Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 5 Nov 1963

Vol. 205 No. 6

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. O'Sullivan

This debate has gone on for a considerable time and almost every facet of local government administration has been examined, with emphasis on the housing situation. So much has been said about the administration of the Minister's Department that there is little left for me to cover. I want to confine my remarks to the problems that confront us in the Southern Committee of Cork County Council and our housing problems in that area. Last week, Deputy Corry spoke in this debate and used pretty strong language. He gave the Minister some advice which it would be preposterous for him to take, namely, that he should use a heavy boot on some officials of his Department.

It is a practice in this House when officials of Departments are attacked that the Minister responsible for those Departments should make it clear that he is the person solely responsible to this House for the administration of his Department. If I am now offering criticism of a Department, I am directing it to the head of the Department, the Minister for Local Government.I consider it unfair that any Deputy should be permitted to make an attack on the staff of the Department such as that made by Deputy Corry. These attacks are repeated ad nauseam at meetings of the local authorities and are reported in the newspapers. Only today the Cork Examiner again reports the type of scurrilous abuse levelled at the heads of the particular officers of the Minister's Department, all with the intention to divert criticism away from the Minister responsible.

I do not subscribe to the methods used by some members of that authority in attacking officials of the Minister's Department. They do that to curry favour amongst people who are awaiting decisions from the Department while at the same time not wishing to oppose their own Minister by criticising him. The Minister has gone on record, on the occasion of his frequent departures from this country, as levelling criticism at the heads of members of local authorities and of local officers for their lack of attention to the housing needs of the people; but I contend that if there are individual local authorities in the country who are not alive to their responsibilities in this regard, the Minister should deal specifically with them. It is not good enough for him to make a blanket condemnation of the entire housing authorities of the country or of their officers.

There are local authorities that are diligent, hardworking and sympathetic to housing proposals put before them by public representatives. I want to say of the Cork housing authority in the southern area that they are a dedicated body of men of action and that they work as one concentrated body in their efforts to expedite the arrangements that have to be made over far too protracted a period to get houses built. The members of the sites committee go out to assist the more technical people and they try to ease over any difficulties that may be met with by the engineers in the selection of the more suitable sites. They are presented with a monthly report on the progress of the various schemes for which the housing authority are responsible.

Here last week I listened to Deputy Noel Lemass express horror at the fact—I am accepting his word that it is a fact—that there was a time when a delay of as long as three months was experienced before sanction was given by the Department. This was presented to us as being an extraordinary delay. From our experience over the past five months in the Cork housing authority, we would regard a delay of three or four months as a very short one. We regard ourselves as being extraordinarily lucky if we can get sanction in a three month period. I know it will distress the heart of Deputy Noel Lemass to hear what I have to recite in relation to our experiences regarding this matter of sanction.

There is one applicant for a house whose home I pass six times a week. He is living under appalling conditions on the road between Bandon and Cork. On 11th August, 1962, I was in a position to inform this man, who was providing his own site, that the housing authority intended shortly to make a compulsory purchase order and that he could expect that within a reasonable period building would start. What has happened since then? The compulsory purchase order was made by the Housing and Sanitary Services Committee at 7 Father Mathew Square, Cork, on 31st December, 1962. It was sent to the Minister for confirmation on 8th January, 1963. Can it be alleged that the local housing authority was remiss in its duty on that occasion? The order was made on 31st December and it was forwarded on 8th January.

We have not yet got sanction for the 13 houses to be built under this order. This matter was raised repeatedly at the monthly meeting of the housing committee during 1963. On 14th May, the manager communicated with the Dáil members of the authority and suggested that they should meet the Minister and try to get some finality with regard to this matter. Deputy Corry took it upon himself to suggest that he would make arrangements for that meeting with the Minister. From that day to this no interview has been arranged. I do not know whether it was that the Minister refused to see Deputy Corry or whether Deputy Corry did not want to embarrass the Minister. That remains to be discovered.

At any rate, at our meeting yesterday we inquired for the umpteenth time if confirmation had yet been received for this compulsory purchase order. Now we find that queries regarding four sites included in the compulsory purchase order were received from the Department of Local Government on 22nd October, 1963. Submissions were made on 8th January, 1963, and the Department decides to send down queries regarding four sites out of the 13 on 22nd October, 1963. We had the details of these queries yesterday. One related to access to the site. Remember, that of the 13 there are only four in question, but the other nine unfortunates will still have to wait for the Minister to make a decision relative to the building of their houses until these queries have been answered.

What was happening in the Minister's Department from 8th January, 1963 to 22nd October, 1963 that these problems were not brought to the attention of the housing officers of the South Cork area during all these months? Why have these queries now been sent to us, despite the fact that at one period it was indicated by the Minister that the ball was now back at the foot of the local authority in Cork and that as far as his Department were concerned, they had no objections to the proposal?

Having being out of the country for a period of three months, I came home expecting that at least compulsory purchase order No. 3 would have been granted by now, only to find that there was no change in the situation. I went to the Minister's Department over a month ago and was given verbal assurance that within a matter of three weeks, sanction would be provided for compulsory purchase order No. 3. After the expiration of three weeks, we now have a further delay occasioned by the raising of four queries regarding four of the 13 houses.

The last resolution passed in despair by the meeting yesterday was to ask the Minister forthwith to sanction the nine houses the sites of which seem to provide no opportunity for further delay in the Department. I want to know from the Minister how long more it will take him to sanction that compulsory purchase order. Is it not this kind of frustrating delay that is causing so much uneasiness, so much unrest, amongst those interested in housing?

We know there are specific problems of the gravest character ever known since we obtained self-government relative to housing in Dublin. I am not conversant with the details of what is happening there. All I know is how usefully the situation was employed for political motives at a given time. We know how effective the propaganda was and we know there were far more houses built then than are being built now.

I want to come back to the specific case with which I am directly concerned.We find in relation to other proposals before us in our housing authority that while we can deal with individuals relative to the acquisition of sites, when it comes to inter-Departmental negotiations, we are up against a stone wall. I would ask the Minister to find out from his colleague, the Minister for Lands, why no action has been taken in six weeks relative to a site being acquired by agreement from the Forestry Division in Saleen, Midleton.

This is the Government who assured us that on their election they would get cracking. The country interpreted that to mean that they would get cracking on doing their jobs as Ministers.Here we have one Minister, supposedly sympathetic to the housing requirements of the people, allowing another Minister to hold up matters, while he comes in here and makes allegations in the course of a debate here last week against men whose footwear he is not fit to clean. It would be far better for that Minister, specially selected to spew the dirt across the floor of the House for a Taoiseach who wanted to keep his own hands clean——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

How does this arise?

Mr. O'Sullivan

The fact that the Minister for Lands was spewing filth across the floor of this House——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister for Local Government is not responsible for the action of any other Minister. The Deputy himself pointed that out in his opening remarks.

Mr. O'Sullivan

Quite so, relative to the officials in his Department. Here is a situation in which three houses are to be built at Saleen, the site being acquired by agreement from the Forestry Division of the Department of Lands for which the Minister for Lands is responsible. He has had this on his desk for six weeks from the Minister for Local Government and has not yet responded to it.

He is not the only Minister who is holding up housing in Cork County. We also have the Minister for Agriculture involved. In that respect, there was interference again, at a time when it would appear that we had a most attractive site available. Here again we have the Department of Agriculture creating delays, of which we were encountering quite enough in our dealing with ordinary civilians. One would expect that example would be given by colleagues of the Minister in Government in co-operating with the housing authority in the matter of sites for houses.

In face of the evidence I have advanced regarding housing in south Cork, did it not take the utmost brazen cheek on the part of the Minister for Local Government to level criticism at members of local authorities or on hardworking officials of local authorities in view of the dilatoriness of the Minister in allowing a period of ten months to elapse between the submission of a simple compulsory purchase order and the discovery of fiddling, so-called defects in four of the 13 sites, involving the withholding of sanction in respect of nine sites with which no fault could be found?

I know of another man involved in this situation whose house is in danger of toppling on him and his wife and children. We know the scandal that was created when houses toppled in Dublin. Are we to await another tragedy before something is done for him? One of the four sites with which the Minister has discovered some fault, aften ten months, was for a house for that man.

In the town of Kinsale, we are in the happy position, ever since another Government classified the town as an undeveloped area, of having secured some industries but the situation relative to the availability of labour is presenting considerable difficulties. There is in that town as energetic and as public-minded a group as could be found in any urban area in the country, in the Kinsale Development Association. They have repeatedly advocated the building of houses to provide the employees of the local factories with accommodation. I cannot see the advantages of a policy of sinking large sums of money in industries, if these industries are hampered later by having to engage public and private transport to travel considerable distances bringing the workers to these factories and home again. We should concentrate on housing efforts where the potential labour force is growing. We know that the yardstick applied for the recognition of applicants as being worthy of having houses erected for them is completely out of date in relation to areas where industrial development is progressing.

