Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 3 Jun 1964

Vol. 210 No. 4

Committee on Finance. - Vote 28—Local Government (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

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

Mr. A. Barry

Before the debate was adjourned, I had been discussing the growth of the traffic problem in the country and the fact that in rural areas we were yet free from trouble because our road surfaces were lengthy and in good condition and that it was, indeed, very attractive to tourists to come here and to drive. There is a good deal of room. We can take a great deal more wheeled traffic on our roads yet. Of course, that creates problems in the towns and cities because in the towns and cities we are rapidly approaching the conditions of the cities and towns in much more thickly populated places. In Dublin, Cork and such centres, traffic was grinding to a standstill. The recent changes in traffic direction have made an improvement which I hope will last for some years yet, but with the growth of wheeled traffic, it is quite obvious that the city streets cannot contain or take the amount of wheeled traffic that will attempt to use them and we will eventually have to face the position where certain areas in all towns and cities will have to be designated solely for pedestrian use. There is going to be objection to that, as there is in Ireland objection to every innovation, but we will have to face that and eventually some centres in every urban district will have to be reserved entirely for pedestrian traffic.

One of the drawbacks about the praiseworthy attempts to improve driving conditions in the towns and more thickly populated rural areas has been the failure of most Irish drivers to obey the indicators for lane traffic. Lane traffic is a very quicklyacquired, intelligent way of regulating traffic movement but quite a number of Irish drivers make no attempt whatever to obey the lane dividers and the lanes are being used incorrectly by them. If they obey the lane arrows and drive in the proper lane traffic, movement will be very much improved. In this regard and in regard to many other facets of use of the roads by wheeled vehicles television and newspaper advertising should be used more than they are used.

I often wonder why in country roads when our engineers were devising the road surfaces, they had not found it possible to incorporate a white or light-coloured material of some kind in the road. Any of us who drives on the black tarmacadam type of road on a wet night knows how hard it is even with the most powerful lights to see the road and when you run on to a road of lighter colour, made of concrete, or an old dust road, at once the lights become 100 per cent more efficient.

It should not be beyond the skill of our road engineers to devise a surface which, as well as having its normal and good properties as a surface to carry traffic, should also have a surface which would not absorb but would reflect light, which would make the roads at night a safer proposition for the driver, particularly in wet weather.

The signs indicating recent changes in traffic control are incompetent and insufficient. Some of those signs should be sited so that they will be on a level with the lights of the car or a little above that, so that the driver can see the sign and signal being given to him.

Of course, the gravest danger on our roads are those who use ordinary pedal cycles. They never seem to realise the dreadful danger they are in and the regulations compelling them to carry a light are honoured more often in the breach than in the observance.

All old drivers would want to be made aware that there is a great number of new drivers on the roads this year because they are attempting to meet the provisions which require tests. If they have taken out licences early this year, they can drive for the remainder of the year before undergoing a test. In the meantime, they are all learner drivers and they do not all carry plates and we would all do well to take heed that there are many beginner drivers on our roads this summer. We should all take care, in any event. The Minister should be gratified, as we all are, that the Whitsun sheet was a very clean one and that probably the injunctions on television and the newspapers by the Minister are having effects.

I want to agree very fully with what has been said about the use of articulated lorries, that is, vehicles with trailers, on our roads. In at least one country in Europe, Italy, the owners of these lorries have been given notice that after so many years, the use of these vehicles will be prohibited on Italian roads. If we have taken the trains off the rails, we should not allow them to be put back on the roads. They are very dangerous vehicles. Even if they probably provide economies of some kind for carriers, they provide very great dangers to road users as well. I could not agree more fully than I do with what Deputy Sheridan said about the rear lighting of heavy vehicles of this kind—that the lighting should indicate clearly the complete width of the vehicle.

