I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £2,770,120 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1960, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Local Government, including Grants to Local Authorities, Grants and other Expenses in connection with Housing, and Miscellaneous Grants.
The net total expenditure involved in the Vote for my Department in the present financial year is £4,475,120, involving a net increase of £735,160 on the corresponding provision made in the last financial year. The chief increases comprise £140,000 in the provision for contributions towards housing loan charges of local authorities; £400,000 in the provision for grants to private persons, etc., for the purchase, erection, reconstruction and improvement of dwelling houses; £45,000 in the contributions towards loan charges of local authorities in respect of sanitary services works and a new provision of £200,000 to supplement the Road Fund.
The group of subheads which provide for the payment of housing grants and subsidies total £3.7 millions, about 80% of the whole Estimate. These housing subheads show an increase of more than a half million pounds over 1958/59 and accordingly account for the greater part of the amount by which this year's Estimate exceeds the sum voted for Local Government last year.
Almost the whole of the expenditure anticipated on the housing side is comprised in Subheads H. 1 and H. 2, which include £1.985 million for the payment of annual subsidies in respect of local authority housing and £1.7 million for the payment of private housing grants.
As regards the provision to meet estimated expenditure on grants for private housing, the £400,000 increase is attributable in the main to the anticipated expansion of operations of reconstruction, repair and improvement of existing houses due to the additional benefits and facilities made available by the Housing (Amendment) Act, 1958. That Act not only increased the maximum grants available in individual cases but widened the scope of application of grants for repair or improvement of houses by easing the qualifying conditions for those grants and also made provision for the availability of loans from housing authorities to individuals reconstructing, repairing or improving houses. The effects of the provisions of the 1958 Act have not yet been manifested in full, but the tendency is clear from the fact that operations of reconstruction, etc., of existing houses increased in the last six months of 1958/59 by more than one-third as compared with those for the preceding six months. As there has been a decided shift in emphasis in recent years from the building of new houses to the conservation of existing houses and since there is very substantial scope for the latter type of operation, it is to be expected that applications for grants for reconstruction, etc., will show a cumulative increase for some considerable time to come.
There is evidence of a recovery in the position in relation to new house building, which had shown a considerable decline, and a slight increase in operations is anticipated while the increase in the amounts of individual grants for the installation of private water and sewerage facilities made available by the 1958 Act has already led to an increase in applications for these grants. There has been an administrative development in the administration of these grants which I should like to mention. It will have the effect of enabling public water supplies to be used in certain circumstances for the provision of private supplies. In the vicinity of built-up areas served by public water supplies, particularly in county health districts, a person may wish to connect his house to a public main although the main is not in close vicinity to his house. The cost of making a connection in these cases is generally very high. Hitherto it has not been the practice to admit such cases for a private water supply grant. I have now had legal advice that such cases may be entertained, and I have laid down the following conditions in regard to them:—
1. The house must be more than 100 feet from the public main.
2. The local sanitary authority must certify that they do not propose to extend the public main as part of the public water supply and that they have no objection to the work.
3. The grant will be on the usual statutory terms involving a minimum contribution by the applicant and will be based on a cost to the applicant which will not include the average cost to a householder served by the public water supply of making a connection therewith.
The same conditions will apply to connections to public sewers.
As regards house building by local authorities, the diminishing volume of housing needs requiring to be met by them is reflected by the figures of completions for the year ended 31st March last. 1,870 dwellings were completed in that year as compared with 3,467 in the preceding year. At the 31st March, 1959, however, work was in progress on 2,221 dwellings and houses in tender at the same date totalled 949. The estimates put forward by the different housing authorities suggest that a somewhat increased volume of building is expected to be undertaken in urban areas during the current year. In county health districts works already approved in respect of the first nine months of the last financial year show an increase as compared with that period in the preceding year, while a further increase in the current year is indicated by the estimates of the local authorities. In the county boroughs of Cork and Dublin the total value of tenders sanctioned in 1958/59 showed an increase of £145,000 over 1957/58.
There was a steady fall from about the middle of 1956 to the end of 1957 in the amount of employment on local authority housing schemes, but a tendency to stabilise at a total figure of approximately 2,500 men is observable from the statistics relating to successive three-month periods since the 1st January, 1958.
The general level of building costs for serviced dwellings remained reasonably stable during the year. It was, however, necessary to withhold approval in certain instances to the proposed acceptance of tenders for schemes in which the superstructure costs were up to £300 per house in excess of costs obtaining in other areas. In all such cases I gave close personal attention to the factors involved and, where it seemed appropriate, I requested the housing authorities concerned to make a general revision of house plans with a view to more economical construction.
I had similarly to withhold approval to tender prices showing an inflationary trend in the case of rural unserviced cottages. Concerted efforts were made in such instances by officers of my Department and of the local housing authorities concerned to determine the reason for unduly high costs and to secure such economies as would enable the cottages to be built at reasonable prices.
While I am on this subject of economy on construction, I think it well to draw attention to the experiment adopted by the Cork County Council in their cottages erected at Ringaskiddy. They are based on a new design involving the provision of a flat asphalt roof and asphalt floors and the omission of internal and external plastering. Their dimensions are designed to suit the size of the blocks. Using these features, a number of fully serviced cottages of a standard of accommodation and amenity comparable with the traditional types have been provided at a total cost of about £950 each, representing a saving of up to £350 per house on previous costs. I understand that a corresponding economical design has now been prepared for an unserviced rural cottage.
It is as yet too early to assess the potentialities of this new design without further experience of the results of tendering by contractors for the erection of this type of dwelling in other areas. I commend the experiment however to the consideration of other housing authorities. My Department will be prepared to co-operate at all times with local authorities in encouraging such enterprise in the design and planning of house types which give promise of achieving economies while maintaining essential standards of construction and accommodation.
The housing operations of Dublin Corporation have entered a new phase which at present is gaining in momentum. The previous stages of the programme involved the immense task of displacing thousands of families from unfit and overcrowded dwellings in the central city areas and rehousing them in new estates on the city fringes. The building of these new estates has reached the stage at which the Corporation has been able to commence the work of redeveloping the cleared areas and to plan the redevelopment of further areas. Redevelopment operations are slower and costlier than building on virgin sites, since the process of land and property acquisition is more difficult, site costs are higher and it is necessary to build blocks of flats to accommodate as many families as possible near places of employment, shops, churches and schools.
Compulsory Purchase Orders have been made, and others are planned, in respect of many city sites of various sizes which will accommodate large and small schemes of flats. Sites are available for some 5,000 dwellings and a further 4,000 sites are either in process of acquisition or are included in a programme of acquisition.