In this respect, the Kinsale urban council submitted a proposal to the Minister's Department for sanction early this year. On 10th April last, lay-out and house plans for ten houses at Cork Street, Kinsale, were submitted.On 8th May, it was indicated to me that approval had not yet been received by the council. As the members of the council were anxious to have the houses erected as soon as possible, the then town clerk wrote to me requesting that I use my good offices with the Department in order to have the matter expedited. Submissions were made to the Minister by, I am sure, all the Deputies of the Mid-Cork constituency in respect of these proposals. The situation is that since last April sanction has not yet been given. I know an alternative plan was indicated to the council requesting that an architect be provided. I do not regard that delay, however, as being as serious as the delay experienced in the first instance.

Here we have a group of people giving of their time without reward for the advancement of their community.Here we have a progressive urban council quite prepared to vote the money necessary to build the houses. They are all frustrated and discouraged by the fact that the plans they submitted as early as 10th April last have not yet been finalised by the Minister. I have selected and emphasised just two of the many examples of the delays frustrating members of local authorities in their efforts to try to get houses built. It is preposterous that we should experience this at the hands of a Minister who in his time was so vocal regarding what were described as inordinate delays five or six years ago. Here we have the example of almost a complete year elapsing before a simple compulsory purchase order could be sanctioned in the Minister's Department.

The frustration which Deputy Desmond and I have experienced seems to be equalled by the frustration experienced by Deputy MacCarthy, the Lord Mayor of Cork, and by Senator Healy, who are members of the same authority. At a recent meeting, they put forward a serious resolution that, in order to overcome these delays, a senior officer of the Minister's Department should be despatched to the city of Cork to be available full-time to try to surmount the obstacles we are encountering in house building by providing liaison with the Department. I did not subscribe to this resolution, proposed and seconded by two members of the Minister's Party, because I did not think it was a practical proposal. I cannot see the necessity for burying a full-time officer in Cork when he could be engaged in the Department working for a much wider area. I merely cite this as an example of the frustration which these energetic and hardworking public representatives encountered, forcing them to resort to this extraordinary proposal. I hope the exposure of these delays will make the Minister think again before he levels one word of criticism at any local authority or any housing officer employed by any local authority. He should at least refrain until such time as he has cleaned up the mess in his own Department in the Custom House.

Mr. McQuillan

I should like to concentrate my remarks on the question of roads generally. I read the comments of most of the Deputies who spoke on the problem of roads in the course of this debate. I think the Minister would do well to study the remarks of a number of Deputies in his Party who come from the west of Ireland, in addition to the comments from the other side of the House on this important matter of road policy. There is no more ardent supporter in this House of a proper, progressive road policy than I. However, I do not subscribe to a policy which has given top priority over the past ten years to the making of main or trunk roads. All Deputies travelling from Dublin to the west have seen a complete change in the countryside in the past couple of years. Now we have what I can only describe as dreary concrete runways stretching from Dublin to Galway, Ballina and Sligo. These dreary concrete runways are bordered by cold, grey concrete fencing. No more unimaginative work could be carried out in any State. It could only be thought up by the vandals we have in the Custom House. If the people who thought this up are qualified technical men, it is God help the country. This lack of imagination is shown at a time when the Government, through their various agencies, are giving prizes for tidy towns and various improvements throughout the countryside.Yet here we have the Department of Local Government embarking on a campaign to tear up every tree from here to Galway in carrying out their road works programme.

Did anybody in the Department ever think that when mixing concrete and making fencing posts they could colour the cement? They could make them red, green or blue; they could vary the colours to harmonise with the countryside, and so endeavour to improve the appearance of the countryside following the tearing down of the trees. Do the people who plan this road system realise that going down to the west at night, the road is a death trap because of the lack of signs, lines or proper protection on the side of the road? Did any officials of the Department or the Minister himself ever stir themselves to go down the country at night? These grey fencing posts I have mentioned are a death trap at night to drivers, or to pedestrians who may be involved, presenting no indication of danger until it is too late. At least the old clay fences or a trimmed hedge gave a guide to people walking, cycling or driving at night. Now there is nothing.

Who is responsible for this? Is the Minister going to accept responsibility? Does he keep an eye on what his technicians and officials are planning or are these new plans the product of somebody who is not under the control of the Minister? We are told that these motorways—concrete runways is my description of them—are necessary for the traffic on Irish roads. We were told by some gentleman in Cork yesterday —one of the leading plutocrats who set up to advise the Government—that the number of cars will be doubled by 1970 and that we must have roads to take that traffic. If we doubled the number we would have 300,000 on the roads then. There are more cars in one county in England that we shall have in 1970 but we shall have a road system, if we are allowed to pursue it, that will be better than they have in England.

Somebody over there said that was cod. I know the Deputy spent a while in England but he ought to go there again. Between Mullingar and Dublin from nine in the morning until five in the evening, from Monday to Friday, you could wait ten to 15 minutes before a vehicle would pass in daylight hours. Go to England and have a look at the roads. See them at night. Between some of the towns, I have counted, as near as I could, cars coming and going and one car per second passes. That is what we are aiming at here but where is the population to come from? If you put a car into every backyard in the countryside, they will not all come out on the same day. What are we aiming at in our road policy? Is it expected that every household will have a car in another ten or 15 years?

While that is being planned, there is a plan by another Minister to spend £24,000 on the railway station in Ballina which will not be used in five years' time at this rate. We have one bunch of lunatics telling us the railway line is being improved and that we are to spend more money to streamline the railway system and bring it up to date and another bunch making concrete runways all over the country, while the people living on the byroads and off the main roads are told: "It is good enough for you to have potholes as big as Ministers' heads in the roads that serve you."

The public will not stand this much longer. I do not know what the Fianna Fáil cumainn are doing that they have not whispered into the ear of this Minister from Donegal what the people are thinking. He is up there often enough to realise that the ordinary people of the country must be served and given priority over somebody who wants to go from Dublin to Galway in a hurry or from Dublin to Bangor Erris in two hours. Is it the Taoiseach or his fish and chip pal from London——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should not refer to people in this country in those terms.

Mr. McQuillan

I certainly will refer to him as a fish and chip merchant.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

And the Deputy may not repeat it or I shall ask him to resume his seat. The Deputy may not abuse the rules of order.

Mr. McQuillan

If the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is so anxious to protect the rules of order, he should tell me why it is wrong to describe a fish and chip merchant as a pal of Lemass. I will accept the Chair's ruling if the Chair will tell me where it is wrong?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

To begin with, it has no relation to the Estimate for the Department of Local Government and the Deputy is referring to people who have no opportunity of replying. The Deputy is abusing the privileges of the House.

Mr. McQuillan

I want to make it clear that I shall describe the same gentleman outside this House as a fish and chip merchant. I do not have to come in here to do it. As far as I am concerned, I do not think that gentlemen of the type I described——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

What has this to do with the Estimate?

Mr. McQuillan

There is nothing wrong with being a fish and chip merchant and I did not say there was anything wrong with it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The matter does not arise on the Estimate.

Mr. McQuillan

If that is so, am I not entitled to say that priority must be given to people who live on the by-roads in Ireland rather than to people from elsewhere, fish and chip merchants and others, who may be in a hurry for two hours' fishing in Mayo and because they happen to be friends of the Taoiseach——

Mr. Blaney

The Chair made a ruling some little time ago and I am afraid the Deputy is not a gentleman since he has not observed it in any way whatsoever.

Mr. McQuillan

Let us be quite clear about it—the Minister for Local Government is not the Leas-Cheann Comhairle yet. I hope he bears that in mind.

Mr. Blaney

I still stand by what I said. The ruling has not been observed.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy will now come to the Estimate.

Mr. McQuillan

I want to point out the mentality behind the Estimate and that this Government are more concerned with making the main roads today into death traps where people can drive vehicles up to 110 m.p.h. What type of people can afford that? Only the pals of the Government, only the people who have been told by the Government: "We shall no longer take surtax from you". It was pointed out in answer to a Parliamentary Question that of the 10,000 people paying surtax a few years ago, only 4,000 of them pay it today, because this Government believe they are the type of people in Ireland who should be supported and looked after.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Will the Deputy please come to the Estimate for the Department of Local Government?

Mr. McQuillan

I am dealing with the Estimate.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is rambling pretty widely.

Mr. McQuillan

I am giving reasons why priority is given to concrete runways and I am asking the Minister to change this order of priority. I think I am fully entitled to ask that——

Mr. Blaney

Attack me, but do not bring in people from outside.

