I wonder, when the Minister was framing his Estimate for this year, if he took into consideration in regard to housing the extra charges that will be imposed by the Budget proposals brought in by this Government. It is reasonable to assume that the building of a house will cost a considerable amount more than it has heretofore cost and that corporations and other public bodies who are largely responsible for housing will find themselves faced with excessive obligations in respect of corporation profits tax. Was there any preparation for that eventually in the framing of this Estimate? If not, will we be faced with a situation with which we have been faced annually in relation to practically every Estimate introduced by this Government? That information would be helpful to the House in view of the somewhat uncertain situation that prevails in regard to housing and the tremendous demand that exists for houses, not only in the city of Dublin, as has been evidenced by the speeches by Deputies who represent the regions around Dublin, but throughout the country as a whole. There must be a tremendous building drive and, as against that, there will be a tremendous extra charge thrown back on the people who are to live in the houses.
Has the Minister any plan to deal with that situation, or, like everything else, is it one of those glorious paper schemes, the difficulties and troubles in regard to which do not appear until it is sought to make the schemes effective?I estimate that a house which is built as from 1st November last will be subject to this percentage charge on all building material. It will also be subject to corporation profits tax and to increased charges which will arise from the demands which it is recognised will come from all manual workers, in fact, from all types of workers, throughout the country, and which in turn will result in increased costs of administration for local authorities in respect of engineers, administrative staff, and so on.
It is very difficult to estimate even roughly what these extra charges will be but I could not find anything in the Minister's address when introducing this Estimate to show that that matter had been given even a passing survey by him and those who advise him in the Department. Perhaps when he is replying at the end of this debate, which has extended over a considerable period, he will intimate to the House what the plans are for the future and also if he is going to safeguard those who are already in corporation houses against an increase in rent or if they are to pay this extra charge, not once but possibly three or four times over.
Whatever way it may be glossed over, Deputies are not offering their opinions here for nothing and it is obvious from the speeches made from every side of the House that there is a backlog in housing. It is also obvious that the surveys the Minister has made in regard to the requirements here do not in any way meet the current situation. I recently asked the Minister a question in relation to housing problems in my constituency and the reply I received was that the survey which had been made dealt only with unfit and unsound houses and did not relate to the increased demand for houses.
It must be recognised—and this position obtains in every country in the world—there is a flight from the land. There are not as many people requiring to live in the rural areas and there are not as many people employed on the land. That situation is not peculiar to this country. Therefore, there must be a movement to the towns and a movement towards industrial development and that means more houses. When a town in any part of Ireland has an opportunity of having a factory established, the first question that is always asked is: "Have you the housing accommodation available? Have you any plans for housing accommodation?"
I want to put it to the Minister that if he were the most active Minister in the world, if he were the most enthusiastic Minister for Local Government this State has ever had, under the present administration, under the present schemes and the present plans laid before this House, there is not the slightest chance of overtaking the housing problem in the foreseeable future. As regards Dublin alone, there has been evidence here in the speeches made by Dublin Deputies that there is a tremendous backlog in housing, a tremendous increase in the demand for houses.
Occasionally I get letters from people who originally came from my own county and who are living in Dublin. Unless they have a five-years' residential qualification and unless they have a family of at least four children, they have no chance whatever of getting a house in Dublin. That may well be for the purpose of protecting those who live in Dublin but it shows an appalling state of affairs. It shows that the housing situation in this city is in chaos.
It puzzles me, therefore, when people buy houses here in the city and wish to construct them into flats, that they come up against the town planning section of the Dublin Corporation who very often deny them the right to convert the houses. Again I say I am a country Deputy but there are people from my own county who come to live in Dublin and who write to me in this regard. I recently had a case of a person, a widow, who bought a house with the idea of converting it into flats for the purpose of getting some remuneration in return. She was promptly told by the town planning authority that she could not do that. The case was then appealed to the Minister. There was some urgency about the matter as this lady did not want to be held up for two or three months.
I made representations to the Department and I discovered that there were 600 appeals on the same question sitting on the Minister's table. I do not say that the Minister is holding these up—I gather they reached him only quite recently—but the point I want to make is that if there is a shortage of houses in Dublin, what is the sense in preventing people converting houses into flats? What is the point of the Town Planning Committee—whoever they are; I gather they are officials of the Dublin Corporation—denying these people the right to turn houses into flats when they are at least helping to offset this very serious situation which exists in Dublin? I call it blatant bureaucracy. It is not getting anybody anywhere.
I hope the Minister will give favourable hearing to these appeals. Only the other day, I heard of a case of a woman in Dublin who converted a house into flats and every one of those flats was let to tenants or potential tenants and then the Town Planning Committee said: "You cannot do that." I do not know what the relations are between the officials of the Corporation and the officials in the Custom House but I hope the people in the Custom House will give a sympathetic hearing to such people and enable them to convert, if they so wish, houses into flats so that people will have the opportunity of getting accommodation with their own kitchens rather than being dumped into houses with three or four other families. I should have thought that anyone who is contributing in any way towards the housing problem in Dublin would have received the most sympathetic consideration.
