a 200 years' span.
Deputy O'Donnell went on to ask, while he agreed with the provisions if they worked, why should we not compel the local authorities to operate the supplementary grants schemes and the other schemes contained here, which are only inserted as permissive legislation in this Bill. Other Deputies have come across with the same story. I have a note of them here and possibly at a later stage we may deal with various efforts on their part to put across the idea that I, in putting this Bill through the House, should take power to compel local authorities to spend ratepayers' money on doing a particular job. I do not intend to compel the local authorities to do this job. I believe that the local authorities are mature people who know what they want in regard to these things, who have regard to the general well-being and ability of the ratepayers to pay. I believe that they are as anxious as we are in this House, to provide these financial aids, in addition to what the Government will give for the provision of housing in both new and reconstruction jobs.
Realising that, I say that I shall not under any circumstances consider compelling the local authorities to do as Deputy O'Donnell and other Deputies on his side of the House ask me to compel them to do. I shall appeal to the local authorities to row in with us as they have done in the vast majority of cases in the past, to row in with the Department and with the Government in helping to add to the assistance we are providing directly from the Exchequer by way of these supplementary grants and by way of providing the loans and the machinery for the administration of the loans, the money for which we are providing now from the Local Loans Fund.
The one big argument I would put to them in regard to these things is one which, at all times while I was a member of a local authority, was the deciding argument as to whether we should have supplementary grants to the full 100 per cent. permitted in those days. That big argument was that, by and large, the people who would qualify for the supplementary grants are people in an income group —or at a valuation level, should they be farmers—who would in time, if not housed by their own efforts with the aid of grants from the State or local authority, fall to be housed by the local authority entirely at the full cost of the house to the rates or the Exchequer or both. That cost would be very much greater, possibly ten times greater, than that which it would cost to contribute at this stage to enable those people to provide houses for themselves.
Under the present system, those people will regard their houses with pride; they will regard them in a better way than if they rented houses; they will preserve them longer and, by and large, they will be a greater asset to the community than if they were trodden down to the point where they had to call out to the local authorities to provide houses for themselves and their families. To my mind, as a member of a local authority, that was the final justification for my continued support and advocacy of the operation in full of the supplementary grants of the past.
That is the argument I would couple with my plea to all local authorities to-day, asking them for their co-operation and their assistance by adding to our grants from the Department their supplementary grants in all future cases. I believe they will do that, as they have proved in the past they were prepared to do it; and, if they do, much progress will be made in new building, in the extension of water and sewerage to the isolated dwellings in rural Ireland and in the conservation of many houses throughout the land.
It has been suggested also by some Deputies that, while this Bill reads all right, they would like to know the Government's real mind. All I can say is that the terms of the Bill were agreed to by the Government and that the Cabinet considered them in detail. They have agreed to provide the money necessary to carry out any development and deal with any increase in the tempo of building and reconstruction which will follow from the terms of this Bill. That is the mind of the Government. Their mind is that they want to make it known, as they are doing in very concrete form in this Bill, that they desire the housing drive to continue, that they desire all the people— not 90 per cent. but 100 per cent.— housed in decent conditions. They are prepared to finance the terms of this Bill if it is made an Act, and they will make available to local authorities the requisite money to carry out their side of it, if they co-operate with us in this new drive.
It is not, as has been suggested, a substitute for the revival of the housing grant. This is what we regard as the method by which the revival will take place. It is not a substitute for revival. It is maintained, by quoting the figures for 1958, 1957 and 1956, that Fianna Fáil has fallen down on the job which they accused their predecessors in office of not doing properly, that of providing accommodation for our people. The quoting of those figures is not conclusive proof that Fianna Fáil has fallen down on the job. It is said that we are as far back now as we were in 1956. Surely the houses which have been built since 1956 must represent some advance on the position obtaining then? Surely it must be realised also that difficulties will arise if one allows the whole building industry to be ground down to a standstill, as was done in 1956, so much so that not only did building taper off but actual planning was stopped completely and entirely by some local authorities.