Mr. McQuillan

I am fully entitled to say to this Minister——

Mr. Blaney

The Deputy is quite in order to say what he likes to me but let him not talk about people outside the House. Let him not throw muck at others. I shall deal with him when I get the opportunity. Let him attack me now and that is enough.

Mr. McQuillan

We have here this Minister who was asked by Roscommon County Council on at least five occasions to receive a deputation and who had not the manners to do so. His Fianna Fáil Party for once woke up in the county council. They were not the well-whipped and well-drilled little bunch of circus boys that they normally are and they voted in Roscommon County Council condemning the Minister for his attitude in failing to receive a deputation to discuss road problems. It took four to five strong protests before the Minister finally gave in. He was forced to do so in the long run.

Let me make it clear that the deputation he finally received was not the official deputation. He was gracious enough to receive the Deputies from the constituency. We agreed to meet him rather than act in the same discourteous fashion as that in which he had treated the local authority. He refused to meet the officials of the county council. He refused to meet the representatives of the NFA and others nominated originally to go on that deputation; but, when he was caught out, his hand was forced and, in the end, he sent for the Deputies representing Roscommon to go down and meet him in his room. Naturally, when you go on a deputation to a Minister's room, you do not take him by the back of the neck and put him across your knee to deal with him.

Mr. Blaney

The Deputy will not do that to this Minister, no matter where he may meet him.

Mr. McQuillan

That deputation was an eye-opener because we found out what was in the Minister's mind. A little light was let in. Roscommon county carries the highest rate in Ireland for road surfaces. No other county, except Donegal, which comes within a few pounds of Roscommon, has as high an expenditure from the rates for road surfaces.

Last year, and for a number of years past, Roscommon got the lowest road grant in Ireland. The grant for Roscommon per mile worked out at £106. The next lowest was Waterford, with £117 per mile. The grants range from £106 per mile for Roscommon to £136 per mile in Donegal, to £150 per mile in Galway, to £190 per mile in Kildare.I will not bore the House with the other figures but, of all the counties in Ireland, Roscommon got the lowest grant per mile from this Minister.

In addition to paying the highest rates in the country for road surfaces, Roscommon is the most heavily roaded county in the country. I will not let this Minister, or whoever succeeds him in the next 12 months, get away with the nonsense that has gone on in his Department. I do not know whether he has any control over the people who advise him but it is quite evident that the advisers in his Department have no regard for the people in rural Ireland. If what they do in Roscommon is taken as the yardstick, then they have no regard for the people in rural Ireland.

In the past ten years, Roscommon has embarked on a programme of taking over, repairing and maintaining by-roads and culs-de-sac. These are taken over at an average rate of 40 or 80 miles per year. Since 1953 the council has taken over the majority of all roads serving three or more houses and, today, these are public roads. Despite the fact that all these roads are recognised by the Department as public roads, the county council has not got one penny increase in its overall road grants in recognition of the work done by it in this regard. Money for these has to be raised from the people in rural Ireland. As far as the people in rural Ireland are concerned, no help by way of Government grant was given to supplement the work done by the local authority.

Why? Because, as I have said, the people who live on by-roads are merely the poor rural fellows. They do not count. It does not matter what kind of road leads into a small village. The people living in the village are only rustics in the eyes of this Government. If, however, a road leads down to the west of Ireland, and there is a recognised beauty spot, there is no end to the money lavished on that road.

I will not be put in the position now of having it said that I am against tourism or that I am against visitors to this country. I believe in the expenditure of money on our roads in a proper order of priority. The Minister may have an idea that he is giving money in Roscommon for tourism to compensate for the fact that he gives lower grants there per mile than are given in any other county in Ireland. Let us see what he is doing. Roscommon County Council is lucky to get a sum of £25,000 per year by way of a tourist grant. We welcome it. Leitrim, Galway, Sligo and other counties are getting tourist grants. Some of them, including Donegal, are getting £55,000 a year in tourist grants.

People may ask: why criticise the grant of £25,000 for the making of tourist roads in Roscommon? Let me make it quite clear that Roscommon County Council deplore the restrictions laid down by the Department on expenditure on what the Department describe as tourist roads in Roscommon.The Shannon borders on Roscommon and there are roads leading down to the Shannon to some of the most beautiful scenic areas and some of the loveliest fishing grounds. Roscommon County Council are not allowed to spend one penny of this tourist grant on these roads. They are forced by the Department to spend this tourist grant on main roads leading through the county, apparently for the sole purpose of speeding tourists out of Roscommon down to Mayo and Galway. That is the policy thought up by this Minister and the bunch of advisers sitting behind him.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister is responsible for policy and his advisers should not be criticised.

Mr. McQuillan

This is the only way we can get it home to them. It is no pleasure to me to have to make the remarks I am making. I do not want to have to make them again. I restrained myself each time on the county council the Minister refused to receive the deputation. I restrained myself on the deputation. I told myself there would be one occasion on which I could let that Minister and his advisers know what Roscommon think of them.

I want the Minister to re-examine the position with regard to tourist road grants in Roscommon. When the local authority send forward a proposal for expenditure in relation to scenic areas, we want sanction for the expenditure of that money. We do not want to be told that that money must be spent between Strokestown and Tulsk or between Athlone and Ballinasloe, or some other place. Such expenditure will undoubtedly help to improve the particular road, but it will not be spent for the purpose of tourism within Roscommon. I will probably be told that such expenditure is good for the country generally; it will improve tourism in other parts of the country. I hope it does, but it should not be described as a tourist road grant in Roscommon.

In Donegal, Leitrim and other counties, I understand that the tourist road grants are expended on roads leading to seaside resorts, on the improvement of existing roads near resorts, on the improvement of promenades, on the improvement generally of roads serving the amenities offered in particular tourist areas. We have tourist amenities inland, too, and it has been recognised by the Government in the past five or six years that the Shannon provides a first-class attraction for tourists because of its fishing. It took a long time to persuade the Minister for Transport and Power to recognise the pulling power of the Shannon for tourists but he has wakened up to it now.

For these and other reasons, I ask the Minister to increase the road grants to Roscommon. He will have to realise that the mileage of public roads in that county has increased by 500 to 600 in recent years and that no recognition of that fact has been afforded by way of increased grants. While on the subject of roads, I submit it is time the Government embarked on a scheme for the improvement of cul de sac roads throughout the country generally. The local authority in Roscommon have almost completed a programme and we are the only county in the country to embark on a systematic scheme of building up culs de sac into public roads.

The Minister has stated—he can contradict me if it is not so—that he does not think cul de sac roads ought to come within the ambit of Departmental grants. He has said that if local authorities wish to take on these roads, they should be saddled with the entire responsibility. If he has changed his mind on that, I shall be glad to hear it. These roads, described as by-roads, are deserving of attention at the same level as county or main roads. It is of the community we should think all the time. We should not think of the people living on main roads as backwoodsmen.

There is no use in the Minister telling me the money cannot be found for such roads. My reply to that is that the money is misdirected at the present time. Some of the roads being built are so wide in parts that some unfortunates are liable to turn round and go back the way they came. Some people travelling at night would really need compasses, the roads are so wide. If the Government want a long-term plan for roads, why not consider this: acquire the necessary land now and as the indications come in that the number of vehicles is increasing, enlarge the road programme? I suggest that the Government acquire the land now, make two or three lanes on what one would describe as a main road, and leave the remainder of the land acquired in the form of two substantial grass margins. That would not cost a lot. The grass margins could easily be trimmed by machinery and would be there for development as additional laneways as the increased traffic dictated. That would be better than embarking straight away on schemes of roadmaking catering for continental conditions in a country where the population is so small.

We will never have sufficient traffic to justify the road programme we are now embarking on. No matter how we stretch out the tourist season, we will never get tourists here during the winter months, at least not to the extent that would justify our present expenditure on main roads. I have discussed this with dozens of people, all of whom agree that people come in here to see the countryside and are not looking for jet propulsion to the west of Ireland. Dublin is now within three hours by road of any part of the country.

In fact, if the type of tourist we expect to come here as a result of President Kennedy's visit arrives, it will be by helicopter and it is quite possible we will have roads to spare, huge, wide highways without any tourist traffic whatsoever. Most of the people interested in our fishing in the west of Ireland will come by helicopter from the midlands of England; yet here we are making what I describe as concrete runways, all of which will be covered by grass in ten years for lack of regular traffic. I do not believe that is the right way to plan; I do not believe there is proper planning of roads.

This reinforces my argument in regard to the Government's approach to housing. If we displayed half the ambition in respect of housing that we display in respect of concrete runways, our people would be properly housed. But we do not, and as a result we have seen in the city of Dublin the tragedies associated with bad planning by the Department and the Dublin Corporation. While we have such housing conditions in Dublin, we see luxurious hotels and concrete runways being built all over the place. When we complain, the reply we get is that we are very lucky to have these people coming in here, that we should put out the red carpet for them and bend the knee as natives, as we did in the past.

