When I moved to report progress, I was saying I thought we could all agree on the need for dynamism in the provision of houses for our people. There has not always been, nor is there now, agreement about the need for attending to the details of aesthetics in the provision of houses for our people. I was referring to certain very attractive schemes in some parts of the country which were a credit to the architects and local authorities that devised them and which I have had great pleasure in showing to visitors from other countries. A phrase used here by Deputy Jones struck me as being particularly appropriate in this regard. He said housing begets respect. I thought that was a singularly effective remark and I want to enlarge it slightly by saying that well-designed and useful housing begets very considerable respect.
The Minister and his Department have a great deal of power and they should use it. It is desirable that they should improve upon some of the things that have been done in the past. Any of us who go around the country with our eyes open see the bleak and comfortless blocks devised for human habitation. No attempt is made at landscaping or grouping of houses. No attempt is made to have tree plantations in the middle of housing schemes. Take, for instance, the ESB—this is an old matter of mine—who disfigure housing landscapes with these ugly supply lines which they are all too prone to run in the most convenient possible way from their point of view but the ugliest possible way from the point of view of giving pleasure and rewarding the eyes. I do not see why the ESB should not be compelled to supply their service wires in the most discreet manner. If they cannot be put underground, let the supply wires be run along the back of the houses but let us get rid of these hideous tree trunks they stick in our city streets, footpaths and housing estates and the heavy wires they string along on them from house to house.
It is only the Minister and his Department who can provide the cure for this kind of thing. The Minister's Department should insist that where public money is being spent, or permission given for any kind of housing, whether it is working class housing or private housing, certain standards should be set and every effort made to see they are not departed from. A requirement should be that a housing scheme should be landscaped, that trees should be planted and that when new, virgin land is taken over, and trees are already growing there they should be allowed to remain and the houses should be placed amongst them. How much more graceful that would make a scheme.
Only yesterday in one of the national newspapers I read a letter by somebody who was complaining about a builder who had developed an area in the south side of Dublin which had a long row of trees—probably part of an old demesne—and when he had built his common place houses, that was the word they used, he proceeded to cut down every one of these trees and the houses which had been somewhat enhanced by the presence of the trees were exposed in all their hideous, vulgar and unattractive shapes. We are very bad about that type of thing and none of us can do enough to put an end to such desecrating and desolating activity. The Minister and his officials and officials of the local authorities must at all times ensure set standards and that where people are being asked to live whether it is in the working class houses or where permission is sought for private building schemes every natural addition, tree growing and landscaping, should be attended to. The effect that will have on future generations is not easily measured. Of course, you have a kind of cleaning-up mind which you find among public officials. They love to get everything square and tidy. They take an area and after getting permission build 40 or 45 houses and put them into monotonous, soldier-like ranks. They must be deplorable areas to live in. I certainly would not like to survey constantly that kind of monotonous and unattractive place as an inhabitant.
There are other problems in housing.Last night we discussed things which are happening in the city of Dublin, the collapse of old buildings. That problem is common to the larger places in Ireland. In all the cities when we sought to deal with the problem of providing shelter in the crudest possible way—crude in the sense of getting on with the job—we moved to the periphery and put up housing estates there. We left a hollow core in those towns and cities. I think the technical word used by architects is a twilight zone, places of decrepitude, and now the buildings are coming down. Although it could not be justified on an actuarial balance sheet, I think rescue work could be done on a lot of these houses and that a lot of them should be saved if only for the sake of not having an empty shell. If it costs a bit more to reconstruct one of these houses than is normally envisaged we should start thinking whether it would not be wise to spend that money.
One of the drawbacks of periphery building is that rents are high and the expenses of people living there are higher still because of the cost of transport.In the middle of cities we have these old houses which could be reconstructed.There are houses that have been pulled down and areas left blank and houses should be erected in these places. It is not going to be easy to justify in the matter of costs but there is another kind of balance sheet and they could be justified. These old streets should not be left toothless, as it were. Where corporation or town councils are providing houses for their poorer inhabitants, even though it costs more, they should be permitted to build one or two houses in these gaps and keep the heart of the city reasonably sound. There are odd places where houses could be built thus enabling people to live more closely to where they work and amuse themselves. This would keep the city reasonably intact and not something which flourished outside its own centre and died in the centre.