Another subject, which has not been referred to so far, is the discharging of diesel fumes from ill-kept diesel engines in narrow streets. If we were strict about that, we might find that the cigarette was not altogether the guilty party in creating conditions which might lead to an increase in the incidence of cancer. Another matter in the same line, for which the Minister would have responsibility, is the pollution of the air by certain factories. In the city of Cork and other lowlying cities, it is quite a problem. The growth of industry brings its own disabilities. It should be possible to compel all factory owners to have properly washed smoke emitted into the atmosphere.

I want to get on to the consideration of a subject in which I am deeply interested and in which, I am glad to know, the Minister is very interested also—the planning of the place in which we live. It is my pet subject, and I am very glad the Minister is also enthusiastic about it. The attractiveness of the place in which we live has effects far outside the immediate effects. The principles involved are elementary: first, cleanliness and tidiness; secondly, reasonably good taste in the decoration of buildings; and, thirdly, the preservation of as much natural character as possible in urban places.

The shame of dilapidation, to which Deputy de Valera referred this morning, is something that should trouble us all. Of course, a great deal is due to our history. In the smaller towns the impact of the Tidy Towns Competition has been something remarkable. It is one of the most useful projects undertaken in my time. It just shows that if the paint brush is used on one premises in a street after a while all the others have to follow suit. Now, some of the towns and villages are a pleasure to drive through.

Nothing satisfies me more than to learn of the growth of paint sales in Ireland. I suppose it is a matter of private human rights that a man should have the building he occupies in whatever condition he is permitted to have it in. But in what condition is he permitted to have it? Has he any right to deface the local scenery with the gross ugliness of advertising we sometimes see in goodish buildings in the urban scene here? I know of some areas in Cork city where the return walls of buildings have been hired out to advertising contractors and great, ugly advertising is permitted to be painted on them. That is something to which we should strenuously object. We seem to have checked the efflorescence of the billboards in the country areas. Where planning authorities are stringent in the urban areas there is considerable control over the kind of billboard that may be erected. We should all strive to keep that kind of thing out of sight as much as possible. After all, as far as the advertisers themselves are concerned, if nobody can use these things, nobody loses and nobody is at a disadvantage. But it would be deplorable if the roads leading from our towns and cities became as the roads leading out of some continental towns and cities. We have a duty to prevent that spoliation of our landscape.

The Minister should have a look at what happens when a man decides he is going to give his place a facelift. The present Tidy Towns movement encourages many people to do this. But they find then that the Valuation Commissioners come along and the valuation goes up. The Minister ought to have a look at this and satisfy himself that this is not a contradiction of what he is trying to do. There should be no increase in the valuation unless there is an increase in the cubic capacity of the premises. If a man tears down dilapidated old fittings and puts up a contemporary or modern shop front, he should not be penalised. It really means we are paying a premium for dilapidation. If this change could be made in the law it would be a great help towards improving the urban scene all over the country. Let us not penalise the improver, as we are doing now.

Another point I want to refer to is the changing of place names. Sometimes, in a frenzied outburst of patriotism or may be religion, we change place names in this country. It often happens that this is the result of some "eloquent Dempsey" on the local council and the rest being too shy to say they think the change should not be made. Even if the names sought to be changed represent the names of our old oppressors, at any rate they are the footprints of history and should be left there. Keep the new names for some new street or edifice. We should not be in any hurry to change things. History is being written for thousands of years. Let us leave the indications of the past there. It does not mean we are giving any approval of some of the activities of the people so commemorated, but in this way is the history of the country delineated.

We are still not planting enough trees, particularly in the urban places. Very positive encouragement should be given by way of free grants to the planting of trees in city places. As I have said previously, there is a great deal of monotony in modern housing, particularly local government housing but often private schemes as well— these ugly rows of concrete cubes one after another, without any attempt to relieve them by a green tree or an open space. Wherever there are beauty spots, particular attention should be given to trees and making sure they are not run down or ugly. May I refer in passing to the proposal made about the Grand Canal in Dublin? It would be a dreadful thing if anything happened to replace that very pleasant and charming part of Dublin by anything like a concrete car park.

