It would be difficult to overstress the importance of the Department of Local Government and the very serious effect the work of that Department can have on almost every citizen in the State, particularly on those who are householders, those who seek work under the various schemes and others affected by health services, sanitation services and services administered by the local authorities.
For good or evil, at the present time, the functioning of a local authority is divided into functions which are generally the functions of the county council and the functions that are reserved to the county managers but over all there is the paramount authority of the Department of Local Government itself which must take full cognisance of all the activities in every local body in Ireland and generally of its own Department.
Generally speaking, the work of local government proceeds in its own fashion. Whether that fashion is a good one or whether the rate of progress is one that leaves nothing to be desired is quite another matter, but people, by and large, I think, have begun to accept the situation as it is and, apart from the occasional moan one hears from time to time from the person directly affected—I might say that the moaning is confined to the actual period of the pain inflicted in any particular case—one does not hear any great complaints except the complaint in relation to the ever-increasing burden of rates and, in particular instances, to the misapplication of the moneys collected, deliberately or through sheer inadvertence or incompetence.
The main complaint by people at present, not alone in rural Ireland but in urban and corporation areas, would appear to be that, whenever they embark upon any kind of improvement to their dwellings they are immediately set upon by local authority investigators or somebody from Ely Place and the valuation is automatically increased.
Somebody already referred to that as a legacy from the landlord practice of increasing the rent on occasions when improvements carried out by tenants became obvious to them. It certainly follows the same pattern. The increasing of rents by landlords in the old days because of improvements made by the tenants was designed to prohibit such improvements and to keep the standard of the tenants at as low a level as possible. Either deliberately or inadvertently, the policy of increasing the rateable valuation of such hereditaments as are improved by their owners has a stultifying effect on progress and tends to keep people down by way of punishing them for the capital which they invest in the improvement of their own buildings. It certainly stifles progress.
I am sure that is something that is not intended by the Department of Local Government or the Minister who is in charge of it for the time being. I think it is necessary that people should do a little fresh thinking in that regard and possibly have some scheme whereby, if there are to be increases in respect of improvements of property, the increases will be on a sliding scale basis.
The housing section of the Minister's Department appears to have got quite an increase in staff. While the reply a Deputy receives in answer to a query, certainly speaking for myself, is always most accurate and sets out the position as it then stands, the only complaint that I have is in regard to delay. Recently I had the experience of dropping a note to the housing section of the Department of Local Government asking them to send out two application forms for reconstruction grants to two constituents of mine whose names and addresses I furnished accurately. It took almost a whole month for those two forms to reach the persons concerned and I might add that, to my great chagrin, people who had political views other than mine had been able to obtain them before that. Apart from that, the delay was very great and I think there is no reason for that at all.
While the staff of the housing section has been almost doubled, apart from the sort of delay I mention, the delay in the payment of grants is having a very unfortunate effect on suppliers of hardware and building materials throughout the country. One of them said to me not so long ago: "I wonder how long more we shall be able to act as bankers for the Department of Local Government?" One can readily understand that a builders' provider in a rural area must have a considerable amount of money invested in materials scattered over the country with builders of various houses. He has to wait for his money until such time as the Department pays. Far be it from me to complain too bitterly in that regard, if the situation were not such as to give rise to complaint. Let us hope that from now on, with the increased staff, payment will be accelerated and that the burden will be taken off the shoulders of these builders' providers.
Apart, of course, from the financial inconvenience caused to merchants, there is the other type of inconvenience caused to the people concerned who have not got the money and are waiting for the grant and who probably transact some other sort of business in these shops. They are more or less ashamed to go into them because they owe this money and they feel that the builders' provider is thinking: "Here is a fellow who has not paid me the money for the material I gave him. His house is completed, he is living in it and he is enjoying the amenities which go with the house. He tells me he has not got the grant and I am not in a position to know whether he has or not." As soon as these people get the Local Government cheque, covering the grant, whether it is the first instalment or the second instalment, a very high standard of honesty obtains in the country and they hand over the cheque in toto and finish up with the provider. I hope that these few words will act as an incentive to the Department with their increased staff to cut out these delays.
I cannot share the enthusiasm of the Minister regarding the percentage increases and percentage improvements in relation to either houses, payments or anything else. The figures which he has given, obviously supplied by his Department and of course over which he will stand, paint a picture the other way, unless there has been some increase within the last couple of months which appears to warrant these statements. Certainly if there was an increase it was only within the last couple of months. Accordingly I have to invite the Minister, when concluding, to study the reply given at Volume 180, No. 9 of the Official Report for the 29th March, 1960, which he gave to Deputy Ryan who asked if he would state, in respect of each year from 1945 to date, the number of new houses built by (a) local authorities and (b) private enterprise. The reply was given in the form of a tabular statement and I propose to give, for each of these years, the number of houses built by local authorities so as to show exactly what the trend has been and to show that the much maligned Government of 1954 to 1957 really did not deserve all the things said about them with regard to housing, particularly by Deputy Briscoe, who led the attack on behalf of the Dublin Corporation at that time.