One of the troubles we have is that councils lose the subsidy where sub-tenants are housed from working class houses and there is a tendency to create a new kind of slum. That has been a sore point and the Department's case is a reasonable one but we will have to take a look at the matter. People who 20 or 25 years ago married and went into working class areas have reared children who are now themselves married. We have not been able to provide houses for them with the result that they have gone into their parents' homes to live. We just cannot evade that problem much longer. We must make sure that local authorities will suffer no lack of grants or subsidies by housing those people who have been compelled to stay in their parents' homes. If it was confined to proved relatives, say a son who married and brought in his wife, it would be a sensible thing to decide to provide a full grant or subsidy for another house.
I have found that in the city in which I serve in the matter of public affairs the cost of houses has increased considerably in six or seven years. I take it that the Minister has found this experience is not unusual. I have found that tenders for working class houses are about £400 more than they were some years ago. I do not know the pattern in the whole country but I should like the Minister to discuss this in his reply to the debate to ensure that the present considerable amount of building being done in the country, in various forms of activity, is not making the housing bill too high for us to look at. After all, if we pay roughly £2,000 for a house and if we ask for a long-term loan to repay it over 30 or 40 years, then quite a great deal of money will eventually be paid for the house. The effect upon rents would be an immediate relief if these prices could be reduced somewhat.
I think prices in building now are somewhat above what they would be if we had more competition in the building trade. In that regard, the various grants which the Minister's Department pays and enables local authorities to pay are completely unreal. We must look at that again. Other Deputies have stressed the obvious addition to costs by the Dublin inspection system whereunder the central authority send engineers and architects to inspect works which qualify for grants. I think there is something to be said for trusting local authority officers to superintend this work. But, above all, the time element would be enormously improved.
Now I propose to point out that we have a very considerable inheritance in this country. We are very fortunate in some ways that we escaped the Industrial Revolution of 100 odd years ago. We should do everything possible to ensure that our industrial progress does not mar the landscape. But, more than that, we should do everything possible to ensure that the more graceful inheritance that we have should be valued very highly by us. I do not propose to refer to the Georgian houses, and so on. However, it would be no harm to refer to the proposal to cover over the canal here for municipal purposes. I do not want to deal objectively with the matter but to stress the importance of some kind of control over that kind of proposal.
If people do not see immediately how important a waterway such as this canal is, running as it does through the city of Dublin; if they do not see its importance from the point of view of sheer visual pleasure and enhancement of the scene they probably will never understand it. I am convinced there are enough people in the country and I hope in the Minister's Department to make the difference. There must be officers in most local authorities to see that this kind of proposal cannot and should not ever be entertained by anybody.
There are people with whom you cannot discuss this matter because they do not see the enormity of their proposal and discussing the matter with them is pointless. I hope there are more of the other kind of view. I hope there are more councillors and more Ministers and more Dáil Deputies who will set their faces very firmly against any such despoliation. I am not even discussing this canal from the point of view of preserving a waterway to the Shannon, although that is quite important. We all know of the importance of tourism. That anybody should attempt to interfere with the beautiful vistas of the canal on the south side of the city is outrageous and I think there should be public outcry about it.
The greatest care should be taken when services and proposals of this kind are formulated that we are all on the watch to prevent that kind of mind obtaining control of the proposal. We must guard against the view that the important thing is to send the water here or the sewerage there and to hell with everything else.
In the city of Cork a fortnight ago we had a lengthy discussion in the Corporation because some of the councillors there thought it would be desirable to cover over with concrete one of the branches of the River Lee. The Lee surrounds Cork. One of the branches, not a busy one, is a rather attractive waterway. These people said they wanted to cover it over with concrete for its whole course through the city to provide a great car park for the citizens and visitors. I thought it was a shocking proposal and I am glad to be able to say that the city council reacted in the same way and that there were only three votes in support of the proposal to do this thing.
I met business people and others outside who considered that business was much more important to the city than this kind of thing. Even accepting that lowest possible standard, I said I would admit that the business of tourism is important and that any city situated such as Cork requires to have these amenities of the eye—the landscaping and the beauty of the place— preserved. One businessman said that if people cannot bring in their cars here what good is anything else. He described it as sentimental poppycock. I am standing for that sentimental poppycock. I hope the Minister and whoever succeeds him and the officers in his Department will continue to stand for that kind of sentimental poppycock in this country.
What we have we should value. God knows, enough bad things were done in the past by our fathers and some by us. However, we should set our faces against it and realise that there is a great deal more in living than the bare rudiments of shelter and services. There are graces to which we must pay tribute. We should always have a kind of aesthetic censorship in relation to what we propose to do. If that had obtained from Victorian times onwards we should have been spared a great deal of the ugliness we now have to look upon.
