The Minister to-day has again repeated in slightly more moderate language the dishonest implication to which he committed himself yesterday in extreme language. I want to characterise that implication yesterday and to-day as being a disgrace to the high office he holds. The Minister yesterday brought to this House certain selected information. He selected it quite deliberately and put it accross to attempt to show that the present housing activity, whatever it may be, was higher than the housing activity that operated during the régime of the Government that preceded his. The House will remember that yesterday, in relation to this matter, he was asked to produce certain figures for the year ending 31st March, 1957. He said he had not got them with him. I shall oblige him by giving these figures for these Estimates today. Another member of the Fianna Fáil Party—the member whose function apparently it is to throw dirt on every possible occasion, Deputy O'Malley—then proceeded to say there had been a Supplementary Estimate for £2 million in 1957, which Deputy Smith, as Minister for Local Government, brought in for the purpose of paying arrears of housing grants. That again is a complete falsehood and if any Deputy is interested there are the Appropriation Accounts, the Supplementary Estimates that were brought in, and there was no Supplementary Estimate introduced in the period from the 20th February, when Fianna Fáil came into power, and the 31st March, 1957.
What are the facts in relation to housing, the facts which the Minister is deliberately trying to conceal by taking figures for certain months, figures which have been increased because of the fact that during the earlier part of the year grants were not paid? I am sure the Minister is telling the truth when he shows favourable grant figures for one month such as these. I do not challenge that at all but the fact is that during this current financial year there are fewer houses to be built. There is less money being paid by the Minister under this sub-heading than was paid in either of the two years for which we were responsible.
Let us look at the records. First of all remember that the figures were announced in the Book of Estimates each year. In the year ending 31st March, 1955, when we were responsible, the allocation then given, as set out in the Book of Estimates for this type of housing grant, was £2,000,000. For the year ending 31st March, 1956, the amount set out in the Book of Estimates was £2,250,000 and an additional Supplementary Estimate was taken in that year for £50,000. For the year ending 31st March, 1957, the period for which I asked the Minister for figures yesterday, the amount provided in the Book of Estimates was £2,250,000. Then Fianna Fáil came in and in the year ending 31st March, 1958, the sum was £2,000,000. In the year ending 31st March, 1959, for which Fianna Fáil must take the full responsibility as the Book of Estimates was entirely prepared by them the figure was £1,300,000 compared with the previous sum of £2,250,000. In the year ending 31st March, 1960, the current year, the amount provided was £1,700,000 and the Minister is now providing a further £200,000 to make a total of £1,900,000. In the new Book of Estimates, published this morning for the next financial year, what do we find? We find the provision is less than the provision that was made in either of the years ending 31st March, 1956, and 31st March, 1957.
If we want to pass from the Estimates to the actual amounts paid, let us take the figures in the Appropriation Accounts of the moneys actually spent. In 1954/55 £1,995,000 was spent, in 1955/56 £2,247,000 and in 1956/57 £2,167,000. Then Fianna Fáil came in and in 1957/58 it was £1,526,000. That figure actually differs slightly— it is £20,000 more than the figure the Minister gave yesterday—but I am giving the larger of the two figures so that he cannot have any complaint. Apparently there may have been some adjustment at a later stage. In 1958/59 £1,329,000 was spent.
As regards the number of houses that were built the information is to be got from the Statistical Abstract for 1959, at page 190, and what do we find there? We find that in each year ending 31st March, the financial year, the figures were as follows: In 1955 10,490 new houses were built with State aid; in 1956, 9,837; in 1957, 10,969, and the Minister cannot suggest that any single one of these houses built in those years was in any way the result of anything he, or his Fianna Fáil predecessor in office, might have done. Then Fianna Fáil came back to power and in 1958, 7,480 houses were built, and in 1959, 4,893—fewer than half of those that were built in the year for which I asked him for the figures yesterday.
If the Minister wants to take the figure of new houses that were built other than by local authorities, he will find exactly the same thing. In 1955, in rural areas, the figure was 3,522; in 1956 it was 3,587; in 1957 it was 4,066 and in 1958, after Fianna Fáil came in—and I might add that these are privately built houses, not local authority houses—the figure went down to 2,473 and in 1959 it went down to 1,651, fewer than half the figure when we were in office, yet the Minister had the audacity and effrontery to come into this House and try to suggest that he has stimulated a wonderful new housing drive.
If we want to go from new houses to reconstructed houses we can look for the same figures and we shall find, on the same page of the Statistical Abstract, that the number reconstructed in 1957 was 8,147 and in the last year for which I have the figures it had dropped to 6,909. As I said already, the evidence of what he anticipates the situation is going to be is in the Book of Estimates that his colleague, the Minister for Finance, issued this morning. The amount provided in that Book of Estimates is less than the provision and the amount that was paid in either of the last two financial years for which I was responsible.
As I said, Deputy O'Malley apparently had been trained by his colleague, Deputy Smith, to try to put over in this House what are not the facts. I am not accusing Deputy O'Malley of doing it deliberately. No doubt he has been misled but he suggested yesterday that in 1957 Deputy Smith, as Minister for Local Government, had to introduce a Supplementary Estimate for £2,000,000 to pay housing grants that had not been paid. Here is the bound volume of the Estimates, Financial Accounts, Supplementary Estimates and Appropriation Accounts and there was no Supplementary Estimate whatever of that sort introduced by Fianna Fáil in respect of these housing grants. In fact there was no necessity for one because, as I told the House a minute ago, the provision was £2,250,000 and the payments in that year were £2,167,477.
It is not as if all these things were new and that the Minister could make the excuse that he was caught yesterday without information on something of which he had no previous knowledge. Housing questions have been put down by me to the Minister which he has answered. Let me refer to one of them. On 11th February, 1960, —col. 337, Vol. 179—I asked in relation, for example, to Dublin Corporation, what was the amount expended by means of advances under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts. It is the person who builds with help under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts who requires grants of the type we are discussing this morning.
In 1956, when certain members of Fianna Fáil, notably Deputy Briscoe, were screaming here about the allocation being made, £1,536,000 was available and spent by Dublin Corporation on small dwellings loans for this type of house; in 1957, £936,000; but, in 1958, under Fianna Fáil, that had dropped to £533,000 and again, in 1959, though it had recovered somewhat, it had not recovered to the previous level and was only £711,000. Similar questions appear in relation to Cork and to the country as a whole.
The Minister, therefore, could not possibly have been in ignorance when he was deliberately selecting his figures yesterday. He was doing it in an endeavour to put over a politically dishonest trick. What has happened not is, and thank goodness it has happened, that some of the leeway that was lost by Fianna Fáil, and deliberately lost by Fianna Fáil, in relation to housing, is now being made up and the Minister is counting that as a great advance. When he gets back to the situation that there was in those two years, when he gets back to the figures of which I have spoken, figures that are on the records, figures that tell their own story, figures that show that the number of houses built with this type of grant under Fianna Fáil dropped from 9,800 to 4,800 in three years, and when he is able to make up that backlog and is in a position to tell the House truthfully and honestly that that backlog has been caught up and that he has reached the figures that were obtained before, it will be time enough for him to boast.
Meantime, let him keep to the truth and not try to paint a picture as untruthful and as politically dishonest as he endeavoured to paint yesterday and as he tried this morning to paint slightly differently.