The main trouble in this apparently lies with the officials of Dublin Corporation. I hope the Minister will take those 600 applications, if he has not already done so, and deal with them expeditiously. As far as I know, the case I had was a reasonable one and as far as I know, the others are. We also have in my county a Town and Planning Committee and it appears that it is necessary to get the permission of the local authority to do anything now. I know of cases where people have been waiting for a considerable time to reconstruct their houses. Something which perhaps is not always as evident to officials as it is to elected representatives is that it is difficult to get contractors. It is also very often difficult to get a scheme— a private enterprise scheme, if you like—started. When you have made arrangements to get it started, it is a bit hard if you are held up by officials for a considerable period. If your scheme is rejected by the officials, your redress is to appeal to the Minister.
Our problems in Wexford do not appear to be any different from those elsewhere. In four towns in my constituency, they are waiting for houses. Every time a house becomes vacant, there are at least 12 to 15 applications for it. We have a housing scheme in Gorey which has been "simmering" for about 15 or 16 months. I gather that the delay is nearly over and that it will be started eventually but it has been a source of disappointment to everyone concerned that it could not be commenced this summer. That may not have been the fault of the Department; perhaps the local authority were somewhat slow in sending up the plans. We also have a housing scheme in Enniscorthy, where there is a big demand for houses, and in New Ross and in Wexford.
I wonder would it be possible for the Minister to appoint somebody in his office to act as a liaison officer with the local authorities so that when these schemes come up from the local authorities, they may be dealt with expeditiously? It often happens that they are sent to Dublin and may be in the office from three to six months before being sent back. All the blame may not be attributable to the Department.It often happens that the Department send back queries to the local authority and the local authority takes a considerable time to reply and then the Department have to reply again. Would it not be possible to set up a small section to deal with relations between local authorities and the Department and if necessary, send an official, an engineer, from the Department to discuss the matter with the body concerned? By doing that, months of delay could be swept away. It should not be very difficult to send a man from the Department to the local authority to discuss these matters.
Although I am not a member of the local authority, I get many requests to expedite the building of labourers' cottages. The plain fact is that there has been no building of labourers' cottages in Wexford for the past few years. Schemes have been sanctioned and have recommenced again but in nearly all cases, it is almost impossible to get contractors. In the few years in which the hiatus in building existed, these people went to England. If a statement could be made that it was definitely intended to carry on with public housing—which obviously all sides of the House and all shades of political opinion are agreed on—in continuity for four or five years, it is likely that many of the contractors who have emigrated would return and we might not be faced again with the situation we are faced with now.
That brings me to the question of further expediting housing. Is it not possible—I think I am pushing an open door here—to turn over to a prefabricated design? Recently I was reading a German newspaper and I saw a photograph of the Minister discussing prefabrication in southern Germany. There have been great advances in prefabricated designs in most continental countries, where hospitals, schools and houses are being built to such designs. The modern prefabricated building is entirely different from the type of prefabricated house we saw in England in the bombed areas and in other places. It is a modern, up-to-date house with every possible contrivance.I gather they are being modernised and brought up-to-date so that now these houses are almost the same price as ordinary brick and mortar houses.
I am further informed by those who are supposed to know something about it that these houses in the not too distant future will be even cheaper than the existing type of houses being built here. As the Minister has not disclosed it to the House, I do not know whether we are to have a prefabrication drive or not. It is quite obvious that it is very desirable that we should and also quite obvious that it will not in any way affect the building trade and those employed in it because I do not think, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, the Minister believes he can draw level with a situation which has fallen into arrears, coupled with the increasing demand for houses. When the Minister is replying, he might give the House some indication of what he discovered in Ulm, or Munchen, or wherever it was in Germany he was photographed with his counterpart in the West German Government.
The traffic regulations have been the subject of many expressions of opinion here and there. I think there is one inescapable fact, that is, that the speed limits in built-up areas have not been responsible for cutting down the number of accidents. Somehow I feel that the speed limit of 30 miles an hour, unless it is actually within the confines or the centre of the city, is inadvisable. Coming into Dublin by the Dún Laoghaire route, one is not confined to 30 miles an hour. In many cases it is 40 miles an hour, which is a more reasonable rate of speed. Coming into Dublin by other routes, one finds it is 30 miles an hour all the time. There are many long, straight stretches of road there. One of the things really responsible for accidents is that if you get a lot of traffic in a built-up area like that, although it is fairly straight and you are allowed to travel only 30 miles an hour, you may find one car doing 20 miles an hour, and not capable of doing more than that, and other cars have to pass it at 30 miles an hour. That does not give latitude to pass expeditiously and fast.