I had hoped last Wednesday night to see the end of this Government, because with a change of Government, there would be some hope that Ministers would be appointed who would have a little more respect for democracy, Ministers who would have enough common sense to realise the idiocy of our present road planning policy. We shall have another opportunity in the new year to alter our present planning.

Mr. Blaney

With his tongue in his cheek.

Mr. Gilhawley

I shall not keep the House long but there are a few points I should like to make, mainly on housing and roads in my constituency.First of all, I should like to give credit for what has been done before pointing out what remains to be done. We have come a long way in recent years and while our progress in housing in my constituency has been very slow—there was only one house built in the county in a period of six years—a start has been made, a survey carried out and we are getting down to the job.

I hope some of the red tape in the Department will be cut out so that sanction for schemes in preparation will be received as quickly as possible. When I came into the Dáil a little more than two years ago, the position of housing in Sligo was pretty poor. We were in arrears with payments, and inspections were behind time by about nine or ten months. I then asked the Minister a Parliamentary Question and in reply, he admitted the situation in Sligo was bad but blamed it on a current shortage of engineering personnel.He added that the staff had been instructed to concentrate on clearing up arrears.

I should like here to pay a tribute to the officials in the Department with whom I have had dealings since elected. From any of them whom I have had occasion to telephone or communicate with by letter I have received nothing but courtesy and efficiency.They were only too glad to do everything possible to help me. I have got prompt attention at all times from the officials in that Department and it is only fair I should put that on record. I should like also to pay a tribute to the inspectors who come to us in the country. They are very helpful to people in giving advice and I have heard many favourable comments on them.

There is one point in this connection I should like the Minister to take into consideration. I understand that one of the inspectors in my county is being taken off, that he is being put in charge of water and sewerage in a region comprising two or three counties. The wisdom of that move is doubtful. Previously, when an inspector came to examine a reconstruction job or the erection of a house, he generally did both together. Under this new plan, we shall have one inspector in charge of water and sewerage and one in charge of housing and I think the old system was much more suitable for the people concerned.

The housing problem we have in the west of Ireland is a national rather than a local one. I agree local authorities have clear responsibility in the matter, but it would be very wrong for anybody to think that the housing problems in the west of Ireland will be solved in a very short time without considerable Government assistance. It will take many years to solve that problem and to give the House an idea of how serious it is, I shall read extracts from two letters. The first is from a Leitrim man and is as follows:

This is a few lines to ask you if you could do anything for me to get a cottage. Any sort of house would do. I have been in for a cottage three years and no sign of it at all. The old house I lived in was condemned last year by two men from the council and it has all fallen down since. I was living in it with my son so we had to leave it and a neighbour gave us a camp of a house where he had cattle before we went into it. It is all damp and wet when the rain comes and we pay him 30/- a month for it.

I need not read from that letter further.

I now quote from a letter received from a Sligowoman:

I wish to ask for your help and influence. I have a very bad house and no money to reconstruct it. I am a widow of 67 years and I have only a girl to help me with the work. The house is about to fall. The front wall is very bad and the back wall is going out. On a wintry night we are afraid to stay in the room.

That is the sort of housing problem we have to face in the west of Ireland. I was in a house in Sligo last August in which a man, his wife and five children lived in the kitchen because the remainder of the house had fallen.

As I have said, a start has been made at least to get over some of these difficulties. I must say a special word here for old, infirm people who have not the money to reconstruct their houses. I know that under the 1962 Act the Minister introduced Section 5 to deal with minimum repairs to houses of that sort. However, the problem arises as to the adequacy of the assistance these people can get. For instance, there were 19 houses investigated in my constituency and the estimated cost is £4,954. The State grant at £80 per house would amount to only £1,520, and the remainder would fall on the local authority.

The point I wish to bring out is that we have 34 further applicants for treatment under Section 5 and 234 more to be dealt with otherwise. In fact, we are not quite sure how they can be catered for. What I want to drive home is the heavy burden this Section 5 places on local authorities. At a housing meeting yesterday in Sligo, we agreed to put up £120 against the £80 made available by the State, making a maximum of £200 a house. We could not possibly go any further because the imposition on the rates would be too high, so I would ask the Minister, if at all possible, to increase the £80 to at least 50 per cent of the cost. If the local authority accept responsibility for repairs to such houses, it is hard to know where they will end. They could be straddled with a bill for £1,000 in respect of a house and could find themselves involved in a legal action as well.

I think there must be some other solution. The £80 is practically useless in our cases. In respect of the specific instance houses which we are proceeding with I think the red tape could be cut. So far as I am aware, this is how it works out. First of all, the local authority investigates the housing needs of each applicant. Then there is a selection of sites which must, of course, be approved by the county medical officer and county engineer. Then there is the making of a compulsory purchase order to overcome the difficulty of defective titles or anything like that. Then there is the carrying out of contour surveys and the investigation of the availability of water, together with the preparation of plans and specifications. All those are submitted to the Department for approval. Before getting that far they have already been delayed long enough. When the Department approves them there is the invitation of tenders, the reporting on the tenders, preparation of detailed reports and making application for ministerial sanction. Here, again, perhaps time could be cut. The arranging of contracts, and bonds, the handing over of sites to contractors, arranging for loans, and so on, has to be done before starting off to build an SI cottage.

I see one flaw in the building of SI cottages for small farms. I think I mentioned it on this Estimate last year. Let us take a farm of eight or ten acres, or even down to five acres of land. You acquire a site and build a cottage on it. After a time the cottage is vested. The tenant in that cottage need not pay a halfpenny rent to anybody and nobody will put him out. Who would come in and have the man, his wife and children put out on the road? Who would come in and take the tenancy? There must be another way. The fact that the local authorities will have to subsidise the rents of those cottages will put an intolerable burden on the ratepayer. The tenant in one of those small farmhouses could not reasonably be expected to pay a reasonable rent from limited resources. The result, to my mind, would be that the rates would have to subsidise the rent and the burden would be thrown on the ratepayer. If the tenant refused to pay nothing could be done about it. I still think, as I thought last year, that if machinery were established so that the Land Commission could draw those rents and build those houses it would save the local authorities quite a lot of trouble and money.

I should like to mention the roads. In passing, I might say that in the west of Ireland it is very difficult to get people who are used to bad housing conditions to understand how we could give £1 million for the Verolme Dockyard in Cork, and how we could put thousands into the Avoca mines, and so on, and still money cannot be found for housing. I think in our county, too, that too much money is being spent on the main roads and not sufficient attention is being given to the county roads and by-roads. Actually, there is one thing the Minister could do which would help a lot to stem trouble. That is in connection with the reconstruction of main roads. There does not appear to be a lot of respect for the rights of the people where land is acquired for the widening or building of parts of these roads. I think the fencing on a man's land through which the road goes should be left in as good a state as it was before acquisition. Sometimes these things are let hang on for 12 months or so; streets are dug up from lorries turning on them and they are left like that. I think these repairs should take place immediately and the property left in as good a condition as it was found in.

One point I should like to make in connection with roads is in regard to county roads. In County Sligo, there are approximately 1,200 miles of county roads and this year the estimated expenditure on maintenance alone is something over £70,000. That allows approximately £58 or so per mile. The rate for all roads in County Sligo is in the region of 11/- in the £, and to increase that rate would, I think, be rather difficult when the total rate for the county alone exceeds the £2 mark.

I might add that we are satisfied with, and are not grumbling about, grants. We are getting reasonably decent grants and we appreciate that, but we can do with a lot more. The point is that year after year, on the five-year plan, we are extending the mileage of tarred road, and if that mileage has to be surfaced I understand that all comes off the rates. If that is so we are increasing the burden on the taxpayer. At a meeting of the General Council of County Councils, we sent the Minister a petition to give a percentage grant towards the maintenance of county roads. After all, they give access to the most important section of the community, the agricultural section.

There is one last point I should like to make. The railway station has been closed at Kilfree Junction. Also the Collooney-Claremorris branch line is closed to passenger traffic. As a result of that there is an extra volume of traffic on the roads. I would ask the Minister if he could see his way to give some railway grant to help towards the upkeep of those roads, especially the road from Collooney to Claremorris, where children had to go to school by train. At the moment the road is not wide enough to carry the traffic. That matter has probably been before the Minister already. I think there is justifiable cause for any grant for widening that road so that buses can travel on it.

Mr. Davern

I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating the Minister on the magnificent job of work he has been doing in regard to housing, the provision of water supplies and the improvement of our roads. Whenever he retires from this House, even his greatest opponent will say that he was the man who inspired the group system, the man who gave immediate sanction to regional water supplies where he was satisfied they would give the desired supply to the regions concerned. He and his officials have put a lot of energy into the operation of the group system, a system with which I thoroughly agree. The operation of the scheme will take a great burden off the rates, especially in areas like South Tipperary and West Waterford, which lend themselves to such schemes.

