Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 31 Oct 1963

Vol. 205 No. 5

Committee on Finance. - Vote 29—Local Government (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That the Vote be referred back for reconsideration. —(Deputy Jones).

Mr. Harte

Before progress was reported, I was speaking in regard to council cottages in Donegal. Where title to a cottage site is not in order, this should be dealt with by a compulsory purchase order. If the owner of a site is willing to sell, I cannot see any reason for delay in having the title put in order. However, we find that the county manager must make a compulsory purchase order, which must be submitted to the Department of Local Government. Some officials must ask a few pertinent questions. Finally, the owner of the site and the applicant anxious to get the house must make representations to a county councillor or a TD about the delay.

I have contacted the Department about such cases. In September, 1962, a compulsory purchase order was submitted to the Department. The owners of each of the seven sites involved were prepared to give the land to the county council to provide a house for particular applicants. There were few legal snags. No member of the local authority could understand the delay in the Minister's Department. Having made inquiries on three occasions, I was told that an inspector of the Department would have to go to Donegal and inspect each of the sites. One of the sites was in Falcarragh and another in south-west Donegal. I would say the distance between them was 100 miles. An inspector has to come to Donegal, inspect the sites and recommend to the officer responsible to the Minister that he sanction the compulsory purchase order. If there was any legal difficulty I could appreciate the reason for a visit to Donegal by an official of the Department.But if the county manager and every other official in the county council are competent to do their jobs, then I think, in order to shortcircuit the delay, the Minister should give the county manager permission to instruct the officers in the Department to sanction the sites.

Having established title and put it in order, the manager then recommends that a cottage be built for the particular applicant. That is advertised and contractors submit tenders. They are opened by the county manager in the presence of the local tender committee.The manager then recommends to the Department that a particular tender, normally the lowest, should be accepted. But this tender must also be submitted to the Department of Local Government for sanctioning, and in some cases it lies in the Department for two or three months before it is eventually sanctioned. Having got sanction, it happens on many occasions that the septic tank is discovered not to be in order. Then we must start the wheel turning all over again. I could cite half a dozen cases where contractors had actually dug the foundations to erect a cottage 12 months ago and the contractor has not put a spade or shovel into one of those sites since then because of difficulties that arose out of delay caused in the Department of Local Government.

I know the Minister is a rational man and has the interests of his constituents at heart and I strongly recommend him to look at this situation.One Minister for Local Government said when he took office that he would buy scissors to cut the red tape. If that scissors is still in the Department, I respectfully suggest the Minister should use it.

Vesting schemes for cottages, or purchase schemes, as Deputy Corry described them, were introduced by the Fianna Fáil Government and in the course of his contribution, he boasted about this magnificent scheme. While much good can be said of it, much can also be said against it. I am in full agreement with the county manager and his staff who recommend that occupants of council cottages should purchase their homes because a man's home is his castle and if a county council tenant purchases or enters into a vesting agreement with the county council to purchase his home, that home automatically becomes his own. But there are a few snags. Generally speaking, these snags do not arise until the original tenant has reared his family and passed to his reward. Then the legalities start to pop up like popcorn. I think nothing I could say in regard to the legalities of these things would add to this debate and I would prefer to leave them alone.

What I intended to say about vested cottages, as I see them as a county councillor, is this. There are possibly 50 vested cottages in County Donegal vacant at present and being used as summer residences by people who have emigrated to England and Scotland. These cottages were built possibly for those tenants or their fathers and now the heirs to these cottages are living in Britain. Legally speaking, they are entitled to hold possession of the cottages and there is nothing the county council can do to retrieve them unless the tenant violates some of the regulations which, even if he tried it, would be nearly impossible to do.

If a local authority builds a cottage to house a person in it at a subsidised rate and if ultimately that cottage is vested and the heir of that cottage eventually claims it and lives in England, I cannot understand why the Minister for Local Government, if he has not got legislation to do it, should not introduce legislation to enable him to retrieve that cottage. It was built by public money. For want of a better term, it is, as it were, a present. I cannot understand why it cannot be retrieved in view of the fact that the Minister for Lands is introducing a Bill whereby he can take over a farm of land from a person who has bought it or whose ancestors bought it with their own money. The position could be at the moment that a widowed mother would elect to go to the Six Counties to live with a married son or daughter and she is not left in possession of her farm—the Land Commission take it from her. We must remember that her husband or father or someone belonging to her bought that farm of land and she is more entitled to it, if we are to compare like with like, than the person living in England who is in possession of a vested cottage which is vacant for 11½ months of the year.

The position is scandalous and I think the Minister should make inquiries.If he does, he will find there are roughly 50 houses of that type in County Donegal. I said earlier that the Department have fallen flat on the housing programme in County Donegal and to try to save themselves, are putting up the argument that might be accepted by some people that sites are required in many cases for the erection of SDA houses. I am in complete agreement with SDA housing but it is only people in certain categories who can afford to build these houses. If local authorities would set up sub-committees to encourage newly-married couples to build their own small houses, we would be alleviating the problem that no doubt will be ours in another five or ten years. If we could encourage newly-married couples to build with the help of grants and SDA loans, they can live in those houses for as little as 18/- a week or as much as they are prepared to build a house for. I believe they could build a decent house for a repayment of 30/- a week under the SDA alone.

Some time ago I mentioned at a Donegal County Council meeting that a recommendation should be made to the Department to give an incentive grant to a person in the lower income group who would wish to build his own cottage. While the Minister and I disagree on many points, I trust he will give this serious consideration. As I see it, a newly-married man in this group normally lives with his parents immediately after marriage and the couple end in a year's time living in a room with a child and possibly paying 30/- a week for it. From that moment on, the problem is overcrowding.