The Minister and his senior officers are, I am sure, at one with those of us who feel that way about these things. The legislation about derelict sites and town planning is all part of that mind—and a very desirable mind it is. We must keep in check the people who think the shortest cut is the best cut. I should like to pay tribute here to the booklet recently issued by Bord Fáilte. It is very witty and informative. It shows how easy it is to improve the places in which we live.
In the matter of street and roadside advertising, I think we are not strict enough. The advertisers themselves would probably in the long run be quite agreeable if we said we would put an end to all such advertising because if nobody had an advantage nobody would seek to continue the matter. It would be a shame if the roads leading from the cities and towns became disfigured in the manner in which roads in other parts of the world have become disfigured by advertising. If all roadside advertising is prohibited there is no loss to anybody.
Another matter in which I have an interest—and in which I hope the Minister has also—is the quiet development of our small seaside places. The Minister should get the local authority to ensure that the efflorescence of tin shacks and discarded railway coaches stops. We are obviously facing a reasonable upsurge in our tourist trade. A great many people will come to this country because of what we have to give them. But, for goodness' sake, let them not leave the country with a bad taste in their mouths about the kind of thing we do here. Let us not disfigure our little bays and beaches by uncontrolled sprawling and ugly erections.
The Minister could very profitably ensure that every county council with a coastal area be made alive to the need for preserving our beaches. I do not want any elaborate construction done, but I want to prevent eyesore constructions being erected. These little places really contain the best of what we have to offer to foreigners. They do not want the other type of thing. If the beaches are reasonably kept and if the tin shacks are frowned upon effectively by the county council, you will get development of a desirable kind.
In regard to the smaller places inland, I mentioned in a previous debate on this Estimate the experiment carried out in the town of Norwich in Great Britain. It was something on the lines of what is outlined in the Bord Fáilte booklet, but a bit larger. All the shopfronts in the principal streets of Norwich were face-lifted. A lot of paint was used and ugly things were taken off the kerb sides. The result was an extremely attractive change. The Minister's Department could well envisage a very satisfactory development whereby we would subsidise local groups who would undertake to do this face-lifting of our towns. It is going to be good for those who live in these places if we can all insist on these improvements. Children growing up in these areas will have an added consciousness of the need to preserve and not despoil. Indeed, it should find a place in the curriculum of the schools. Services like television could be used to indicate the lines on which to go. Above all, we should inculcate pride of place in all our people.
I have already referred on other occasions to the proliferation of roadside signs. Many of these signs are, I know, essential from the point of view of traffic, but I wonder if they are not defeating their own objectives. In 50 yards of Patrick Street in Cork, I counted no fewer than 20 poles, all bearing different messages—to stop, go on, turn left, do not turn right. In those 50 yards, only a genius could absorb all the instructions about what he should do and should not do. We have allowed it to become overpowering. I described it previously as a footpath forest. We would want to do something about the simplification of these signs.
A slight fault I have to find with the towns I have been in is that occasionally there is stupid location of street names. I go to a corner to try to find out what street I am in and I find no indicator at the corner of the street I am seeking. Frequently these indicators are not maintained by the local authority in a clean and defined manner. If we are to provide the traveller from outside with information and if the growth of motor traffic enables more of our own people to go around the country, we should help them in this way. Street names should be clear.
I am not so sure if I agree with all the proposals being made at local authority meetings to scrap old placenames and street names and substitute for them what I would describe for want of a better word as patriotic names. Many of the names we seek to scrap would not, in the context of present thinking, be regarded as patriotic. However, these people lived in these places and they left their mark on the places in which they lived. Now a change is taking place. They have largely been dispossesed and their descendants are inhabitants of a different country. The old place names remain. They indicate the passage of time and they are a record of history. I think they should be left there. If we want to honour the names of our current leaders, let us wait and proceed to put them in new places. Do not let us obliterate the marks of time.
Another matter to which the Minister could give attention concerns waterside cities where there are harbour authorities. It is a matter of providing protection for the people on land, to keep them away from the water and so to prevent the tragedies that occasionally happen in these places. Frequently there has been great delay in getting adequate protection because of powers of harbour authorities and local authorities. In the city of Cork some years ago, it was only because of the great reasonableness of the harbour authority that we were able to get as far as ensuring that what happened at a particular place would not happen again. At present they are jointly agreeing on other proposals so that some form of protection will be provided. I am aware of the need for keeping the quayside accessible and available for its proper work of discharging and loading boats, but, with the growth of motor traffic, the danger is greater. The harbour authority should be subordinated to the civic authority in matters of this kind.