Perhaps if the Minister went a little further and assured those people who have been industrious enough, who have been painstaking and patriotic enough, to get their own supplies and said to them that in the matter of upkeep, he will see that they will be helped out, it would be a good thing. That perhaps might be the only bone of contention in regard to the group system of water supplies, that we will have the same half-dozen or dozen people disagreeing about the charge for upkeep, repairs and so on. There could be a little bit of trouble there and I would appeal to the Minister seriously to consider giving them an assurance that the State will be behind them on every occasion, not alone because they have their own water supply but because they spared the ratepayers so much money. We know that there are areas, such as localities in the mountains, where it would be impossible for the local authority to provide water supplies and the people themselves could provide supplies themselves very effectively and more cheaply.

We can all see the great improvements that have been carried out on our roads. Despite the fact that traffic is multiplying daily and more traffic of a very heavy nature is coming on to the roads, the Minister, in his generous way, with the taxpayers' money, has been helping the local authorities to do their work well. Were it not for the fact that roads have been widened, dangerous bends taken away and an insistence by local authorities in practically all cases that hedges be cut so that views will not be obstructed, the number of fatal accidents would be greater. It is important that local authorities should use their powers to ensure that views are not obscured. If the Minister insists on the local authorities doing their work, I am sure every Deputy will be behind him. The obscuring of view has caused many accidents. While it is unpopular to bring people to court, and nobody likes to have to do it, if there is a possibility of an accident at a corner because the view is obscured, everybody should be behind the engineer and the Minister and the local authority in seeing that the person responsible is brought to court.

I want to thank the Minister for the many roads he has licensed in my area for buses which carry mainly poor people who are unable to afford motor cars. The day of the bicycle seems to be gone. The Minister did not turn a deaf ear to our appeals but after consultation with the local authority and after some desirable and necessary repairs had been carried out, the buses were able to travel on these roads and bring people to the local villages to do their essential shopping which otherwise they would find difficulty in doing.

I want now to refer to the speech made by Deputy P. Hogan (South Tipperary). It is unfortunate that attacks should be made on anybody who is not in a position to defend himself. Neither the county manager nor the Secretary of the Department of Local Government is in a position to defend himself and anybody who attacks one or the other, in addition to the local authority of which Deputy Hogan is a member, should have his head examined. The county manager is not a personal friend of mine. I doubt if he ever did anything I asked him to do but he is a fairminded man and he and his assistant, Pádraig de Buitléar, are as good men as this country could produce. I feel very proud of them. They do their work conscientiously and well and they do not care whether you are a county councillor or not; if your representations are not of the right type, they ignore them and that is the correct thing to do. I am not 100 per cent behind the Managerial Act but it is in operation and therefore it is our duty to give it all the support we can. I am very sorry that an attack was made on our council. The majority of the members are Fine Gael and Labour. Fianna Fáil have 12 members, Fine Gael ten and Labour three plus one. My experience over many years is that they are a decent body of men. I do not believe that money would buy any one of them and they do not deserve unfair censure especially from a Deputy who is himself a member of the council.

Twice he availed of an occasion to refer to an act of the county council and of course very carefully avoided telling the whole truth about it. In the rural division of Fethard some years ago, when the county manager divided the rate book, he left the town of Fethard attached to Drangan, which is many miles from Fethard. The young man who had the rate book had a very small salary out of it and he had been constantly looking for this addition. The council, regardless of political affiliations, gave it to him. It was not a political vote. Members of Fianna Fáil voted against the proposal, as also did members of Fine Gael and Labour but it was a majority decision. It was sent up to the Minister and it is costing the ratepayers £95, not £120 as stated by Deputy Hogan. I can understand the Minister not sanctioning such proposals at a time when farmers are fighting against rates and this proposal was not sanctioned at the request of the hierarchy of Fianna Fáil as suggested by Deputy Hogan.

When has it become a crime in this country to elect a man with Fianna Fáil tendencies, the son of a Fianna Fáil councillor, to a position, if he is otherwise suited for it? There was a time in this country when we heard the old slogan that no Irish need apply and in one part of this country, there is the slogan that no Papist need apply. In Tipperary, if Deputy Hogan had his way, we would have the placards that no supporter of Fianna Fáil need apply.

Mr. Donegan

Did a Fine Gael supporter ever get a position when Fianna Fáil had a majority?

Mr. Davern

Within the past ten years, three prominent supporters of Fine Gael got jobs, even when Fianna Fáil had a majority.

Mr. Donegan

I doubt that.

Mr. Davern

I do not tell lies and I do not exaggerate. If the Deputy has any doubts about it, I can prove it to him. Deputy Hogan went on to throw more mud at South Tipperary. He tells the Dáil about the terrible thing that happened down there. Two home assistance officers were appointed there some years ago and, according to the terms of their appointment, they were to get the first rent collection that became vacant. When the rent collector died, his carcase was to be sawn up and divided between them. The idea of having a home assistance officer also a rate collector is a bad one. He is dishing out money with the one hand and taking it in with the other and there is always the temptation, where a man is in arrear with his rent, to give him a few weeks' home assistance.

If Ministers are slow to sanction appointments of that nature, I would clap them on the back for it. What is the position? The father of the young man who has been doing the collecting was vice-commandant in Liam Lynch's column, and the hardship he suffered in those days made him an invalid. In this connection I would say that it would be well if the young men of today knew more about those days. If they did, they would refrain from slandering the dead. That man was an invalid for many years. His son was doing the job and doing it well, but Deputy Hogan's idea is that it should be taken from him and that he should be sent to England.

What is the position? One home assistance officer is the owner of two or three farms. He is acting in the capacity of superintendent and his brother is acting in his place. That is the terrible grievance that Deputy Hogan has brought to this House. That young man who has been doing that job is to be deprived of his position and sent to England, and then we start shouting about emigration and unemployment.I have always supported a man who had no other means of livelihood as against a person who I thought was living in frugal comfort. I shall continue to do that in the future no matter what Deputy Hogan may think. To criticise his own local authority as he did was most undesirable and they say that it is a bad bird that fouls its own nest.

He can now go back to South Tipperary and ensure that the man who has been doing the job is fired out of it, a man who is the son of an old IRA veteran, without whose efforts in the past none of us would be here at all. That is one thing we can be sure of, that it was not pious resolutions that brought us here. It is a shame and a disgrace that a man should be attacked in this House when he cannot defend himself. As I have already said, in some parts of this country, there is the slogan that no Papist need apply and now, down in Tipperary, we have the slogan of Deputy Hogan that no Fianna Fáil supporter need apply, although he was at one time himself a member of the hierarchy of Fianna Fáil.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): I never was.

Mr. Davern

You were. You told me when you joined Clann na Talmhan that it was the only way to smash Fine Gael.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): I must object to the Deputy making false statements.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Colley)

I think we might get back to the subject before the House.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): Show the mark on your neck.

Mr. Davern

If there was one on yours, you might be a better man. You brought the poteen to the Black and Tans in Rearcross to give them courage to fight.

Acting Chairman

Perhaps Deputy Davern would get back to the subject of the debate.

Mr. Davern

It has been alleged that the local authorities have been slack in their approach to the housing problem. The thousands of houses built in Tipperary are monuments to the work and the efficiency of Fianna Fáil. Before we came into power in 1932, there was not a cottage built in rural Ireland for anybody. There were ten years wasted and ten years' arrears had to be made up. We can truthfully say that the housing problem in South Tipperary has been narrowed down to the point where there is only a small number of applicants. Admittedly, the number has been increasing again over the past few years because emigration has been stopped and young men are getting married at home, full of confidence that this country will give them a livelihood and that they will be entitled to a house. They will get a house.

The trouble is to get the contractors. Deputy Donegan may laugh but I can assure him that it took me two years to get a contractor to do a small job. Most of the contractors are engaged in repairing houses. With so many cottages needing repairs and repairs being so costly, we are coming to the stage where the State will have to share the burden with the local authority, if these houses are to be put into a proper state of repair. It is a very costly matter for the ratepayers, who, we know, are already overburdened. Rates have reached the ceiling and we are honest enough to admit it. I would appeal to the Minister to come to the rescue of the ratepayers and subsidise by way of grant repairs to labourers' cottages.

There are many cases of hardship, especially where the cottage is in an isolated situation, which makes it even more difficult to secure a contractor to carry out the work. There is one such case I mentioned in this House before. I refer to a tenant called Heffernan, in a placed called Newcastle. The county manager and the officials have gone to a great deal of trouble in an effort to get a contractor to carry out the work required to be done in that case. The only hope is to supply a prefabricated house. I would suggest that where there is urgency, prefabs be utilised to an appreciable extent. They would have a life of 40 or 50 years. The coming generation could take their share of the burden of cost.