For that reason, I think the whole question of the built-up areas and the speed limits should be brought under review. I fully appreciate the fact that it is at its experimental stage now. Of course, that is what they have largely done in the United Kingdom and what they do there today we always seem to do tomorrow. Perhaps the Minister would consider replacing some of these 30 mile an hour speed limits, where he sees it possible to do so, by 40 mile an hour limits. Perhaps we will get a better result therefrom.
I do not know what the Minister or his Department intend to do with regard to the parking situation in Dublin. The Minister in his opening address told us that we were to have 13 new parking places in Dublin. He did not give us any indication where these parking places were to be, when they would be available, or the number of cars they will accommodate. The only thing he told us was that underneath Corporation flats somewhere or another we would have accommodation for cars. This is something which should be dealt with as expeditiously as possible.In Dublin at the moment the streets, which I think could at the present time take the traffic, are entirely prevented from doing so because every street is cluttered up with cars. The streets are so cluttered up because there is nowhere else to park. It is perfectly true to say that every available parking place in Dublin is taken up by the people who live in the city. They get into town in time and use up all the parking space. When people come up from the country, they are obliged to park in Rathmines and Donnybrook. Very often it is hard to get a place out there and they find their way into the city. That may be desirable from the point of view of utilisation of public transport and the financing of CIE. It is bad luck on someone who comes up to do a day's shopping in the city to find he has to spend half an hour in a bus or perhaps ten minutes looking for a parking place in Dublin and a great deal more than half an hour trying to get out. At the rush time, it may take even an hour.
I put it to the Minister that anyone who comes up from rural Ireland to do business in Dublin is considerably impeded by the total lack of organisation in regard to the traffic parking regulations.I think the Minister should give the matter his earnest consideration. He may have been influenced by the fact that the parking arrangements made in London were not a success. There were, I believe, big parking places made underneath Marble Arch and Hyde Park in London which are practically empty. As against that, I should like to draw the Minister's attention to the fact that these are not shopping centres in the accepted sense of the word. They are not within reach of the majority of the shops there. What the people in Dublin want—I am speaking for rural Ireland largely—is to be accommodated somewhere in the centre of the city near the shopping centres where they can park their cars. I cannot understand why the Dublin merchants have not revolted long ago because they must be losing money due to the fact that the people cannot get to the shops.
I wonder whether the Minister has given consideration to the closing of railways and to the potential closing of railways and the greater load of traffic which will be thrown on our Irish roads. Nobody knows from day to day what the latest move with regard to the rail traffic will be. Of course, it is not a matter for the Minister for Local Government but it is a serious matter for him when he finds himself faced with roads on which the cars will be bumper to bumper and hampered by lorries and slow traffic. It means that if the railways go a great deal of heavy traffic will be put on the roads. On the continent of Europe where there has been a great deal of closure of railway lines and a great deal of transference of traffic from the rail to the road, where the double type lorry is very prevalent now, they have moved to meet that situation. The first move necessary to meet that situation is to widen the roads.
For that reason I should like to put this to the Minister. I take it that everything that takes place on the Irish roads has ultimately to be sanctioned by him. I think it would be more advantageous if we widened our roads rather than do what we are doing at the moment—trying to make all the roads straight. In my own county literally thousands have been spent on the reconstruction of straight roads as against bends. Actually, the roads themselves have been left aside and new roads burrowed through fields and farms. I do not think that is a good policy. It is probably all right from the tourist point of view if you want to have a road where the tourist can do 50 to 60 miles an hour and shoot through the country quickly from one place to another.
If we are to face the future, we must keep abreast of the revolution that is taking place in traffic all over the world. We want to widen our roads. One can always put a foot or two on each side at a comparatively small cost. The roads on which I travel from my home to Dáil Éireann could be widened by two feet on each side for comparatively less than the present expenditure on these extravagant schemes. I do not know who is responsible for them. I do not know if they are the idea of the geniuses and engineers within the local authorities or are conceived in the brain of somebody in the Custom House. It is a matter the Minister should review in the near future.
If I may be topical for a moment and refer to my own constituency, I may say that more motorcars come into Ireland from the United Kingdom through Rosslare Harbour than through any other port. That situation will obtain until they get the ferry in Dún Laoghaire, if they ever get it. The cars then have to come north to Wexford. They come on a narrow road that is not particularly good. No attempt seems to be made to widen that road. I have asked questions about it frequently in Dáil Éireann and am told that it is a matter for the local authority. Again I say that everything that comes under the heading of road construction, housing, and so on is subject to the sanction of the Minister for Local Government. It is his job, in the final analysis, to see that it is done properly.
I have given the Minister some idea of the many problems that a rural Deputy faces in relation to matters concerned with his Department.