Many Deputies referred to the parking of cars and other transport in our towns. We seem to be moving towards a slow strangulation. I believe, the time will have to come where we shall have to give inducement of some kind to local authorities to erect elevated parks, lifts and so on in city centres.
We can all be proud of the very great development and good work done in the servicing of roads in this country. It is something commented on favourably by every visitor. I have often wondered whether something could be devised in the making of roads to give a slightly white surface which would help a night driver. Any of us who drive at night know the great comfort of coming onto a newly-concreted road where the car's lighting system appears completely efficient. The engineers who provide road surfaces should not deem it beyond their skill to devise something that is quite different from the black, shiny surface that appears as a wall of darkness to the night driver on a rainy night.
The Minister's Department should indicate to local authorities who are undertaking road works on major roads the kind of road signs they should employ to indicate that works are in progress, the distances at which they should be placed from the work and the time the signs should be taken away when the work is finished. At two different parts of the main road between Dublin and Cork, there are signs which say "Danger: work in progress". You drive on and on, expecting to come to the work in progress and eventually you find the road work has been completed but the signs have been left there. The Minister should remind roadmaking authorities that these signs should be clear, should be placed at the correct distance and there should nearly be an agreed formula about the wording on them. They should be taken away immediately the work is done.
I am inclined to agree with Deputy Flanagan who said that our craze for straightening roads and taking all the bumps and bends out of them has elements of danger. I do not think the M1s and M2s are good or necessary in Ireland. I do not think the contours or configuration of the country lend themselves to that kind of road. I have seen some of the great earth-cutting equipment in use so that a flat road may go straight through the countryside. I think this can cause unhappiness in regard to the landscape and unhappiness to the driver who drives for long periods.
There is a railway bridge near Cork city which is almost an S-bend. It is in fact the end of the Dublin road to Cork. I have always opposed anything being done about straightening it out and this was before the Minister's proposals about speed limits. It works on the mental state of a driver and makes him think in terms of slowness so that when he gets into the city, he will be thinking in terms of 20 or 25 miles an hour rather than 60. I think an obstruction occassionally has its merits.
I support Deputy Jones in his remarks about public libraries. When the Library Council was established, it was a considerable step forward. I do not know to what extent the idea generated is flourishing but I should like to know what grants have been applied for by local authorities and library committees and what grants are to be made. I have been interested in this all my life because I think the growth of literacy in Ireland is one of the greatest needs we have. We would hear much more informed comment on many matters if more reading had been done. It is a pity that the good proposals contained in that action are not sufficient because of the grudging minds of many local councillors. The first thing they light upon at an estimates meeting is the library rate. It is really a frightening phenomenon. I should like to hear from the Minister how the work is going.
The Department is one of the most important, extensive and far-reaching of the Departments of State in the way it wraps up the life of the citizen and influences him. There are three units in it, the public representative on the local authority, the manager and the Ministers' Department. We have also the long-suffering citizen. The enormous growth of function in my lifetime has made the work of local government almost too great a subject for a public representative. The managerial system was the inevitable result and public representatives had to be prepared to shed some authority. They are, after all, the transient government and the manager and his staff are the permanent activists.
How well we make the system work will be measured by the commonsense we all bring to it but the figures the Minister has quoted alone of rating returns and expenditure by local bodies indicates the enormous size of the work. In that work there are many anomalies and many time and money wasting procedures. The Minister's Department should help to short circuit and eradicate some of the red tape that surrounds the entire activity. The work is becoming greater and its impact on the local representative is becoming less, of necessity, because he is not able to do it. A good public representative now would be wise to concentrate on a very few aspects of his council's work and let others take on specialised work in other aspects. None can do all of it and never was the jack-of-all-trades in local affairs more the master of none.
If councillors took an informed interest in certain aspects of the council's work, the whole thing would add up to the kind of competence we require. We should not be depressed by criticisms on financial points by certain well-organised groups. The figures we got yesterday for the change in the value of money mean that the rates sought from citizens in 1939 should now be three times as much but in very few local government areas is that the case.
There is a great task to be done. The Minister's Department can have enormous influence on it, provided all the things I have outlined in my speech are attended to as well as the ordinary day-to-day work of providing housing, roads and so on. It can also influence very much our people and the places in which they live.