I hope that attacks on local authorities, whether deserved or otherwise, will not be tolerated in this House. The place in which to attack a local authority is the council chamber, not here in the shelter of Leinster House.

The Minister has made a splendid job of his Department. I regret the attack made on the Secretary of his Department who is one of nature's gentlemen, who is responsible for such a huge amount of work, who has such a huge task. Never before in the history of this country has there been such a great task confronting officials as confronts our officials now. We know that the wisdom and the good guidance of the present Secretary have merited from us unqualified praise. He should not be belittled in this House. He cannot defend himself. If he could, he would defend himself but, if he could, he would not be attacked. The House can be sure of that. Of that I am perfectly certain.

Mr. Corish

I am sorry I was not here for the entire speech by Deputy Davern. I gathered from his concluding remarks that he thinks it somewhat unfair that local authorities should be attacked in this House. I do not know whether I could go the full way with him on that or not. A local authority has two parts—the elected representatives and the official side represented by the manager. I do not think it is a fair claim by a Deputy that a man should not be criticised in his absence. If it is malicious criticism, he should not be criticised in his absence, but if we were to confine our remarks merely to people who are in this House, we would end up by making personal attacks on one another rather than on people who are responsible for things that happen outside this House. It should be remembered, when we appear to attack or criticise officials, whether city managers, county managers or county secretaries, that they are not personal attacks at all. They are not even attacks. They are criticisms, not of the man, but of his office.

Deputy Davern says that the place to criticise local authorities is the council chamber. If that were insisted on, many of us would be deprived of the opportunity of speaking on the Vote for the Department of Local Government. There are many Deputies who are not members of local authorities. In relation to matters such as housing, roads and suchlike, it would mean that a big proportion of the House would not be entitled to speak at all. However, I do not think Deputy Davern made any great point about this or devoted a great deal of his speech to it.

My concern here to-night is, first of all, housing. I want to say straight away that I am not concerned with what happened in the past. I am concerned with what happens now and I am particularly concerned with what is to happen in the immediate future. Criticism of what happened during the inter-Party Government régime or of what the Minister may have done or may not have done in the past four or five years will not get people housed.

I hope there will be a greater awareness of the need for houses than there was in the recent past. I cannot understand why we cannot declare an all-out emergency as far as the provision of houses is concerned. We must consider not alone the present needs, but the needs in the future. Deputy Sherwin tells us that he sees a lot of people during the week. In many towns and villages throughout the country, there seems to be the same big demand for houses as there has been for many years past. We must consider also the number of houses that fall into disrepair as the years go by.

This is a tremendous problem, not alone for the Minister but for the local authorities themselves. It is tragic that over the years we have lost so many building workers to Great Britain. There was a lull in house-building in the latter portion of 1956 but at the beginning of his period of office, the Minister's attitude seemed to be that we had sufficient houses and that the need was not as great as it actually was. I do not say that was deliberate or that the Minister's every action was conditioned by that attitude. I do not know whether or not he got wrong information from the local authorities, but he must admit that the need for houses seemed to be played down. The Minister and his officials now seem to be more responsive to the requests of local authorities for the building of houses, but there still remains a very big problem.

One of the things we lack in this country is a proper housing survey. The Minister gave figures here of the housing requirements of the various areas, but I do not think he has the complete picture. That is not his fault nor the fault of his officials. As far as I know, many of the local authorities who were asked to carry out this survey either did not do it or carried it out in a very haphazard way. As a result, there are conflicting views as to the number of houses needed in this place or that place.

Another difficulty is the amount of reconstruction and building of offices and factories in certain parts of the country. That activity tends to draw off a number of building workers, who in the normal course of events would be engaged io the building of houses. Equal importance should be attached to the building of houses as to the building of offices, the reconstruction of shop fronts and, even in some circumstances, the building of factories. It has been my experience that some people decided to go to Great Britain, not alone to get a job, but because they could not get decent housing accommodation at home. I do not say they got better accommodation over there, but they felt so frustrated at not being able to get a house in their own country that they thought they would take a chance and go to Great Britain.

I should like to ask the Minister to encourage local authorities to build on derelict sites in the centre of towns. I firmly believe that many of our provincial towns are becoming uglier every day because derelict sites in the centres of these towns are being left, while the houses are being built in sprawling suburbs. In many cases this means the towns are becoming lopsided.I know that through legislation and financial measures the Minister has given encouragement to local authorities to clear these sites and build on them, but my impression is that that assistance is not being freely availed of by the local authorities. Perhaps the Minister, by words or letters of encouragement—or even by direct action—might try to ensure that our towns retain at least some vestige of their character and that their centres be preserved by having decent houses built on them.

I cannot speak for every area, but so far as Wexford is concerned, I am thoroughly dissatisfied with the reluctance of the local authority to build houses for people who need them. I believe there is a reluctance, and whether it is the fault of the manager or the members, I do not know. I suppose other Deputies who are not members of the local authority have the same experience of representations made to them by people who need cottages.

Over the past few years, the Minister has been questioned here on many occasions by members of the Labour Party in regard to the housing of people lodging in local authority houses. We put up several arguments as to why the rule with regard to the one-third and two-third subsidy should be relaxed in order to allow these people to be housed. To give credit to the Minister, he announced some time ago that in certain cases a local authority would qualify for the two-third subsidy where people were being housed from existing local authority houses. He said they could in certain circumstances be housed in a house that would qualify for the two-third subsidy where there was a case of overcrowding or where there were compassionate grounds. However, I find reluctance on the part of the local authority, through their officials, to use their own good judgment, take a chance and depend on the generosity of the Minister and his officials to apply the two-third subsidy.

I have in my files many cases where married couples, because they have no accommodation of their own, go to live with his parents or her parents. I have in mind a particular case of a young man and young woman who married and went to live with the father of one of them. In that house was the father, the mother, a grown brother, a grown sister and the married couple, that is, six people in a county council cottage. The local authority refused to build for that couple because, they said, they might not get the two-third subsidy. These people are advised to look at the local newspapers to see whether there are any vacant cottages in the area and to apply for them, but vacant cottages are very few and far between. If the local authority do not build for them, they will be lodging in their parents' house for quite a long time to come.

The Minister has advised the local authorities that where there is over-crowding or where there are compassionate grounds, the local authority may qualify for the subsidy. Can he go any further? Can he give a decision on an application by a local authority prior to the building? I think it somewhat unfair to ask a local authority to take the chance in certain cases and perhaps end up by having to accept a one-third subsidy and in consequence have to charge a greater rent than would normally be payable.

It may not be quite so bad where a young couple live with his or her parents but there are cases of married couples having no accommodation of their own who are forced to live with complete strangers as lodgers. We know how unpleasant that can be. It is often said that two married women cannot live together very long in one house. I suggest some families are very unhappy because there are in some cottages two, if not more, families. I ask the Minister to advise local authorities to send in their applications for permission to build a cottage and supply all available information so that the Minister may give his decision before the cottage is built. In present circumstances, a decision is not given until the house is actually occupied.

There seems to be quite a lot of controversy regarding the sale of local authority houses, whether vested cottages or houses in towns purchased or in the process of being purchased by the occupiers. I see a certain inconsistency in the decision given by local officials. In some cases, the sale is sanctioned; in others, it is not. The law seems unclear in this respect and it would be helpful for members of local authorities to have it clarified. Certainly, in those I know, it would help the officials and the members if the Minister attempted to define more clearly the conditions in which a vested cottage or house-purchase dwelling may be disposed of.

Perhaps there is little necessity to say this as all speeches on Estimates are supposed to be confined to some form of criticism but I should like to pay tribute first to the Minister and also to those in charge of building and reconstruction. I do not know what the experience of other members may be; they may have many difficulties but so far as this section is concerned and as far as the general administration of building and reconstruction grants is concerned I, personally, have only the highest praise. Many people engage in building and reconstruction and frequently do so before they notify anybody. I find the Department officials and the inspectors most helpful.

The only criticism that might be made is that inspectors' visits are too infrequent. That problem can be overcome.If there is a case for employment of more inspectors—something which has been advocated for a long time—the Minister should consider that. The people's biggest complaint seems to be the delay while waiting for the inspector to come. Some inspectors pay a cursory visit and if they do not meet the person concerned, go off again. It would be a humane thing to call next door and inquire when Mrs. Murphy will be back instead of going back to the Department and reporting—quite honestly—that he called to Mrs. Murphy but she was not there.

I appreciate that inspectors cannot wait around all day but a few inquiries as to when the person concerned will be back or where he might be, would be most helpful. I understand that it is impossible for an inspector to say exactly when he may call. That means a person waiting for an inspector might have to be on top, so to speak, for up to a month.