If that person were encouraged to build a three-roomed cottage of the type for which the Department of Local Government issued plans, and if he were in receipt of less than £10 a week, he could, in County Donegal, get £350 by way of grant—£175 from the Department and £175 from the Donegal County Council. It is reckoned such a cottage could be built for something less than £1,000. If the applicant were energetic enough, he could cut down on the cost by putting some of his own personal effort into the actual building. In any case, he could borrow £550 to £650 and he could live in the completed cottage for 18/- per week. He has a house of his own for 18/- a week.

In most cases newly-married couples do not know of the existence of these aids. They are not told about them. Whether it is that they are not told because the Department and the local authorities do not want to bother, or whether it is that they do not want possibly to discourage them, I do not know, but, in many cases, neither the Department nor the county council publicise the fact that a cottage big enough for a newly-married couple, commodious enough to last them for the first ten years of their married lives, can be built for £1,000, of which £350 is available by way of grant and the remainder can be borrowed from the local authority at a repayment of 2/10 per week for every £100 borrowed over a period of 35 years.

A husband, whose duty it is to provide a home for his wife and family, is normally scared when he thinks he is left with a figure of £1,000 but if he is told he can borrow and repay 2/10 per week for every £100 borrowed over a period of 35 years, then the idea becomes a concrete proposition.If people were encouraged in this direction the housing problem would, I believe, be relieved considerably in another five or ten years. I trust the Minister will give keen consideration to this suggestion and, in the case of a person earning less than £8 per week, he should get an incentive grant to build a cottage and there could be a mortgage on the cottage preventing him from selling it at a later date to someone in a higher income group.

Some few months ago the Minister introduced new town planning legislation here. The provisions met with my approval, though I was disappointed in one aspect. Town planning will involve local authorities in a tremendous amount of capital expenditure. A great deal of effort will be put into it by local engineers. Local councils will have to discuss the plan for their respective areas. Having adopted it, at great expense, I think the Minister for Local Government, irrespective of what party he may represent, should accept the plan and leave it as it is. What do we find? Whenever a county manager refuses town planning permission, the Minister should say that that is final. If he does not say it is final, if he wishes to query it, having reversed the decision of the county manager, he should give the reasons for reversing the decision. The present unsatisfactory position tends to create confusion and chaos and to militate against good planning.

Linked with town planning, I should like to see better lighting. The Minister on his many journeys to his constituency in North East Donegal must have noticed the street lighting in Aughnacloy. It is most attractive and most effective. There is nothing so ugly as ESB poles lining one side of a street and Post Office telegraph poles lining the other. If the Minister has not noticed the lighting in Augnacloy I suggest he should do so on his next journey to Donegal.

I should like to see more co-operation between local authorities, the different sections of local authorities, and Departments of State. Often when a new footpath has been laid the Department of Posts and Telegraphs comes along a week later to lay underground cables. This is wanton waste of public moneys. I suggest the Minister should appoint an officer in each county council to act as a link where public works are concerned between Departments of State and the different sections in the local authority.

In the towns of Donegal, I should like to see better street surfacing. As a public representative, I must condemn the delay in putting the streets in Ramelton into proper order. It is a downright disgrace that a contractor should have spent two years, or more, putting in a town sewer in the streets of Ramelton. The streets have yet to be resurfaced. It is not the fault of, neither is it a reflection on, the county engineer. The Minister should give marching orders to the contractor. I believe he is now within a few weeks of completing the work.

Roads constitute such a problem in Donegal that the position was summed up at a recent GP meeting of Donegal County Council in that the county engineer warned each councillor present that, if the present programme were to be continued, he would need an additional £7,000 per year over the next seven years. He would need another £7,000 and it would go up each year until the seventh year had been reached. That meant that in the first year we will get a demand for an immediate increase of 6d in the £, the next year it will be a shilling, the next year it will be ? and so on. The Minister for Local Government was a member of the Donegal County Council before his appointment as Minister and appreciates possibly more than I do the problem of rates in Donegal. I cannot see any salvation for the Donegal ratepayers. In many cases, the owners of guesthouses or small hotels are paying more in rates than the owners of larger guesthouses in the city of Dublin.

Mr. Blaney

Not at all.

Mr. Harte

I know it for a fact. I have visited many guesthouses in the city; I have stayed overnight in them, have become friendly with the owners and they have told me the position. I should like to congratulate the Minister on introducing the new traffic regulations, which were long overdue. I hope they will be a success in helping to protect the general public from drunken and reckless drivers.

I suggest that the Minister consider the provision of Garda motorcycle patrols on roads throughout the country. In co-operation with the Minister for Justice, he could provide at least one extra Garda, equipped with a motorcycle, for each Garda station, to patrol the roads in their respective areas. If any motorist, young or old, driving along country roads or on main roads approaching the city of Dublin, feared the presence of a motorcycle patrol, there would be fewer fatal accidents.

From his knowledge of the Six Counties, the Minister must be aware that it is possible for a motorist to walk into the taxation office there any day of the year and have his car taxed for the coming 12 months. For instance, if he goes into the taxation office on 4th April, he can tax his car until 3rd April following. Now with the increased volume of traffic on our roads, I suggest the Minister adopt a similar system here.

While I am giving credit to the Minister for many things, as a public representative I must condemn some of the things he is responsible for or partly responsible for. We have had, in County Donegal, the job of appointing additional rate collectors. The first of these vacancies was created in the Inishowen Peninsula. Prior to the appointment, we had two collectors, a lady who carried out her duties exceptionally well, and a middle-aged man who had to retire for health reasons. Prior to his retirement, he had been in ill health but had carried on for four or five years.

Then, for political purposes and no other reason, it was suggested behind closed doors that an additional appointment should be made. Many reasons were given for this but the people are familiar with the facts. I put a question to the Minister asking him why he sanctioned an additional appointment and he told me the area was too big for two men, though up to that time it was covered by a lady and a gentleman who was in failing health, to the satisfaction of the county manager and the county council. Now the Minister says the area is too big for two young men.