There are people in local authorities who see nothing wrong in doing that kind of thing and one of the jobs of the Minister and his Department is to educate such people into a realisation that what they are doing is very wrong. Wherever there is water on the Irish landscape, it is a very important part of the scene and we should ensure that these waters are kept on the landscape so that those who visit us will see for themselves that we make the most of our natural amenities. For pity's sake, do not put concrete roadways over streams, rivers and canals. That is a frequent proposal.

The same argument applies to our beaches, to the cleaning of them and the checking of erosion. It is possible to do the latter in many ways but there is only one good way, that is, by exercising the utmost good taste in the erection of breakwaters. If we could get rid of the ugly shanties that disfigure our seaside places, it would be a great step forward. Too often outside our country towns one finds the town dump. I do not know why the dump is always just a field into which the stuff is thrown without any attempt being made either to cover it or to hide it. Trees planted and the rubbish hidden behind those trees would be an improvement on the present position.

I am sure the House will bear with me if I refer again to the work of the ESB and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in erecting great ugly poles in the middle of streets and towns and housing areas. They should be compelled to bring these heavy wires for telephones and electric power in by the backs of the houses if they cannot face the expense of putting them underground. They have disfigured many charming parts of Ireland with their activities. We should not condone that and I shall certainly keep on objecting so long as I am here. I have a good deal of sympathy with Deputy de Valera's proposal that there should be an inspection squad in the Minister's Department to keep an eye on all these activities. The inspectors could go to a district and if gentle hinting did not succeed, they could put the heat on in order to convince local authorities they are doing wrong.

The Minister's greater Dublin plan under which he proposes to make an effort to control all developments is a sensible and desirable one. I take it that within a radius of 50 or 60 miles, a proper relationship will be preserved between the rural and urban scene. I hope that in the near future we shall have the result of the application made by Cork to extend the city boundaries. That extension is a necessary development because there are a number of things that should be done but cannot be done unless the city embraces a larger area. It is possible with cities like Dublin and Cork, with large residential and large industrial areas, to have the cities both good looking and busy. The important point is that the area should be large enough to bear the burden of the kind of control and direction needed.

The local government elections will take place next year and it is desirable that the result of the application for an extension of the area—I do not know whether it will require legislation—should be known in good time because there will necessarily be a larger electoral area and arrangements will have to be made to reconstitute the kind of corporation that now administers the affairs of Cork city. We should try to ensure an end to the ridiculous system under which 70, 80 or 90 names appear on a ballot paper.

The real danger the Minister has to face, and all of us who are interested in local government, is that the everincreasing burdens placed on local government—health, housing and the growth in salaries and wages—means that the important local government work is being neglected. There is a lesson to be learned perhaps in the fact that the Custom House is now overshadowed by Liberty Hall. Salaries and wages have tended to rocket in the last three years. We should always remember that money values change and the danger is that desirable expenditure is curtailed and those who want to have things done in their areas have to fight to get them done. There are a great many Philistines around, and very often in ratepayers' organisations. They tell us we have a duty to the present but I think we have a duty to the future to make sure that the organisation of our towns, cities and rural areas is both competent and good looking. If we get impatient sometimes, then it is easy to get impatient. Deputy de Valera asked the question this morning, talking about the Dublin Corporation: "Do they know what they are at?" I think they do and I believe the local authority of which I am a member know what they are at although the red tape, the necessary controls that must be exercised, seems to make the process of doing the work of local government very slow and results are sometimes very disappointing. There is a continual battle against inertia. Results are slow but I am pretty sure that, if we all get down to the job, results will come in the end.

Mr. O'Connor

First of all, for the purpose of the record, I should like to correct an impression created by Deputy Dillon in relation to the housing shortage in Dublin. He referred to the year 1956 and to the number of houses built.