Here are the figures. For 1945, the number of houses built by local authorities was 150. In 1946, it was 565. In 1947, it was 742. In 1948— and it will be recalled that was the year of Deputy Costello's first administration—the figure rose to 1,371. Lest anybody might claim any credit for any kind of backwash from the year before, it will be seen that that pattern continues. Again, quoting from the Minister's reply, for the year 1949, the local authorities built 4,026 houses and in 1950, they built 8,117. In 1951, they built 7,258. Fianna Fáil came back into power in 1952 and the figure for that year was 6,938, a drop. For 1953, their first whole year in office, it was down to 6,320, a further drop. In 1954, it was 5,697, dropping still. In 1955, it was 4,143. In 1956, the figure was 4,218; it had begun to go up. In 1957, which forms part of the year for which the inter-Party Government had made provision in the Estimates, it was 4,123 and in 1958, again the first whole year of Fianna Fáil in office, it was 2,033. In 1959 it was 2,399. That cannot be said to reveal a state of affairs in housing for which the Fianna Fáil Party, as a Government, can claim any great glory.
Let us approach it in another way. As reported in Volume 181, No. 10 of the Official Report for 17th May, 1960, a little over a month ago, Deputy Corish asked the Minister for Local Government the number of houses completed by local authorities in each year since the 1st April, 1948. The reply was again in the form of a tabular statement: 1949, 1,871; 1950, 5,299; 1951, 7,787; 1952, 7,185; 1953, 7,486; 1954, 5,643; 1955, 5,267; 1956, 4,011; 1957, 4,784; 1958, 3,467; 1959, 1,812; and 1960 showed some improvement by jumping to 2,414.
That is the only place where we can see any indication of an effort being made by the Minister to give an impetus to the housing drive which we were assured by the former Taoiseach he was specially appointed to do. There is a great deal of leeway to be made up before the hopes then expressed are fully justified.
With regard to local authority housing in rural Ireland, I notice that 30 extra engineer-architects are employed. I strongly urge on the Minister that some sort of encouragement should be given to them to vary their designs so as to alter the picture of the Irish countryside and get away from the uniform appearance. While at present the houses are good, nice, perfectly comfortable and well laid out, nevertheless if there are rows and rows of the same type of houses, even something which is uniformly good presents a rather drab appearance.
Too many people are involved in the building of houses and from that point of view I deplore, to some extent, the extra staff of engineers, unless they give an impetus to the building of houses and complete the job more quickly than is at present envisaged. My experience is that, first of all, a person has to get a plan and then the site has to be seen by one engineer. Up to a certain point, he looks after it, but then a second engineer comes along and approves of the final plan for the house. The matter does not end there. There may be a supplementary housing grant payable by the local authority, and before that grant is paid, at least one other engineer in the local authority's jurisdiction must visit the place to see if the house qualifies for the supplementary grant. The fact that it has been certified for the primary grant from the Department ought to be sufficient, in my view. Once the certificate goes down, there ought to be no more about it. So much for housing.
The matter to which I am about to refer will come before the House by way of a new Road Traffic Bill. It will be some time before that Bill will be ready. Certainly it will not be available this side of Christmas, and we are passing into the holiday and tourist season. If I am permitted to do so, I should like to make a few recommendations to the Minister which he might consider on his own initiative, where he has power to do so, or in co-operation with or on the advice of the Minister for Justice, with a view to taking certain steps.
I do not know whether this matter has occurred to anyone else with regard to driving, particularly in rural Ireland. I refer to the effect the great number of wayside petrol filling stations have on traffic. First of all, they constitute a danger which is an ordinary danger in modern times in that people must drive in, fill up with petrol and drive out again. That is fair enough, but where I think there is positive danger, and where there should be some control, is in the position and power of the lighting of the station and the shadows they throw. A number of people passing some of these stations, driving either with full headlights or dims, find it quite impossible to see what is on the other side of the lights of the petrol stations. They are advertising lights mainly, close to the road, and it is impossible to see what is on the far side.
I do not want to single out any particular station, but there are a few on the road between Dublin and Belmullet, and that gives anyone interested plenty of room to guess where they are. They constitute a danger to the motorist and to the pedestrian who happens to be on the road at the time.
I do not know what is the real situation with regard to the dimming of lights. I know there is an order in force whereby every mechanically propelled vehicle must be fitted with a dimming device, but nowhere could I find any order that compels anyone to use it. Since I could not find such order, I do not think it exists. I think a motorist qualifies if he has a dimming device, but there is no obligation on him to use it. When one motorist finds himself blinded by an oncoming vehicle, the only recourse the aggrieved person has is such invective as he can pour upon the motorist as he passes him by. He cannot be expected to turn and chase him along the road in order to have some sort of charge preferred against him.
In that regard, I urge on the Minister as the person responsible for road traffic to consult the Minister for Justice with a view to making a supplementary or correcting order compelling a person to fit a dimming device which is really effective and to use it on all occasions, not only when meeting an oncoming motorist, but also an oncoming cyclist, or oncoming horse-drawn traffic. In other words, there should be an order compelling him to use the dimming device to the advantage of all users of the road.