It is well known the first appointment was an upset for the Fianna Fáil Party. The man who was to get the appointment discovered there was a stronger candidate in the field and this second candidate was appointed. Then what happened? A county councillor's son was told that if he held back he would get the next appointment. Then a third man came along, the son of a Fianna Fáil urban councillor, and again the cat was in the nest. The only solution that could be arrived at to keep everyone happy was to divide the area up so that each son of a strong Fianna Fáil supporter would get a job.

During the voting in the Donegal County Council, there were married men, married men who had been TB patients, married men with national service, looking for these jobs but they were given to single men. The next appointment we had was in the Glenties area. The manager on this occasion recommended to the council that a rate collector with a number of years' service, with the princely salary of £240 a year, should be given the area. This was suggested as a saving by the county manager but the Fianna Fáil members of Donegal County Council refused the county manager's recommendation and appointed the chairman of the Fianna Fáil Dáil Ceantair who was already in a job.

I might say that some of the people involved in this affair had relatives who are personal friends of mine. I found it was offending these people when it was my duty to expose those things. I make no apology for offending them but I give a warning to the Minister that if similar cases come before the county council, I will expose them as long as I am a member of that council. I will also oppose the suggestion to abolish the general purposes committee. This was proposed by local councillors for the reason that things discussed in committee could not be raised at a general meeting of the council. It is a democratic right of every Deputy and councillor at a county council meeting to expose anything which he feels is contrary to the public interest. While I remain a member of Donegal County Council, that will be my attitude.

Might I say that I protest in the strongest possible manner against some of the actions of the Minister? These actions are despicable, low and purely of a political nature. Some of the things he has done recently bring his office into disrepute. In the parish of Rosguil, in the reconstruction of the Rossapenna hotel, the contractor sent out letters to selected people asking them to apply for jobs and one man was actually brought back from England to fill a job. It matters nothing to me if a contractor employs particular people. He is entitled to select whomever he wishes to do his work but if he is getting a State grant, he is spending public money, not the money of the Fianna Fáil Party. He is spending the money of the taxpayer and he should refrain from such petty political stunts as were indulged in this instance. He invited people to apply for jobs from a list sent to him by the Minister for Local Government. If this is an untruth, then the Minister can deny it.

This is not the first time the Minister has stooped to such low tactics. Some time ago, there were 12 new jobs being created in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, labourers to the linesmen. The Minister sent down two letters, one to the secretary of the local Fianna Fáil cumann.

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not see how this has anything to do with the administration of the Department of Local Government. The Minister as a private individual or as a member of this House is entitled to help his constituents in any way he can. We are only considering the Minister in his responsibility to this House as the Minister responsible for a Department. Any statement must be relevant to his actions in administering that Department.

Mr. Harte

I submit to your ruling, Sir, but I want to protest in the strongest possible manner. I need not mention the details of the case.

Mr. Crinion

It is welcome news to hear that there are to be increased grants for small farmers. I hope that with these increased grants from the Government, the local authorities will give increased grants in a similar ratio. These are grants for people who are waiting to build new houses and many of them have been waiting for a long time. Meath County Council recently took a leaf out of the Minister's book. They were getting it so hard to obtain contractors that they provided loans at four per cent to enable people to build their own houses. Those people can now get a house by borrowing £1,000 and, with the grant of £400, they have the house for repayments amounting to £1 0s. 6d. a week.

I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister that quite a number of contractors take contracts to build houses and then, when called on to build them, say they are not interested any more. When they take a contract, they should be bound in the insurance bond to complete it. I have seen cases where cottages have been given in contract and they have not been built for two or three years afterwards. The same thing happens in County Westmeath.I know of five houses which were given to a contractor in November, 1962 and he started to dig the foundations for the first house only last week.

This is causing undue hardship to the people, especially as many have been living in houses which have been condemned for a number of years. Naturally, they are not going to do repairs as they are expecting their new houses to be built and the house they are living in gets worse as the time goes on. How often have we seen that where a person moves out of a house, particularly a thatched house, inside a week the house completely collapses. It is natural that once the fire goes out of it, it deteriorates quickly. If the Minister could bring in a regulation or give encouragement to local authorities to demand an insurance bond with the acceptance of the contract, there would be some chance of getting the contractor to build a house in a reasonable time.

We must compliment the Minister on the amount of new housing and housing reconstruction that has gone on over the past few years. There were very few new houses being built a few years ago and more rarely still were they being repaired but since the introduction of new grants in the past couple of years there has been an increase in building and reconstruction.New housing is one of the most important signs of an upward trend in the community. One often sees the standard of living of a family improving once they go into a new house. If they live in an old house they can do nothing with it. It is hard to decorate it but when they go into a new house they keep it spotless and the garden will be nicely kept. Housing is a great uplift to the community.

It is obvious that the grants and loans which are being given could not be made available unless the economy were going well. The Minister is making this money available according as the economy improves. In my constituency certainly there has been a great increase in the number of new contractors who have sprung up in the past few years. They are all extremely busy and they are doing very good work. Furthermore, they are giving employment.

One fact which does emerge from my interviews with constituents is the delay in the Department from the time the person who is looking for a subsidy fills up the application form and sends it to the local authority and then to the Department. This whole operation takes the best part of two or three months and if there is any snag, naturally it will take a bit longer. When a person is thinking of having work done he likes to make a bargain with the contractor. The question is how much over or under the Department's estimate will he get the work done and he likes to have an opportunity of going around to see which contractor will do it at the lowest cost. When there is delay in a matter of this kind it takes a good deal of the satisfaction out of having the work done.

I realise the Department have had to deal with an increased number of applications for grants in the past year or two. It is phenomenal and, naturally, the more applications that come in, the more time it will take to deal with them. With a little goodwill, I am sure the Minister could speed up this machinery. It is only in the Department that there can be an appreciation of the number of people applying for these grants and building their houses. If you go into any local authority you will find there is not a day passes but it will sanction half a dozen or perhaps more water and sewerage grants. The same will apply in the housing section in regard to housing grants. This is proof that the Minister and his Department are achieving positive results which one likes to see when a Government or a Minister has put new plans and grants into operation.