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy allow me? I should, I think, remind the House that the Minister will be called on at 6.20 p.m.

Mr. Sherwin

Will that end the debate?

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes.

Mr. Sherwin

Then let us hope the speakers will be short because a few of us would like to get in.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is why I reminded the House of the position.

Mr. O'Connor

I intend to be brief. Deputy Dillon implied that emigration had reached such a heavy figure since 1956 that there was no housing shortage. In fact, the population of Dublin has increased since 1956 and up to 1961 by 13,300. Present indications are that it has since increased by a further 6,500, making a total of 20,000 requiring on an average 5,000 extra houses. Better economic conditions for workers, together with the needs of the already existent population, have tended to place a strain on the Department and the Dublin Corporation. I make the point to keep the record clear.

We in Kerry are grateful to the Minister for the many reforms he has brought about, particularly in the housing situation. Certainly this new scheme of building houses for people with a valuation of £5 and under has been very warmly welcomed in Kerry. It is a pity the Minister could not find some other means of having the houses erected in Kerry because we have a backlog of 600 houses.

Recently at a conference the engineer told us the maximum rate of building cannot exceed 150 houses a year. Therefore, it will take four years to deal with the present backlog. With the new scheme, we should get another 1,000 houses, but it is a pity the Minister did not get his own organisation to work on it because he has the engineers, and he has a housing section. With the present rigid regulations, we cannot see the Kerry County Council making any serious impact on that position. However, it is a job for us in Kerry and we will do our best to try to resolve the difficulties.

My main purpose in rising to speak was to deal with the question of road grants. In Kerry we find ourselves in a very difficult position in view of the fact that there has been a reduction in the county roads grants and that the railway grant which operated there for years has been withdrawn. On two occasions, the county engineer has said that the Department have insisted on channelling all the tourist grants into the arterial roads. That is a most serious position. It will affect us in Kerry for a long time because only 66 per cent of our entire roads are dust-free, which leaves 34 per cent of our roads, and particularly the mountain roads which give access to our scenic attractions, in urgent need of attention if we are to improve the tourist industry. Without doubt, if the tourist industry is affected in Kerry, it affects the whole country. There are small narrow roads where motor cars find it difficult to travel, and two cars cannot pass each other.

I ask the Minister at this stage to have this position reviewed and to give us the grants for our county roads which are of scenic value, and play an important and major part in the tourist industry in Kerry. I do not think there is absolute necessity for the big arterial building we have at the moment. If there were an absolute necessity for it, I am sure an arterial grant would have been given to the county, but it has not been given, which denotes that it is not a matter of urgency.

In Kerry we are trying to organise every section of our people into maximum productivity by way of tourism, fishing, and agriculture. We need to have these small roads attended to immediately. I ask the Minister, if he can, to make a special grant available to help us, and also to have the tourist grants channelled into the small roads, because I think it necessary that should be done. Some of the roads which need to be done are the road from Incharoe, Glencar to Cloon; the road from Anagar Bridge to Dirreen, Aghatubrid and Cahirciveen; the road from Ventry Church to Dunquin; the Caher road, Castlegregory to Aughacashla; and the Staiguefort road. All these roads need immediate attention. I ask the Minister to do everything possible to channel the grants into those roads.

In the small towns small shopkeepers are being put out of business. They cannot do any repairs because if they do, their already high valuations will be doubled. Those people make roughly £300, £400 or £500 a year out of their shops. Legislation should be brought in to help them because they are an important part of the community, and they get very little out of any grants that are going. The Minister should bring in legislation at some future date to help that type of person.

I want to express to the Minister the thanks of the people of Kerry for the job he has done towards alleviating the lot of the small farmers who are in no position to help themselves. That is an innovation, and it is a worthy scheme, and I want to convey the thanks of my constituents to the Minister for bringing it in.