That occurred for one very good reason, that they could see no point whatever in planning for further building when they had not the money to pay for the building which was going on, when they had not the money they were promised before they started to build in order to pay for the work that had been completed. Surely the responsibility for that must rest with the Government then in office, and surely theirs must be the guilt if, 18 months after their departure, the revival that Fianna Fáil believed was possible has not yet taken place?
It is common knowledge that you cannot acquire land, plan houses, get contractors on the job and build houses overnight. That, in fact, is what is implied in the criticism now being levelled at Fianna Fáil, and in the figures quoted of a 40 per cent. decrease this year as against last year. The responsibility for that is being laid at the door of Fianna Fáil, but I lay it back at the door to which it belongs, that is, the door of the Coalition Government which, as I have said, brought the whole building industry to a complete standstill. I go further, and say that if it were not for the advent of Fianna Fáil in 1957, the percentage drop in the number of houses built in the past year would be not 40 per cent. fewer than the previous year, but it would likely be 80 per cent. fewer.
We must go back a little bit and recall to our minds, those of us who knew the situation then from the point of view of being members of this House and members of local authorities, the plight in which we were then; the plight in which local authorities were placed in the summer, the autumn, the winter of 1956 and in the spring of 1957. We were being tagged along. We were being codded up to our eyes by promises issued week by week either from within the House, within the various Departments, or from platforms at public and private meetings held outside this House. We were being pushed along and coaxed to continue building, and the money that was to come last month was to come next month.
And you ceased planning.
The Deputy knows as well as I do—and I am sorry for him still that he was a party to the Government, and was the instrument by which the local authorities were brought to their knees to such an extent at that time—that they had to cease planning.
We will know who got on their knees on Tuesday.
No moneys were made available by the Department. No moneys were forthcoming. Promises were being made that: "If you wait until next week, or next month, you will get what you were promised for last month." The position naturally grew to such proportions that prudence within the local authorities began to assert itself, and members said: "While we are committed up to our necks in what we have already planned and made contracts for, we would be a right lot of idiots to go further in planning future schemes until we get the moneys for the schemes which we are now doing." That is one of the reasons why, though Fianna Fáil has been in office since March 1957, we have not yet recovered to the degree that we would wish to recover in the building trade, nor to the degree we believe is possible of recovery in the building trade.
Lest there be any doubt about what I have said, lest people's memories might be slipping, is it not a fact that when Deputy Smith became Minister for Local Government he sanctioned, within his first six months in the Department, £865,000 worth of contracts, the sanctioning of which had been awaited in that Department and had not been forthcoming under the previous Government and the previous Minister? Is it not true that in the few months before the departure of that Government, before March, 1957, only a few small schemes amounting to not more than £13,000 in all were sanctioned? Then to come along here to try and maintain that because more houses were not built last year than were built the previous year, to try to prove by that that Fianna Fáil has failed, is surely futile on their part if people but recall the circumstances under which Fianna Fáil came into office, and if they realise the back-log of unsettled and unsanctioned schemes that lay in the Department of Local Government, and the unpaid bills that were lying at the doors, not only of the Department of Local Government from local authorities, but at the doors of local authorities themselves, from the various individual people who built houses on the promises of grants made by the local authorities who were to get the money from the Government, but who did not get it.
That was the position that obtained when the Coalition were in office. That position, however, does not obtain to-day; it has not obtained for the past 12 months. That, in itself, is surely a turning back of the tide which once threatened to overwhelm the entire building industry in this country. That in itself had been a very big advance and in a very great part is the fulfilment of the promises of Fianna Fáil, prior to coming into office on the last occasion, that they would rectify the matter and would bring the building trade back to a proper basis.
And house-building dropped by 40 per cent.
The Deputy is not so innocent as he appears, or as he would like the House to think him.