In regard to vesting cottages, on a number of occasions I have come across cases where a person would like to build a second house on his plot. This would be, perhaps, where one of the family is getting married. It is sometimes hard to find an additional site even in the country where there is plenty of land especially if the person wants to be near home. It is fairly hard to get an SDA loan where it is a vested house except the father or mother actually gets it in his or her name to build it for the son. It is not satisfactory. The father or mother does not like to be accountable for the son's house and possibly there is some way that problem can be overcome. I am sure other Deputies have had cases of this kind because the problem is creeping in.

The SDA loans are extremely good. They are the simplest and cheapest loans that can be provided at present but there are a few counties, including Westmeath, where a person needs security for this loan. When a person gives in the deeds that should be sufficient security. There are other counties where they do not require the extra two securities and I feel that every county council should have this system. It is embarrassing for a person who is looking for an SDA loan to have to ask two of his friends to sign a paper or give in their names. It may be more embarrassing if the county councillor refuses to accept a name as security. Something should be done to iron out that matter.

I mentioned the delays regarding applications but there is also the delay between the time the house or reconstruction is completed and the time the man gets his money. There are bills to be met. In most cases shopkeepers are extremely good but a person does not like to be under an obligation to these people for five or six weeks before he can pay the money. There is always the feeling that the money is not forthcoming. I know that there is a form issued by the Department which the person can sign and cheques are paid but still it is not satisfactory. The people would like to have this money fairly quickly.

We have invested quite an amount of money in our roads. While it is satisfactory to see so much money being devoted to the main arteries, there is an aspect of road improvement on which I should like to touch. Travelling from here to Naas one can see the construction of the dual carriageway. To a layman at least it seems silly that the Dublin County Council and the Kildare County Council should be using two different methods to do the same job. There must be a difference in cost and one method must be better than the other. The Kildare County Council are first putting down sand and gravel and then putting on tarmacadam; the Dublin County Council are putting down concrete first and then putting on the tarmacadam.Time will tell which is the better and cheaper method. It is a lovely road and should make for safer travelling. Travelling on the old road was a nightmare and the sooner the dual carriageway is finished the better.

Widening operations are being carried out along the western road through Meath and Westmeath. One thing that strikes me about these wide roads is that when you have wire fences along the side the lights of a motor car seem to lose much of their effectiveness, in much the same way as they would if the car enters a large field. I feel there is some danger here unless the sides of the roads are properly marked. You have the centre line but there should be a demarcation line on the sides. They have orange lines on the dual carriageway and something like that is needed on these wide roads.

There have been two fatal accidents because of this lack. Both accidents occurred shortly before last Christmas and involved a person on a bicycle on the gravel margin and two men walking on the gravel margin. In both cases cars overran the gravel margin and struck the people. In one of the cases the driver was dazzled but if you have your lights dimmed you can see the centre line and the line at the gravel margin. If the Minister would convey this to the Meath County Council, it might save some lives and a great deal of expense. In the Enfield district, the people feel a lot of anxiety and there is a lot of public feeling over those two accidents.

In regard to the question of a motor car lights on a wide road, I wonder if a bank would not be better than a wire fence. A bank might be more costly but it would improve visibility. As Deputies are aware, on a narrow, winding road, your lights are very good but when you come to a wide expanse, they are not so good. Possibly the Minister's engineers could bear this in mind for future reference. Some of the money spent on roads could be diverted to the improvement of by-roads and laneways. In County Meath, every road that has two or three houses is tarred up to the last house, but in Westmeath, there is a big number of laneways that need to be taken over. They are not public roads even yet. The families living on them have been there for generations and you could describe them as being the backbone of the country.

Those people still have to come through mud and water along laneways covered with potholes and if they have cars it does not improve them. In most cases, they go out on a bicycle and it is rather objectionable. Very often, it means that they have to bring a second pair of shoes with them on Sunday morning when they are going to Mass so that they may change their shoes at the head of the road. We should devote some of the money for main roads towards those laneways. Even if there is only one house along a lane, the position in most cases is that farms adjoin it and it is an outlet for other holdings. At one time there may have been other houses in occupation there and, over the years, people moved out of them.

We have a duty to people living in the country and who have a stake there. We should do something by way of some form of grant or encouragement to take over those roads so that they will be repaired every now and then and, in the not too distant future, tarred just like the main roads. The doing of one of those laneways would be comparatively cheap, so to speak, as compared with the money spent on main roads and you can take it that it would not need repairing for quite a long time. Therefore, the initial cost is the capital cost. I feel something could be done to encourage county councils to provide this service to the people who have been paying rates to them for generations.

I compliment the Minister and his Department on the work they have been doing, which is certainly bearing good fruit. The greater the number of applications they receive for grants of one kind or another, the greater the proof of the fruitful work they are doing.

Mr. Crotty

Naturally, housing has been the main subject of debate on the Minister's Estimate. In the past few days, I have been very amused by speeches by some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies and by the way they try to explain the housing position over the past number of years.

The other night, Deputy N. Lemass stated that the slowing-down of house building was due to the collapse of housing in 1956. He said that we are only now getting geared into starting a housing drive again—after seven years. Just imagine that it would take a Department with an energetic Minister seven years to get geared again to start rebuilding houses!

Another Deputy said that due to emigration, there was no necessity for building houses and that that was the cause of the closing down of housing. Today, Deputy Brennan made a further suggestion, that is, the alleged inactivity of the inter-Party Government in the 1950's. I do not think any of these suggestions will bear examination.

There was never so much house building as was done under the inter-Party Government. When the present Government took up office in 1956, they decided, as part of their policy, to close down on housing. I heard one of the able members of the Government state at a dinner in Kilkenny that the money spent by the inter-Party Government on housing was just slush money to create employment for the time being but was not really of any use economically; that it brought in no dividends and represented no permanent improvement to the economy of the country; that, for the time being, it was good enough to create employment and to give a fillip to employment over that period.