Mr. D. Costello

I shall emulate the last speaker in trying to keep my remarks as brief as possible so that other Deputies can take part in the debate. At the outset, I want to say it seems to me that the time has been reached when we should consider a radical overhaul of our whole system of local government. That system is now built on mistrust. There is a lack of trust in the elected representatives on the local authorities. Their powers have been whittled away. They have little real power, although they may exercise some influence.

There is a lack of trust in the officials of the local authorities because they are subject all the time to the Department of Local Government. Their initiative is curbed and their activities circumscribed by the requirements of our present legal framework, which requires practically everything to be referred back to the Department of Local Government. There is a lack of confidence in the Department of Local Government on the part of the Department of Finance, because everything has to be then transferred to the Department of Finance for final sanction. So our whole system of local government which has developed over the years in a pragmatic way, without any clear principles involved, is built on this lack of trust. Responsibility has become diffused, with resulting in efficiency, and resulting delays of which we are all aware, and necessary progress is retarded.

Why should it take perhaps three or four years for a compulsory purchase order to be considered by the Minister and his Department? Why should the housing drive in the city of Dublin be held up because, as the City Manager stated recently, it may take five years between the time a compulsory purchase order is first considered until it is in effective operation, and sometimes double that length of time, and all sorts of sanitary works and development works which are initiated at a local level are delayed and hindered? It is not, I believe, from any malevolence on the part of any official but because of the system which has developed over 100 years and which breeds inefficiency, encourages delays and retards progress.

We have had a remarkable example of this in relation to the housing situation because in fact the Minister has power to delay housing but he has no power to initiate it, and over the past few years there have been one or two statements by the responsible Minister wishing that local authorities had done more but deploring the fact that he could not do anything further. Surely that is an example of the whole situation which calls for a radical overhaul of this system of local government which has developed over the years?

It is, of course, to be expected in this debate that a considerable amount of attention should be given to the problem of housing. It is not unique for us on this side of the House to raise the problem of housing, this year or last year, or the year before that for that matter. The problem of housing has been raised by us every year since this Government took office because we were pointing out, particularly those of us from the city of Dublin, what was happening and it is not with hindsight that we now refer to the difficulties in which the Corporation find themselves. We pointed out in past years, and before the houses started to fall down, that a housing crisis of very serious proportions was developing. I wish that the apparent sense of urgency indicated in the Minister's speech yesterday had been evidenced some years before but it was absent and remarkably absent.

I want to give a quotation which I have given before and for which I make no apology for repeating because in this quotation we find the answer to the whole housing problem in Dublin and elsewhere. It is taken from the Programme for Economic Expansion, November, 1958 and it was in paragraph 7 of this Programme, which is the official Government policy, that their policy of allowing a decline in social capital investment was set out. The paragraph reads:

The social capital investment of past years has given us an "infrastructure" of housing, hospitals, communications, etc., which is equal (and in some respects, perhaps, superior) to that of comparable countries. What is now required is a greater emphasis on productive expenditure which, by increasing national output—particularly of goods capable of meeting competition in export markets—will enable full advantage to be taken of that infrastructure and in due course make possible and, indeed, necessitate its further extension.

Here is the vital part—

The expected decline in social capital expenditure in the coming year will afford an opportunity—and underlines the necessity—of switching resources to productive purposes.

So it was expected in 1958 that social capital investment was going to decline and that was clearly indicated to mean housing, and housing not just in Dublin but throughout the whole country declined.

One would not think it was the same Government that issued that statement and then yesterday through the responsible Minister referred to the fact that there were now 70,000 houses outside Dublin and Cork that were unfit, and 30,000 of those totally unfit. Recently we spoke about economic planning. That is what we criticised the Government for. This is just a lack of planning. As I say, the sense of urgency which perhaps to some small extent was apparent in the speech yesterday was absent in other years. As I said also, we have raised this matter in other years. In July, 1961, in the debate on the Minister's Estimate, this matter of housing was raised and on 6th July, 1961, in volume 191, at column 478 of the Official Report the Minister said that:

... the last four years——

that was the last four years of his Government——

have made a radical change in the situation, and that the serious situation in which we found ourselves in the latter part of 1956 and the beginning of 1957 is now gone.