The Minister is not able to contradict those figures.
The Deputy apparently cannot be made to understand that you cannot stop building, and put the entire population into confusion through not paying bills incurred by Government, and then expect within 15 months of this Government assuming office, that not only will the bills be paid but that the wheels of the building industry will be rolling as merrily as ever they rolled before. We do not claim to be magicians, but I believe that even with those figures which the Deputy and his colleagues quoted, we can claim to have gone a long way to rectify the position that the Coalition Government had brought about by their mismanagement in the years of their office up to 1957.
The Minister will not change figures; only the Taoiseach can do that.
If the Deputy wishes to quote figures possibly he will tell the House why he, when Minister in the Coalition Government, did not set up an all-time high record for the greatest number of houses completed in any one year? Who holds that record? Who holds the record for the second highest number of houses built in any one year since this native Government was established? It is not the Coalition. It is not Fine Gael, Cumann na nGaedheal or any other Party in this House other than the Party in government to-day.
They were the architects, back in 1932, of the revival of house-building and of the promotion of house-building and the rehousing of our people. A great job has been done and if, in the interval, by accident two Coalition Governments may have carried it on, there can be no mistake, and there will not be, when the history of the housing drive in this country comes to be written, about where the credit lies. I say that deliberately. The entire credit will go to the Fianna Fáil Party who were the initiators and the promoters. They were the people who launched that programme and they are the people, who by the terms of this Bill, will fill in the gaps that have been left by past legislation.
We are trying to get down to the level of those who, in the past have not been able to avail of the various benefits of previous Acts, to try to cater for those people in a greater degree than in the past, and so fill the gaps which remain in the programme for the rehousing of our people. Deputy O'Donnell remarked that we could hold up building needlessly in a way designed to conserve money. I think there is nobody better qualified than himself in the unfortunate circumstances he was placed by his Government to know the ways and means of holding up building needlessly in order to save and conserve money. We do not intend to practice the same type of hold-up. If we did not have the money and if we could not see our way to provide it in the future, we would not come into this House, as I now do, to make further and better provision for more building in the future.
The Bill has also been described as theoretical legislation by Deputy O'Donnell. He talks of theoretical legislation and hypothetical estimates. I do not think the Deputy can be quite serious in suggesting that these estimates are hypothetical. Possibly I have misnamed the Deputy in this case. It is Deputy Corish who spoke about hypothetical estimates. When I mention Deputy Corish, I should like to go further and say that this charge of hypothetical estimation by officers of the Department of Local Government and the local authorities is a lot of eyewash. If an estimate is found to be much under what the actual cost of the job proves to be—as is very often the case in regard to houses which from an outward appearance look as if they do not need much repair but which on further investigation. may require a good deal of repair— these earlier estimates if wrong, are revised and have been revised for the benefit of the applicant in very many cases. It is not hypothetical nor is the legislation we are now promoting theoretical. We hope it will be very practical.
There have been suggestions that the method of dealing with the various problems in regard to houses has been slowing down; that we have been dillydallying and that we are not getting on with the work as we should. I want to make it clear that as far as these housing projects are concerned our wish is that where necessary projects are and could be devised and put up to us in the Department we are awaiting them. Rather than attempting to block them we are awaiting their arrival in the Department.
We have made that quite clear on several occasions. I wish to reiterate that we are not holding up unnecessarily or unduly for the want of money any worthwhile scheme whether it is a housing scheme, sewerage or water scheme in any part of Ireland at the moment. That is the present position and that is the position I hope will continue. If there is one little fault I can find with the situation at the moment it lies not with the Department but with the situation whereby, due to the nature of the planning, sufficient schemes are not coming to hand —not as many as I should like to see and not as many as I know could be brought to hand if the job were tackled and continued without a break during the latter days of the Coalition Government.