House building is the most essential activity in any country. As Deputy Crinion says, it helps families to go out of old houses into new houses, with a general improvement in the mode of living of such people. They take pride in their new homes: they could not do anything with the old houses. I think house building is the first essential and the inter-Party Government had the idea that the first thing we must do is to provide housing for the people. We went a very long way to do that.

Even in my own city of Kilkenny, housing has closed down over a number of years. Practically the last site bought for a housing scheme in Kilkenny was purchased in 1956. Tenancies were taken of 38 houses erected on the site purchased in 1956 exactly seven years later—in 1963. During all that time, we had plans with the Corporation. There were further inquiries as to whether all the people to be rehoused in these houses were eligible for the two-thirds subsidy, and so on.

I would not go as far as Deputy Brennan went today. He said it was eight years before two houses in his area were even under way from the time the site was purchased. They are under way now but it is eight years since the sites were first purchased. He alleged that the Minister is deliberately holding up the building of houses. A Deputy supporting the Minister stated today that the Minister is deliberately holding up the building of ten houses.

Mr. Blaney

Is it correct for Deputy Crotty to misinterpret the remarks of another Deputy?

Mr. Crotty

I took it down. I even asked the Deputy the name of the town. I could not get it from him: I could not understand the name but I took down the actual statement he made, namely, that the Minister is deliberately holding up the building of ten houses.

Mr. Blaney

He did not say that.

Mr. Crotty

I shall have it looked up afterwards so as to see who is correct. The number of local authority houses erected in 1962-63 was 1,828, according to the Minister. He says this is an increase of 47 per cent. It would be easy to have an increase of 47 per cent when the number of local authority houses built in 1961-62 was only 1,200.

Can you imagine that, in the whole of Ireland, according to the Minister's figures, only 1,200 local authority houses were built in 1961-62. That figure improved to 1,828 in 1962-63. According to some Fianna Fáil Deputies, the hard winter was the cause of houses in Dublin falling. Due to the falling of these houses, and the resultant deaths of four people, the housing position in Dublin has been taken in hands—taken in hands with panic measures.

There was no attempt whatever to build to any extent local authority houses in the past six years. Now we have taken panic measures. There are proposals to extend existing contracts and additional schemes have been agreed to in order to save time in the preparation of contract documents. That is a big step forward for the Department of Local Government and the Government who practically closed down on housing over the past six or seven years. It is a welcome step. However, if the house building had gone on in the normal way, there should be no necessity for these panic measures now.

The Minister had discussions with the representatives of the Corporation on the possibility of further increasing housing output. There were discussions between the officers of the Department and Corporation officials. Is it not a pity that these discussions were not held over the past seven years? It was a pity the housing drive did not go ahead even at a slightly slower pace rather than have it stop altogether. The Government felt it was not yielding a return for the money, but it was yielding a social return.

According to the Minister's statement, the number of houses requiring replacement is 25,000. At the rate of 1,200 houses a year, how long will it take to replace them? We welcome the subsidy increase of 10 per cent, but we disagree with the Minister when he states that the increase in subsidy should encourage local authorities to speed up their housing programmes so as to eliminate the remaining pockets of unfit or overcrowded dwellings. That is passing the responsibility over to the local authorities. The Minister's statement seems to suggest that the local authorities have not been doing their duty. They have been doing their duty, but they are frustrated by delays in the Minister's Department. One would not mind the normal delays that might be expected, but when plans and lists of applicants are returned time after time, it means there is a complete slowing down. Local authorities do not deserve that statement of the Minister. They are only too anxious to speed up the provision of houses. If the Minister would encourage his Department to co-operate with local authorities in building houses, he would be nearer the mark.

I have been on several deputations to the Department seeking permission to build houses for people living in overcrowded conditions. The Department refused the two-third subsidy on the last scheme we put up. We were putting into those houses ordinary, working-class people recommended on grounds of hardship, medical grounds and overcrowding. The Minister should give the Corporation the subsidy on those seven houses to encourage them take people out of overcrowded houses. I understand that when the case was put to him by a delegation from the municipal authorities, the Minister replied that if they in Kilkenny increased the rents on their houses he would give it more consideration. In many instances rents in Kilkenny are very high in proportion to the incomes of the people in the houses. Indeed, the tenants are to be congratulated on the wonderful manner in which they pay their rents. We have had a 100 per cent rent collection in Kilkenny ever since the housing drive started. When many of these urban authority houses were built and people were transferred from houses costing 1/- or 2/- per week to houses costing 7/- or 8/- per week, it was said those people would never be able to pay the rents on the houses. But, to their credit, they have paid their rents faithfully all the time. Sometimes they have had to do without other things in order to pay the rent. It does not come well from the Minister to say that he will consider the matter if we review the rents.

An urban scheme of eight houses was built in County Kilkenny recently. There were 18 applicants for the houses. I was interested in a few people who asked me to look up their applications.I went into one particular case. The county medical officer in his report stated that this family were living in a damp house with the roof likely to cave in. Surprisingly, however, he did not recommend them for rehousing in any of the eight houses. I went to the county medical officer, referred to his report and asked him would that not justify him granting this family a tenancy in one of the new houses. He told me he had done his job of allotting the houses as fairly and as honestly as he could. The principle followed was to allot houses to families living in overcrowded conditions.He said he had families in Urlingford with ten to 12 people living in the one house and boys and girls of 13 and 14 practically in the same room. He felt he was called upon to accept these people rather than families in unfit dwellings, and I had to accept that.

I feel the Minister should have another look at the regulations concerning overcrowding. We had cases of eight people to one room in Kilkenny, but the Minister has refused time after time to sanction the two-third subsidy in respect of housing people because of overcrowding. These people cannot afford to pay the rent that is payable if we get only the one-third subsidy. No ordinary working man can afford that. He may pay 25/- or 30/- a week for a flat for a couple of months after his marriage but he cannot continue doing so. I understand the Minister said he would review this matter. I plead with him to give a fairer decision so that we may commence a building scheme to rehouse those now in overcrowded dwellings. Most of them have been rehoused, because we have gone ahead with our housing schemes in the past. I would ask the Minister, therefore, to pay the full subsidy in good faith.