So that in 1961 the view was that the serious situation of four years previously had gone and things were more or less all right. Again I make no apology for quoting the figures for housebuilding in Dublin: 1,564 houses were built in 1956-57 and 392 were built in 1961-62. When I say "houses", I include both flats and houses. The year 1956-57, according to the Minister, was the serious year, the year in which the difficulties arose and in 1961 they were all right.

It is unnecessary to labour the situation in Dublin now. It is appalling. The social conditions in which thousands of our people are living are a disgrace to a Christian community. We have old people who do not understand why, when they have been living for 50 years in one flat in the middle of the city, they suddenly find themselves in a barracks. We have old people who may be more fortunate and get an offer of accommodation and then find themselves at the top of an old decrepit slum dwelling owned by the Corporation and known as substandard in the Corporation's terminology.

These are the things that are happening. We have families split up, husbands and wives split up and their marriages broken, sometimes irretrievably, because of the housing situation. If we are angry and concerned about these things, it is because we have them and we know these problems every day of the week and we have been raising them and trying to get something done and have been failing.

I do not want to enter into any argument with any councillor, any member of the Corporation as to the responsibility of Dublin Corporation for this, because, as I have said before, it is not the responsibility of the Corporation; it is the result of Government policy, bad planning and inadequate examination of their affairs. This is why we criticised the Government and why we are criticising them now. Anything that can be done to improve the housing situation should be done. I was present at a debate a few weeks ago in which a representative of the Government said that one of the things that were holding up the housing drive was the shortage of technicians and skilled craftsmen. I should like to know if that is so and it would be important for the Minister to inform us whether or not the housing drive in Dublin and elsewhere is being held up because they cannot get the craftsmen, carpenters, plasterers and other skilled men who are needed. If that is the fact, and may be it is the fact, then obviously something drastic must be done about it.

I see no reason why we should be erecting fine office buildings for ourselves outside these walls, if, in fact, we are taking the skilled craftsmen away from where they are more urgently needed. This year there are proposals for extensive building by the Board of Works of Government offices and public works of one kind or another. They can wait three or four years, if necessary, so that we can have the men and resources allocated to where they are urgently needed. If we cannot get them from the public sector, then we should ensure that the private sector building is such that luxury buildings and offices are not erected if they are taking manpower which is urgently needed in other parts of the economy, particularly the housing of the poorer sections of the community.

This is commonsense. If the Parliamentary Secretary who said that the other day was wrong, if, in fact, there is no shortage of skilled workmen and a shortage of manpower is not holding up the building drive, what I say does not matter, but if in fact it is so, then surely the Minister should ensure that we stop building a block of offices for the Department of Social Welfare and stop further work by the Board of Works on erecting offices and other types of unnecessary buildings until this housing problem has been dealt with.

There are at present 500 applications in Dublin from newly-weds, 1,000 people who have recently been married and who want a house from the Corporation. They have nowhere to go and they have about as much chance of getting a house from the Corporation in the next four or five years as they have of flying to the moon. What about old people? It seems to be extraordinary that the problem of old people has been ignored. We have certainly built flats and houses but we make only 20 or 30 available in a year for single old people, families of two, two old people living together or an old person and a son or daughter. All this sort of planning requires urgent consideration and our criticisms of the Government are all the more real because we have raised them time and time again and have got nowhere.