There have also been suggestions— several suggestions as a matter of fact —that unduly long delays are taking place in regard to the acquisition of building sites in the cities. Particularly is this claim made in regard to the Dublin City area and to a lesser degree I have heard it mentioned elsewhere, although on investigation in Limerick and Cork I have discovered there is not very much in it. The complaint is that, due to faulty legislation, bad legislation or lack of legislation, acquisition cannot proceed. Here in Dublin, however, wherever or by whomever Deputies are advised, there seems to be general agreement amongst various members of this House that we have not got sufficient legal powers to get on with the acquisition of sites in central Dublin; that it will take, as some of them said, from five to seven years to get on with one of these clearances.
I have investigated this aspect of things put to me by various Deputies not only to-day but on other occasions and so far as my advisers can tell me, there is sufficient law at the disposal of Dublin Corporation to-day——
Hear, hear!
——to clear the areas not in five or seven years but, if they are doing their job properly in the legal department of that corporation, in five to seven months at the outside.
Deputy Briscoe and his pals are the ones who have held it up.
I am not talking about Deputy Briscoe and his pals. I am talking about the apparent general dissemination of information no doubt by some legal gentleman or genius who has instilled into the minds of the lay members of Dublin Corporation and members of this House interested in the welfare of central Dublin the idea that no matter what law there is it is not sufficient to enable the legal department to go on.
The Minister is quite right.
There is sufficient law to acquire building sites not within five to seven years but within five to seven months.
Hear, hear!
I hope Deputies will follow that up. If they can get nowhere I shall hear from them. There is sufficient law to clear the central city building in every other city in the country. I would ask Deputies who are members of the corporation to follow that up. If what I have said is found to be so, then they will go on, as I know they want to go on, with the acquisition of central city sites. If they come back to me and say it is not so, I shall lose no time in rectifying the position. But we are as assured as can be that there is the law.
We will hold you to that.
You will not have any difficulty in holding me. I will be a very willing volunteer. Perhaps I have kept the House sufficiently long. I have fallen into the same trap as many other speakers who went before me and who dealt with the Second Reading as if it were a Committee Stage. I would ask to be excused for that fault. Having listened to so many points which I might call Committee points, I felt there were some which demanded at least a reply. That I have not covered all the points mentioned by all Deputies is due to the fact that most of them are appropriate to the Committee Stage. Then we can discuss them in detail. Every point raised will be fully gone into and the answers will be given to Deputies on that stage.
I shall conclude by saying that so far as this Bill is concerned, if it becomes law, I believe it will do much to bring about a revival in the building industry, that it will have the effect of giving a chance of getting houses to those who still need them and that it will provide a long felt want in regard to the conservation of many old houses, particularly those owned by landlords who, for one reason or another, could not do anything with them in the past. I believe that so far as the loan content of the Bill is concerned it will go a long way to make it possible for the not-so-well-off owner to do a good repair job on his house and make it a more fit place for himself and his family to live in.
I believe that the terms approved in the Bill regarding water and sewerage schemes throughout rural Ireland will provide for a certain number of applications and that the time will come when we shall have a dwindling number of unserviced houses, not only in the city and towns, but also in the rural community as a whole and that the drudgery of the housewife, the farmer's wife and the labourer's wife will be reduced, that the attractions of the countryside for the younger people will be added to, that more contentment will obtain and that fewer of our people will be seized with wanderlust to leave the country as they have been doing and not without justification. In the past it was lack of amenities such as these that led people to leave the countryside because life there was not very pleasant for them.
These things are possible under the terms of this Bill. They will become probable if I get, as I believe I shall, the full co-operation of the local authorities in the operation of the grants and loans. Having got that, I believe we shall go on to attain the objects for which this Bill was introduced—the provision of better houses for many of our people, the conservation of the existing housing stock and the saving of money, not only to the Exchequer but also to the ratepayer. As such, I now commend the Bill to the House and trust that it will become the law of the land.
Would the House agree to put the Committee Stage down for Tuesday next?
Yes; we shall try to give the Minister all stages on that day.