Excellent work has been done by means of the reconstruction grants, which have meant much to places like Kilkenny. But for the introduction of these grants many houses would be practically derelict sites. I hope the grants will be continued and improved and that people will be facilitated as regards inspection. Any time I have been in touch with the Department in regard to reconstruction grants I have had every civility and courtesy and the cases I inquired about were dealt with in a reasonable time. I must give credit where credit is due. The Corporation have followed the lead of the Government and have given 100 per cent grants to anyone who obtained a reconstruction grant from the Department.This makes it easy for people reconstructing their houses to complete their work.

There is one other matter I should like to bring to the Minister's attention. It has already been brought to his attention by several of his own Deputies.It is the matter of the road grants for 1963-64. We have got the same amount of grant for 1963-64 as we had in 1962-63. There is no reduction. We have had a total of £170,000 in road grants. As far as it goes, that is all right, but Kilkenny County Council have always been very energetic and went ahead with road improvement works. After the last war, as county roads had not been touched during the war, they proposed that 2/- in the £ be allotted directly out of rates for these roads. That had a big effect. The road demand has gone up year after year but that 2/- remains for the improvement of county roads. We have reached the point where we have at present 80.8 per cent of our county roads tarred and in good condition. But what congratulations do we get from the Government for such good work? What is the result? The county road improvement grant is cut from £170,000 to £48,000. That is our reward. If we had been slow and had not provided that 2/- in the £ for county road improvement and had less than 50 per cent in good condition, we should still have our £100,000 provided this year.

I have a report here which says that the road improvement grant has been reduced by £52,500 for 1962-63 and that this will mean drastic reductions in improvement works on county roads. Here is where the point comes in. It says that it is necessary to surface-dress green roads and roads that have only received a first surface dressing. Therefore, it is necessary to allocate £28,700 for surface dressing of roads from the County Road Improvement Grant and, therefore, there is only £19,400 available for the reconstruction of county roads during the present year.

That is little or nothing when spread out over the county. We should have had £73,000 for the same work. A certain amount of this money under the Road Improvement Grant has to be paid out against the previous year's work. The sum of £28,000 has to be spent this year in that way, leaving us nearly £19,000 to divide over the various overseers. They could hardly do one small job on a county road on that. That is the return we get for being active and energetic and pressing forward with the work and using the most modern methods on our county roads, employing sand and gravel rather than broken stones.

We even went further in regard to the by-roads that Deputy Crinion spoke about. Over the past two years we provided £31,000 for the improvement of these roads and quite an amount of work was done on them. People on county roads now say: "How is it that such and such a byroad is done and our county road is not done?" We had a deputation in about one-and-a-half miles of county road left undone and they pressed their case so well and stated their road was so bad that we had to raise a loan of £1,500 or £1,800 to do that portion simply because the county improvement grant was cut. If that is the encouragement local authorities are to get for going ahead, would it not be much better for them to go slow? Apparently, if they do not improve the roads they will get more grants and the slower they go the more they will get when everybody else have their roads done. That is a bad system. If you want arterial roads brought up to a higher standard, give more money but do not rob the people living on the county roads, the ratepayers, who also pay licence fees for cars and tractors and who expect a reasonable road up to their houses.

A good share of the money taken from the county road improvement grant will be spent on about 7 miles of arterial road in the Johnstown-Urlingford road area, leaving all the other farmers to cope with potholes and water-logged roads which, unfortunately, they must use.

I ask the Minister, the Department and the Government to change the system of allocating money next year and restore the grants for county road improvements. The more that is done the more the people want done. If they see a neighbour's road done they want their own road to be as good. Kilkenny is a good tillage county and we must have reasonably good roads for the agricultural machinery. The day of the laneway leading to three or four farmhouses has gone and I appeal to the Minister to restore the previous system of allocation. The present policy seems to be one emanating from people who have lost touch with the people of the country. They want to show how wonderful the main and arterial roads are and leave everybody else in dirt and mud. If the former system were restored, would it not be great to be able to say: "Now we have finished our county roads and we can devote extra money to main roads and arterial roads." The main roads need some improvement but not so much the arterial roads.

I am very pleased to see water supplies coming but when you see a regional water scheme started you must expect that it will not be completed in ten years. In the meantime, those who can afford to do so are putting in their own supply and that ultimately takes away from the revenue that should accrue to the regional water supply. I ask the Minister and the Department to improve the rate of progress in getting these documents through. I know a certain amount of time is necessary. One has to get the source. One cannot implement a scheme without having a source. That is not something that can be done in a fortnight. Nevertheless, something could be done, I think, to improve the present position. One sees pipes being laid and the possibility is that the water will not go through them for two years. Progress is slow. The schemes look all right on paper, but when one comes to implement them, it is not such an easy job. But too much time is taken, I think.

We welcome the new traffic regulations, especially regarding lights on bicycles, and so on. We all hope these will result in reducing the number of accidents on our roads. I do not know that improving the roads will help. Kilkenny Corporation sent up schemes for urban road improvement last June. We are now practically in the month of November and we have not yet got sanction from the Department of Local Government. The principal schemes relate to tarmacadam roads. In order to do such roads properly, one must do them in the summer, or in good weather. Had the scheme been sanctioned a few months ago, work could have started. I ask the Minister to look into this matter and sanction this scheme as early as possible.

Mr. O.J. Flanagan

Special emphasis has been placed on housing and on roads by practically every speaker in this debate so far. Our main roads have come in for a good deal of praise. On the occasion of President Kennedy's visit, he commented to a number of people that we had very fine roads. Now we all know that President Kennedy drove from Collinstown Airport, through O'Connell Street and Dame Street to the American Legation in the Phoenix Park. All that route is a first-class road. Every other journey undertaken by President Kennedy was done by helicopter.