One of the measures that could be taken to ease the housing situation is in the realm of house purchase schemes. A great number of tenants of the Dublin Corporation would like to buy their own houses. A great number of would-be tenants of the Corporation would prefer to go into a purchase house. The difference between their weekly repayments by way of mortgage, interest, rates and the rent which they would pay to the Dublin Corporation is not all that great. A large number of them would willingly bear it but one of the things people cannot get is the deposit in order to allow them go into a house purchase scheme, and for the sake of £100 or so, they become tenants of the Corporation instead of owning their own houses or, alternatively, they go on to the waiting list.

I want to suggest to the Minister that, if necessary, interest-free loans should be given of the deposit so that this legal formality—because in many instances that is all it is—can be overcome. If houses could be provided under the purchase scheme without the necessity for this deposit or if a scheme could be devised by which it could be given to intending purchasers, this would alleviate the pressure on Dublin Corporation. It would not cost the Government very much and it would make a great deal of difference to the persons concerned and to the housing problem generally.

Planning in the city of Dublin has been deplorable. The planning of new housing estates that have been created has been deplorable. Reference was made here during Question Time to the situation in Finglas where there are now 14,000 people living in a new housing estate with nine shops and it has taken years and years of pressure to get these extra shops built. There were no playing fields provided, no library provided. There is no proper medical centre. We talk of community centres but there is no such thing as a community centre. There has been one library built on the north side of the city of Dublin since the war. There is a site in Cabra which has been there for 20 years and when you ask what it is for, you are told: "That is for the library".

The provision of amenities for the citizens has been deplorable. One responsible member of a tenants' organisation said to me: "It is a degrading thing to be a tenant of the Corporation." He was not being unduly sensitive or unreasonable. He was stating the fact that these tenants in the Corporation areas find themselves in great difficulty when they come up against the officials, not through any fault of the individual official concerned but because of the system they are operating. These tenants are at a great loss for the amenities they seek in the outer areas of the city.

There are many other things I should like to discuss but I shall leave them there because of the shortage of time, but it does seem to me, as has been pointed out before, that the Minister's Department is one of the most important Departments in the State. He has circumscribed himself by the laws under which he is operating. He has no power to get the Corporation to build houses. The Corporation's exercise of the power to build houses is delayed by the Minister's Department through the system under which he functions. The local representatives who are elected have themselves no power to get the houses built, apart from the influence and pressure they can bring to bear. The whole system, which this housing crisis has brought to light and which many other aspects of local government illustrate, is one that needs to be radically overhauled.

Mrs. Crowley

I am very glad the Minister is to look into the question of rates because, especially in the counties on the western seaboard where the rates are high, the people who have not got the minimum valuation find it very difficult to pay these rates. Therefore, if the Minister could look into the whole question he would have the gratitude of the people on the western seabaoard.

The Minister should be very pleased with the success of the water supply schemes. In my county anyway, in Kerry, it is very difficult all the time to spot people wanting extensions. At the beginning when the piped water schemes were mooted, many people said: "We have always drawn water from the well; we do not want piped water." Now when they see piped water and their friends can turn on a tap, they come to the county council in a deputation imploring them to extend the water to their areas. I think that is a very good sign because nothing is so useful in a house as a supply of water by turning on a tap.

To get to the housing question, a greater number of council houses have been built this year than in previous years. They are well designed and they all have water and sewerage. The housing situation has been greatly relieved by the number of people who are building their own houses. The Department of Local Government draw up the plans. I think there are something like seven or eight plans for people who want to build their own houses. I should like to ask the Minister if he could have more plans available for those people, and not to have the plans so elaborate. I am always glad when anyone anxious to build a new house is prepared to build according to the Department's plan, if he is borrowing money. These people are certain, if they build under a Department plan, that they will not be turned down. I often find instances where they get into difficulties with the architect who designs the house. The application goes to the Department and it is found that something is wrong. Then it is sent to the person who is to build the house and he is told to have it rectified. Then it goes to the engineer or whoever designed the house.