There is another aspect of lighting which I think is extremely important, that is, the grossly inadequate manner in which trailers hauled behind lorries which are already of a substantial size, are lighted. Anyone who has experience of driving on the Continent knows that one of the things brought to one's notice very forcibly at night is the great number of lights on all trailers and even on lorries by themselves. They are almost set out in outline, with strips of light indicating to the oncoming driver the extremities of the lorry and the actual amount of space taken up by the lorry and trailer, so that he can allow for it accordingly.
Again, I would say that the Department, not deliberately, but with some degree of carelessness, takes the sanctioning of contracts and the implementation of contracts very lightheartedly indeed. I know it is invidious to refer to matters in detail, and particularly to matters relating to one's own county or constituency, but nevertheless from such details the Minister may be enabled to make certain inquiries. The pattern might be quite uniform but might not be in the interests of getting the most out of public expenditure.
I want to refer to a few things that happened and are happening in Mayo. I do not know if it was the present Minister or his predecessor who sanctioned moneys out of which a sum was payable for the erection of a new bridge at Ballylahan on the road between Foxford and Castlebar where there was a very old-fashioned crooked bridge which was adequate. The contractor who got the contract to build the bridge proceeded to do so. I suppose he had all the advantages of the services of an architect. Lo and behold, a little flood came last year when they were on the point of laying the floor of the bridge and the flood covered the parapet prepared for that particular project.
The Minister can readily understand the local consternation. It was the show piece on the Sunday afternoon it occurred. Motor cars travelled from a radius of 30 miles to see what was happening at this bridge at Ballylahan. That was all right. In the first place, the pillars were not tall enough. Then, for some months past, the work has ceased altogether.
My information is that the beams supplied by a firm within the jurisdiction of this State, I regret to say, were found to be inadequate in strength of material. I further regret to say that my information is that these beams could have been supplied by a firm from Northern Ireland but, around the time they were to be ordered or supplied, I cannot say which, an Order was made here by the Department of Industry and Commerce clapping a duty upon that particular type of beam. The result was that, on the figures quoted, the Northern Ireland firm could not compete and the firm within this jurisdiction was able to collar the contract for the beams at a price almost equating to that of their price prior to the imposition of the duty plus the whole of the duty or very near it. The Minister should make inquiries into that matter in relief of the ratepayers of County Mayo and find out if what I have said is true. I am not stating it is true, but it is information given to me from a reasonably authoritative source.
What is the position in regard to the contractor? Will he be compensated for the length of time he has been held up? It is now a period of some months. A clerk of works was employed there at a special rate, I am sure—probably at an adequate or fair remuneration. He is doing nothing there at the moment. Is he being paid? If the contractor is to be compensated and if the clerk of works is to be paid, who will be responsible for the wholesale waste of money and time?
I hope the Minister will take up that matter seriously. No matter what political Party we belong to, we must take seriously this apparent waste of public money. If, upon investigation, it is found that there is no real waste, that there were special circumstances, then public feeling in the matter will be considerably relieved and allayed. It will also be good to know that there was not any such wastage or incompetence. By and large, an investigation into a complaint does an amount of good even though it may reveal that the complaint was not really justified. That applies to many complaints, apart from this.
There is a second matter in relation to the administration of Mayo County Council to which I want to direct the Minister's attention. I have already done so by way of a Parliamentary Question some time ago. I inquired about a tar spraying material depot at Castlebar. I can well understand that this would be a particular item within the moneys sanctioned in globo by the Minister. However, I brought it to his notice. I can well understand that, at that time, the Minister would not have the information available to him which I should have liked to get. I remember being stopped by An Ceann Comhairle who said I was giving information to the Minister rather than getting it. I gave him a considerable amount of information on that Supplementary Question, contrary to the rules governing Questions. I hope it was useful information. I hope he will have something to say about this when he is replying.
The Minister will recall that the Mayo County Council, through the County Manager, proceeded to build this depot near the railway station in Castlebar. They procured a site from Córas Iompair Éireann—certainly they leased it—upon which to build this peculiar structure. Nearby was a resident who felt he should take exception to the structure. He knew that such operations would interfere with the amenities of his house, his grounds and his family. He so warned the county manager, through the secretary, by letter. He got very little satisfaction.
The building was begun. Then the man with the grievance brought it to the notice of his solicitor who took up the matter. An extraordinary situation developed. Side by side with the erection of the building there was being built up all the necessary pleading for the action that was to be taken by this neighbour against the Mayo County Council looking for an injunction restraining this project, seeking damages and the usual costs.
When the building was completed the pleadings were completed and the case was ready to begin. In the course of it all, very learned specialists were sought by either side to give evidence. Two days were specially set aside at the Castlebar Circuit Court in order that this case might be heard and justice administered as between the parties. Then, lo and behold, about a day or two before the eminent gentlemen were asked to travel from their respective abodes, the County Council stepped in. An injunction was agreed to.
In a settlement which was made a rule of court, they undertook to take away the structure they had built and to pay costs to the tune of about £400.
That matter will come up on the local audit. I sincerely hope, having regard to the persistence of the persons responsible—the county manager and the county engineer—that there will be no ease or remission by the Minister of any surcharge which should properly be found against them in this regard.