Therein, I believe, lies the real trouble. Our Ministers and visitors to this country see our main roads only. They see a speedway, suitable for four lanes of traffic, and they are under the impression that all the roads in the country are the same. Naturally enough, those who accompany distinguished visitors do not do anything to destroy that impression; they paint the picture as if these are the roads we have built in recent years, and that we have them all over the country.

With regard to housing the Minister has this year inspected housing conditions in, I think, Paris. He has been all over the continent inspecting housing and discussing housing problems with various Ministers for Housing on the continent. He was not fortunate enough to visit the United States this year but I am sure he is listed for a ministerial trip next year. One would imagine that a Minister for Local Government would devote his energies to inspecting housing conditions in his own capital city rather than in Paris, Amsterdam and elsewhere.

No matter what some speakers may say, housing is a problem which must be tackled courageously. It is a problem that has been tinkered with so far by the Government. Fianna Fáil have been in office now for over 30 years and we find ourselves today with an acute housing shortage for our aged, our newly-weds, and large families. What have the Government done? They have thrown up their hands in despair and decided to put the people to live in caravans.

The Minister will go down in history as the Caravan Minister for Local Government. Presumably he has had a word in the ear of the Minister for Agriculture for the purpose of supplying these people with grants to buy horses so that they may become part and parcel of the itinerant class, travelling the roads in their caravans drawn by horses. It is to that the Minister is driving our people. It is a nice way of getting out of his difficulty: put the people on the road in caravans on wheels. I do not know if the Minister got this idea as a result of the report of the Commission on Itinerants, but the idea seems to be now to create a number of caravan dwellings. I do not know why. It looks as if they want to drive those who need houses into caravan colonies. To me it is demoralising. To me it is degrading. It is letting the country down. It is letting our people down. It is letting this capital city down.

People cannot be given good housing conditions by being pushed into caravans. The sooner our Caravan Minister for Local Government realises his real responsibilities, the better it will be. Our people do not want caravans. They do not want the kind of roof that covers itinerants. It is entirely wrong, unchristian and indecent that caravans should be offered to our people. The Minister is responsible for housing our people. No matter how the Government may try to belittle the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, no matter what they may say about the inter-Party Government, the only Government in this country that ever drove our people into caravans are the Fianna Fáil Government. It is pitiful and shameful.It is a black mark on present housing policy.

There were in 1960 numbers of rat-infested dwellings. Not alone were there houses in which there was chronic overcrowding, but there were also bad houses, insanitary houses, houses in which there were neither water nor sewerage services. The sooner we realise we are living in modern times, the sooner we will realise the urgency of the problem facing young married couples living in the most horrible conditions, unhealthy, unsound and insanitary. We know all this from reading doctors' and county medical officers' reports, despite all the ballyhoo we hear from Fianna Fáil supporters.

Had this question of housing been tackled properly and courageously it would have been solved by now. All that is needed is a greater measure of co-operation between the local authorities and the Department. The local authorities have done their fair share in the matter of the provision of houses but many of them now find themselves at a standstill because the rents are so high that tenants cannot afford to pay them. These high rents are a great hindrance to the solution of our housing problems.

I cannot understand why the Department have not embarked on a scheme for the erection of what are generally known as workmen's houses. Such houses could be erected in groups. There could be a group for the larger workingclass families, a group of small houses, comprising a kitchen, sittingroom and bedroom for old age pensioners, and a group for the lonely bachelors who wish to be independent and have a roof over their heads and who are prepared to pay for it. No attempt has ever been made to provide houses for such groups of people who are unable to provide houses for themselves.

It has been said that a man's house is his castle, but I am afraid we have many thousands of people in this country, most of them with large families, living in unhealthy, rat-infested hovels. I do not know whether the Minister, when touring the housing slums of the continent, saw conditions as bad as he can see any day in this country. In my constituency last week, I was approached by a young expectant mother and her husband. She told me the rats had eaten the food prepared for the children, that she was afraid to leave the children alone in the house. This woman lives at Trumrea near Mountrath in County Laois. She, her husband and children are living in the most shocking and desperate conditions. The attention of the local authority has now been directed to it but it appears there is no alternative accommodation available for this young family, living in dread and horror.

The Minister does not have to go to the continent to see rat-infested hovels. I can speak with authority about housing conditions in the Midlands but I naturally have not the same knowledge of the position in Dublin. What I want to draw the Minister's attention to, however, are the regulations of the Dublin Corporation imposing a residence qualification in regard to houses. Apparently a person must have lived in the city for a certain period before he becomes qualified to get a house.

This, to my mind, is an unjust regulation. We know there is a flight from the land to our bigger cities and towns; we know that many thousands of our young people in recent years have come to Dublin to work. Where their work is they must also live; yet they are debarred from getting houses here. This is not a problem confined to Dublin. It is a national problem. If these thousands of young people come to work here, live here and pay their taxes here, they are entitled to a roof of their own over their heads. Many of them have to continue to live in small flats after they are married. I am not at all satisfied the Department and the Minister have devoted all their energies to solving this problem or to the relief of the thousands of young people living in overcrowded flats in the city.

I am glad the question of the letting of houses by local authorities is being reviewed. There was a regulation under which the full subsidy would not be paid on a house if the tenant had been a sub-tenant in a council house. Surely, if a member of a family gets married and if he has no house, the natural place for him to go to live is his parents' house. This regulation about sub-tenants, therefore, can create untold hardship and has become a real barrier to the solution of our housing problem.

The Minister, like all Ministers, is a man of many words, loud talk and little action. That certainly applies in relation to housing. I would like to know what is the position with relation to these caravan cottages that the Minister proposes to set up and what is the atmosphere that the children will be living in. There is a moral obligation on the Government in this matter, a moral obligation they cannot get away from, to look after our people in this regard.