I have no knowledge, and I say this in ignorance, although I have colleagues here who are very well experienced in local government, but I wonder what direction, if any, is given by the Department regarding roadmaking methods to local authorities. I have seen some roads made, or allegedly made in recent years and they have broken up very quickly, so quickly that thousands of pounds appear to have been wasted. A roadmaking method employed in my county recently was, I think, called the sanding method. A base was put down with sand over that and tarmacadam or colfix then laid. These roads, after a few weeks, just burst up, due to the amount of traffic over them.

We should be more careful in allowing engineers to experiment, some of them losing possibly thousands of pounds for the State and the ratepayers.The public do not look kindly on this. If a road worker breaks a shovel—I suppose this is also a Fabian remark—he is liable to dismissal on the spot but some engineers and other professional gentlemen engage in experiments that may cost the ratepayers thousands of pounds. Therefore, I ask the Minister, although my colleagues would be able to tell me, perhaps, are any methods or standards laid down by the Department or has each local authority the right to construct roads as they like?

As a personal opinion, I think speed limits have been very satisfactory up to date. I appreciate their introduction must of necessity be an experiment and that many changes may have to be made before a permanent system is evolved. I know the Minister has no responsibility for the enforcement of the various regulations connected with speed limits and traffic generally but he has responsibility for the location of signs and I suggest he could intervene in many of the decisions made by local authorities regarding placing of signs. Some are placed too far from a town or village; others too near them. Has the Minister prescribed the distance they should be from the village or town or city border? It can be a cause of great annoyance to motorists if signs are either too near or too far from the town or village concerned.

I wonder also is it possible—this, of course, will cost money—to have warning signs of speed limits. No matter how alert a motorist may be, he may discover that there is a speed limit only when he is five, ten or 20 yards away from it and realises it is there. If he is over-conscientious, he will be inclined to jam his foot on his brake. If there is following traffic, that, in turn, will be jammed up also. In other countries, I think, they have a system of warning signs before coming to the actual speed limit signs.

The Minister appears to wield an amount of influence in the Government.I wonder if he would use that influence on two of his colleagues, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and the Minister for Transport and Power? I wonder if the Minister has this difficulty in his own constituency: I refer to the damage the ESB and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs do to footpaths and roads. They are two of the most brash bodies in the State that I know if; they assume they can come into a town, rip up the footpath, or the road, and just put a thin coating of concrete over the openings, a thin coat that cracks up in a matter of days.

The local authority does not seem to get any satisfaction from either the ESB or the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. The Minister should try to come to some agreement with the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and with the Minister for Transport and Power and, in the case of the latter, he should not let himself be fobbed off with the plea that the Minister for Transport and Power has no function because the ESB is an autonomous body.

I do not know whether other local authorities suffer as we do. Wexford town at the moment looks as if there had been slit trenches all over it, trenches filled in in a hurry when the soldiers moved on. Wexford Corporation have had correspondence and made representations to both the ESB and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs.They are not getting very much satisfaction and I suspect the ratepayers will be stuck for all this. I think the work could be done much more cheaply from the point of view of public expense if the ESB, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, the gas company, and so on, were required to put footpaths and roads back into the exact condition in which they found them. They are not doing that at the moment.

I would urge the Minister again to give all the encouragement he can to the building of houses and to insist on the completion of the surveys. Whilst he may have some appreciation of the situation from the point of view of housing needs, none of us has the full picture. I honestly believe the need is as great in certain places today as it was ten, 15, or 20 years ago, by reason of the fact that many houses have in that period fallen into disuse and disrepair.Declaring an area emergency as far as housing is concerned will not do any good. The Minister and his officials and the local authorities would be well advised to regard it as a national emergency.

Mr. M.E. Dockrell

As one of the signatories to the motion being discussed with this Estimate, I am naturally concerned about the state of housing, especially in the city of Dublin. The problem is not at all a simple one. It is not easy suddenly to increase the tempo of the housing programme.I do not myself quite know why the housing programme lapsed into the state it did in Dublin. Over a period of years, we built thousands of houses in Dublin. Then, quite suddenly, that ceased. The most important factor, I think, is the attitude of mind not only of the Government but of the public in general. Naturally, on this side of the House, we would lay the blame at the feet of the Government; but that is not the complete answer because any Government will ultimately do what the people wish them to do. Somehow the public did not seem to realise the dangers inherent in an easy, do-nothing policy in this city.

Dublin Corporation were well aware of the situation, but it is not fair to blame the Corporation as certain people have done here. From the Corporation's point of view, the problem is not a simple one. They cannot build houses faster than they receive money from the Government, and the Government did not give them the grants towards housing equivalent to the grants given in the past. I do not want to waste time trying to place blame because, as I say, there are a number of reasons. I should, however, like to see—it is something we all want to see—the situation at the moment remedied and housing starting again with all the impetus it had some years ago under the late Deputy Tadhg Murphy as Minister for Local Government.

He set up a housing council. The very efficient head on that council is now the city manager in Dublin Corporation.That body did a tremendous amount of good work in this city. It increased enormously the number of houses built. We need now something like that. We have a situation in Dublin amounting to a crisis. The building programme will deal only with the natural increase, and barely with it at that. It cannot deal with the situation in Dublin generally. Quite suddenly, everybody now realises that many of the old 18th century houses in the centre of the city are in such a state of decay that they must come down. Some of them have fallen down with tragic results and as regards others of them, we know, and the Corporation know, that unless people are moved out of them immediately tragedies may occur.

That is the situation in which we find ourselves. Large areas in the centre of the city have reached the end of their period of usefulness for housing people and we must house them as quickly and rapidly as we can. Unfortunately, the will to do this is not sufficient because it takes a number of years between the time plans are made, property is acquired, and so on, and finally houses or flats are built and the tenants go in. The answer probably is that we will have to put up prefabricated houses wherever we can in certain areas as a short-term measure.

Another answer to it is that in the city of Dublin we will have to adopt a bolder method of housing and will have to go higher. That is what every modern city, that does not want to spread out too far and put too great a strain on its citizens and indeed on its transport, has done. The question is either to go up or go out. We have gone out pretty far in Dublin. We will have to alter our views radically on the question of height. We will have to go up higher than we went before and if necessary, instal lifts, and so on, in the flats we build. That is something that will come and must come.

We must also adopt a more modern attitude on planning streets. We must spend more money on widening streets and on pulling down buildings which stand in the way of modern development of streets and roads. Otherwise, our city will choke itself with the amount of traffic that is in it. Every one of us has seen in the past few years the increase in motor cars on the roads and we are told by Ministers and the Government, and indeed we can see in a way, that we are only at the beginning of movements of money to sections of the population that have not been able to afford vehicles and luxury goods. There are many categories of people who in the next few years will be coming into the income group where they can afford to buy cars or other mechanically propelled vehicles. Those are going to go on the roads and our roads will have to be as well designed and as wide as we possibly can make them, not only in the city of Dublin but throughout the whole country.

We are fortunate in having many lovely trunk roads but as is the case in all the cities and towns in Western Europe, the roads in our cities and towns were not designed for the traffic which they now have to bear and we will have to spend money on them and spend vast sums of money on them, or we will find our towns decaying, with consequent loss of revenue, and so on, to the local authority and great hardship and difficulty to both labour and the business community in them. Therefore, we shall have to look very carefully at our planning in the future in that respect.

In the city of Dublin and in the Custom House, too, there is a wideawake approach to that problem but the housing programme declined because there was not an alert public opinion there to press for it. We will have to do these things in the future in our cities or we shall find we are creating satellite towns outside the cities where business is done that was formerly done inside the cities. That already, I believe, is happening to a certain extent and will increase in the United States of America and it is not because it is America that that is happening. It is because America with its very large number of cars on the road has found that the centre of the cities get choked up. We are already finding that. Everybody who lives around Dublin knows what it is in terms of exhaust fumes in his nose and mouth and frustration and delay in trying to get through the city. Therefore, we will have to have a forward policy in that regard.

There has been talk also in that connection of building another bridge across the Liffey. We had a debate in Dublin Corporation about a tunnel east of Butt Bridge. I do not think a tunnel under the Liffey is the answer to our traffic difficulties on O'Connell Bridge. The entrance to the tunnel would really have to be started in Clontarf and it would come out the other side somewhere near Merrion Gates. That is a bit of an exaggeration probably but certainly the entrances and exits to any tunnel under the Liffey would have to be so far from the Liffey that I do not think they would ease the traffic congestion. What we need is another bridge higher up the Liffey than O'Connell Bridge that would help to relieve the North-South traffic which is one of the great problems in Dublin.

The city of Dublin has tremendous problems and has tried to face them but it needs money and it needs grants from the Government to do that. The Government will have to empower the Corporation to take these very necessary steps which will cost money but which must be taken if this city of ours is to hold its position as a fine and beautiful capital city.

In that respect, I should like briefly to mention a matter which has been coming up recently, namely, the houses in Fitzwilliam Street, the proposed demolition of which by the ESB has caused so much controversy and has saddened so many people. I have spoken about the decay of houses in the centre of the city and we all know the difference between the houses which were in danger of falling down and the houses in Fitzwilliam Street. I hope that matter will be settled adequately and that reconstruction can go on behind these very lovely facades in Fitzwilliam Street so that we can get modern conditions and at the same time maintain the 18th century atmosphere of the whole district. These very beautiful 18th century buildings which we still have in Dublin are very valuable from a tourist and a cultural point of view. They were built by Irish workmen, designed by Irish architects and lived in by Irish people. They are relics of a very elegant age. They are part of our history, part of the tradition of Dublin as an 18th century European capital. There are very few capital cities that have the heritage we have and it is worth spending some money and going to some trouble to maintain it.

I am not a person who feels that modern buildings should always be sacrificed for the past. Not at all. I believe we can create beautiful buildings when we set our minds to it and we have erected some lovely buildings quite recently around the city of Dublin.Some of them take a bit of getting accustomed to but that is the age in which we live, an age of glass and steel and concrete. Our modern architects can create very useful, functional buildings, often objects of great beauty in the modern way. I am in favour of that trend but there are certain areas in the city which should be preserved because they are unique and Dublin has been famous for them for a couple of hundred years.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, the centre of Dublin is about to fall down and that is the problem the Dublin Corporation and the Minister and his officers have before them. We must be prepared not to take the same view as we did some time ago when a business was carried on in the bottom of a house which was, in effect, a tenement dwelling. We were very chary of interfering with business in that respect but now we have reached the stage that we must take notice of dangerous buildings not only because of the danger to the occupants of the houses but to passers-by, which is a more important consideration than keeping a business in existence. We must be more ruthless than we were in that respect.

I do not know what the immediate solution to the problem is except the obvious one of putting people into some sort of prefabricated buildings. However, what we can do is step up the building programme. Years ago great work was done by the housing council under the late Mr. Murphy, and before that again there were periods when the Dublin Corporation and the Irish Government behind it did tremendous work in housing. That was done because there was a feeling that the poor of Dublin, and not always the poor, the people who were in overcrowded and dangerous buildings must be got out at all costs. We must have that evangelical fervour again to improve the living conditions of so many of our citizens.

That is why I am one of the people who is calling on the Government to set up a select committee to examine the whole situation, investigate the housing shortage and then take all the necessary steps to enlarge the housing programme for the city of Dublin. The present situation is a disgrace to an Irish Government and Irish people wish to see it remedied as soon as possible.

Mr. Carter

This debate has proceeded now for some time. It is natural that a Department like the Department of Local Government should touch on many matters relating to housing, road building, building workers' conditions, road workers' conditions and all the rest. Deputy Dockrell is dealing with the housing problem in Dublin. There is no doubt that Dublin is faced with a problem but that problem is not beyond the ability of the Dublin Corporation to deal with it. May I say as a country man looking objectively at the position in Dublin that the Dublin Corporation has many aids available to it to remedy this position.

We all know from past experience that those houses cannot be expected to last forever. The solution, therefore, would seem to be, seeing that some of the Dublin squares are passing into history, to build upwards. We know from past experience in this regard that the Corporation, and especially the Housing Committee of the Corporation, has come in for some criticism on the ground that building houses out in the green belt is causing a difficulty, not merely in and around the city but in the county of Dublin as well. I feel that it is not beyond the powers of the Housing Committee, without setting up Commissions, or without going into the matter very much further, to come to grips with the problem.

The Housing Committee has available the services of its planners, its architects and those people who are qualified to advise on those matters. The trend would seem to be in cities bigger than Dublin, and in Europe in particular, that when it comes to flat building, the authorities are inclined to go up. We will not go into the technicalities of the various heights but it would be a good thing if the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation made a move to build upwards and to insist, when doing so, that the design of the flats be improved and that there be a brightening up all round. We have seen in the past blocks of flats erected which would remind one more of a barracks than a modern block of flats. I am not criticising the Corporation on that ground but we have now reached the day and age when a little colour could be introduced into the building programme in general.

I have as lively an interest in the city of Dublin as any other Deputy, even though I come from the country. I was glad to see—I do not know what the final decision in the matter was— that the Dublin Corporation had decided pro tem to restore O'Connell Bridge to its former condition. The best advice that could be given to the Corporation in this matter is to restore the bridge and leave it alone.

In general, the Minister can feel a sense of satisfaction with the rate of house building in the country, the rate of building new houses and the rate of replacement. We all welcome the recent announcement of the increase in the scale of grants payable to certain categories of farmers and others who are finding it difficult to secure the wherewithal to proceed either with the reconstruction or replacement of houses. It will make matters much easier for those people who, despite all that has been done down the years, still live in unhealthy and unsound houses. There is no doubt we have had down the years a tough problem in dealing with the replacement of houses and the reconstruction of a good number of the existing houses. It is good work from the national point of view and anything which this House or the Government may be able to contribute towards keeping the national housing stock in a sound condition will eventually help to improve the health and uplift the living standards of our people.

As I am referring to housing in general, I might as well try to make one point. We all know that the conditions of building workers have improved down the years as regards wages but I cannot say that one should feel satisfied, going through the city of Dublin, watching building workers out in the wet, having their rations, so to speak. In England, the contractors at least provide decent shelter for their workers and the same sort of provision should rightly be made here. It should not be beyond the powers of those who are engaged in the building trade to do so. It is not very edifying, to say the least of it, that men who have to work in the open in all sorts of weather, especially on the early development of a site, should have to sit out in the open having their meal. For that reason, some sort of shelter provision should be made for them, especialy during the bad months of the year. As I said at the outset, that problem should be properly dealt with by contractors engaged in the building trade.

I should like to make a point in reference to vested cottages. In the efforts to solve the housing problem, and in conformity with the various Labourers Acts, the local authorities allow the vesting of labourers' cottages but, in recent times, a practice has sprung up in the country of allowing those cottages to pass into the possession of people who, strictly speaking, do not need houses.

I want to develop that point a little further and to say that a position sometimes arises where somebody in the neighbouring farm may covet a vested cottage. The cottage comes on the market and somebody steps in and buys it, not for the purpose of housing a family but merely for the purpose of owning it and perhaps with the intention of living in it later on. Local authorities, as far as it is possible, should not allow such a state of affairs to prevail. The local authority should have power to house a family where it deems it desirable that the family should be housed and prevent this traffic in houses which were built primarily for working men.

In regard to road making there is at the moment a satisfactory rate of progress. One point, however, is that one often sees, during road widening operations, a row of trees being uprooted by a local authority on the presumption that they will be in the way of the scheme. Sometimes that is highly doubtful. This reminds me of something that appeared in the Irish Times of 20th August, 1963 and to which I will refer for the purpose of the point I am making. It dealt with an old house in San Francisco which had recently been torn down to make way for an apartment building. When the house had disappeared, a bulldozer moved in to complete the devastation. It destroyed, in the process, a beautiful 100-year-old fig tree. At last the area was rendered as lifeless and as sterile as the dark side of the moon and the bulldozer crew departed, but they left behind them a notice offering 100 dollars reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone defacing the property.

I merely refer to that to make the analogy that local authorities who allow indiscriminate felling of trees along the road without sufficient cause are entitled to be criticised because it can be argued—people may be inclined to be cynical about the point—that it is very easy to cut down a tree but it is very difficult to grow a tree. During the past two years, I have seen what I consider to have been the indiscriminate felling of trees along the public highway on the grounds that the road was being widened and that the trees were in the way. I do not want to criticise any particular local authority but I remember the road where those trees grew and it was reminiscent of a carriageway more than a road. In my opinion, those trees could not have have been deemed to be in the way, by any stretch of the imagination. Local authorities and county engineers should be very careful about the indiscriminate felling of trees along the public highway.

We have a very good road programme at present and the Minister can take every satisfaction from the knowledge that he is laying the foundation for a first-class system. That applies both to the mainroads and to the county roads. The rate of building of county roads is also satisfactory and has been over the past three or four years because local authorities have taken advantage of the various grants available to them. That is a very welcome feature of local government.

A further point to be remembered in regard to the road widening programme is the increase in motor traffic. Some indication of this is to be gleaned from the increase in the consumption of motor spirit. The consumption of motor spirit rose by three million gallons in 1961 over the previous year and by six million gallons in 1962, bringing the total consumption to 96 million gallons. The Minister is to be complimented on his foresight in making provision for main roads because if the growth of motor traffic continues at its present rate, we shall need these wide roads.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 6th November, 1963.