Another aspect of our housing difficulties arises in relation to rents. It is all very fine for a young married man to go into a house and pay 30/-a week in rent while he has no family but how is he going to continue to pay that when he has a family? Assuming that he is a casual worker, and most of our workers are casual workers, if he allows his rent to run for two months due to a period of illness or unemployment, how is he going to clear it off? The relationship between a person's income and the rent he is charged does not stand the test of commonsense. No casual workers can be expected to pay the high rents that our present housing laws require.

Is there any explanation for the regulation requiring a local authority to provide fully serviced houses in rural districts? In a district called The Health, near Portlaoise, the Laois County Council erected a number of cottages and there was no part of the Midlands where they were more urgently required. They were serviced for water but when the houses were completed they discovered that the water was not available. That is a poor reflection on the engineering ability of the Department or whoever was responsible.

The rents of these houses are remarkably high and are based on the fact that the houses contain bathrooms which were not needed. The people were told that the reason the rents are so high is that the houses have the facilities of bathroom and water despite the fact that water cannot be got to service toilets, bathrooms or anything else. What investigation does the Minister propose to have into this matter to see why the tenants are being charged rents appropriate to serviced houses when they are not getting the services? The fact that a person has an ornamental bathroom without water does not mean that he should have to pay for the service he has not got.

It is unreasonable to expect local authorities to provide houses of the very high standard required by the Department. The tendency now is to build houses in groups in the rural areas. Recently we have been furnished with statistics which tell us that there were never so few agricultural labourers on the land, never so few people living in remote rural districts. That is due to the fact that no effort has been made to scatter these houses throughout the rural districts. In this day and age, we cannot expect agricultural workers to travel three or four miles a day to and from their work.

We have many cases where farmers were prepared to give sites to local authorities to build houses for their agricultural workers and they are being told that the councils propose to build houses in groups and that these houses must be serviced with bathrooms, water and other modern facilities. I do not know if the majority of agricultural workers or road workers are as anxious as all that about these additional facilities. All they want is a clean house with a sound roof over their heads in which they can rear their families in Christian decency. If we have a housing policy designed to strip and denude rural Ireland, how can we blame rural workers for drifting into the towns?

I have often wondered why an effort was not made by the Forestry Division in conjunction with the Department of Local Government to erect houses in remote districts for forestry workers who would be prepared to live near the various State forests. I can well understand why such a large number of schools are closing down all over the country today. I can understand the reports that are coming in to the Custom House of the low marriage rate. The whole cause of that is the decision of the Government not to provide houses scattered around the rural areas where the farmworker can be near his work. I am all for building the houses on the land and that project should present no difficulty whatever.

The present housing position does not reflect any great credit on the Minister. However, in relation to the reconstruction and repair of old houses, I want to associate myself with the complimentary remarks of Deputy Crotty because the facilities which are made available by the Department for the reconstruction and repair of houses have done an immense amount of good in rural Ireland. I know, from my own experience, that there are the greatest possible attention, speedy reports, favourable and sympathetic consideration in this regard and, on the whole, may I say that the officers of the Minister's Department who are dealing with and deciding these individual cases have displayed a high degree of common-sense and intelligence? I have no complaint whatever to make in relation to the manner in which the schemes for the reconstruction of houses are administered.

In view of the increased building costs and the prospect of increased wages, I should like to see these grants being increased to a greater extent even than that to which the Minister has recently referred. When one goes to repair or patch up an old house, it is very difficult to know the point which expenditure can reach. When an attempt is made to roof an old building, it may be found that the gable end, the back wall or the front wall needs repair. Very often repeated requests have to be made to the Department for a new estimate for the work. Substantially higher grants should be paid for this purpose.

In regard to road grants, I am sure that since this debate commenced a few days ago, most Deputies must have appealed to the Minister to reintroduce the Local Authorities (Works) Act. That was a very useful Act, one that did excellent work and indeed one which has been very sadly missed in rural Ireland and more particularly by local authorities. We are anxious to see the works which came within the scope of that Act and which now cannot be dealt with by the local authority except out of their own funds again being brought within the scope of that Act. It would not require legislation to bring that about. It could be done by ministerial order and I would appeal to the Minister to do that in the interest of the local authorities and in the interest of the many hundreds of schemes which would qualify to be carried out well and efficiently only under the Local Authorities (Works) Act.

I opened my remarks in regard to roads and I had intended to develop the point to deal with county roads and byroads. We are devoting too much attention to the main roads and it is high time that the culs-de-sac were properly tackled, culs-de-sac which are serving six, eight or ten houses. There are also many lanes where children find it extremely difficult to travel daily to school, particularly in wintertime and aged people who have to go through these culs-de-sac and lanes in order to get to Mass at weekends have a genuine sense of grievance when they consider the facilities available on the roads for high-powered, expensive motor cars. These roads are for the benefit of the millionaire class while these poor people cannot find a way in or out of their humble homes.

I do not want to accuse all the county engineers of being members of golf clubs but I will challenge any Deputy here to tell me of a golf club in Ireland today that has not a tarmacadam surface leading to it. I do not know of any. It is very strange that all the golf clubs can have rolled and tarmacadam surfaces while the lanes and byways out of which some of the finest and best men and women of this country came originally have to depend on these ill-kept paths and roadways. I hope the Minister will take steps to relieve the plight of these people who are living in those shocking conditions and who have no hope except through the benefits of the rural improvements scheme and again, when it comes to that scheme, if the people are on in years, if their circumstances are not the best and they have no steady income, they are not in a position to contribute generously to a rural improvement scheme.

One would think that in the advanced period in which we are living and particularly in Ireland, being such a very small country, cases of this kind would be very few and far between. I say no. This is the case not only in my own constituency but all over the country where these boreens and lanes are not maintained. I cannot understand why county councils complete houses down such lanes and when the houses are built, wash their hands completely of responsibility for the roads leading to them.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 5th November, 1963.