All these things take time and the person who is building the house gets agitated because the contractor is waiting to start building work and somebody else in turn wants him to build, and so on. That is why the plans sanctioned by the Department are very valuable. However, some of them are very elaborate and many people who are not so well off find them so elaborate that they would prefer to spend a few more pounds and get a local person to draw up the plans. If, in the case of three-roomed and four-roomed houses, the Department would draw up more plans, I think they would find a ready sale for them.

I should like to refer briefly to roads, about which my colleague, Deputy O'Connor, spoke. I am particularly interested in one arterial road, the road from Cork into Kerry. It is a very important road. It leads into Killarney and Kerry generally, which is, I suppose, the principal tourist area in the country. One part of this road becomes flooded at Glenflesk. This is a serious problem because the water often rises to six feet, with the result that no car can travel through it. Unless a notice is put up at Macroom, 20 miles away, a person who does not know the road goes on to Glenflesk and then has to go back 20 miles. There is no other roadway. There are no roads over the mountains and this is the only way by which a person can come into the Kerry area. The Minister will soon be asked for a major grant for that road as it will have to be re-aligned. It cannot be raised because it would have to be raised eight feet. It will have to be re-aligned and I hope the Minister will give it very sympathetic consideration because it is an important road. It is not so much a matter of the stretch of road, but the expense involved because it has to be cut through a high hill.

Mr. Sherwin

I listened for a while to Deputy D. Costello. While I am prepared to admit that he is an able young man, and I am sure we could do with more like him in the House, when it comes to a subject about which he only reads, then I hold he is appealing to an ignorant audience. I am not ignorant on these matters, but others may accept what he says. That is why his leader, Deputy Dillon, is always harping on things about which he is ignorant. He knows the people outside are equally ignorant about this subject and that he has a good chance of putting it over on them.

I shall get down to the business of how many houses this Government has built. Provided the money is given by the Government, I do not think the building of houses is the responsibility of any Government. There is a housing committee in every county and it is they who initiate the building. It is they who decide that houses or flats should be built and it is from the housing committee the ball rolls. Building is initiated nowhere else but in the housing committee and, so long as the money is there, there is no hold-up. As I said before, and as can be proved, the only time there was no money was during the last years of the Coalition Government. At that time the banks lent the money and they said they had no money to lend. It was because of this shortage of money that 1,200 workers were dismissed in the last year of the life of the Coalition Government. One-half of the men employed on preparing ground for future development were sacked. That was the position. So long as the money is there, the whole responsibility is on the local housing committee.

I should like to mention some figures and then I shall pass on to what I have to say. I have the official Dublin Corporation handbook of 1964. It states that the number of dwellings handed over in 1953-54, from March to March, was 1,922. These were handed over, goods delivered. That was due to the efforts, if you like, of the Fiánna Fáil Government. I do not consider it a matter for any Government but, if you like to put it that way, it was thanks to the work of this Government that that number of houses were handed over. In 1956-57, that is, the last year of the Coalition Government, the number dropped to 1,564. In the following year, 1957-58, the number dropped to 1,021 and in 1958-59 it dropped to 460.

Now, it must be remembered that it takes two years to build a house. It takes a year for site development and for planning and another year for the plans and tenders to be advertised and accepted. Therefore, it takes two years to build a house. If one examines the problem in that light, one will see the arduous work involved in handing over 1,922 dwellings in the year the Coalition Government took office. The fact that so many houses were built and handed over in that year was due to the work of the Housing Committee and of the outgoing Fianna Fáil Government. The number dropped to 460 in 1958-59, due to the lack of planning in 1956-57. Therefore, there was a complete collapse in the years following 1957.

There are ten Fine Gael members on the Corporation who can dispute that if they wish. I suggest that we should forget who built what and get down to arguing why we have a problem at all at the moment. It is said of politics that the more often you say a thing, the more you will be believed. Fine Gael say this as often as they can and I shall contradict them as often as I can, when I could be much better occupied saying something constructive.

I am told by the dangerous buildings authorities that there are 129,786 dwellings—not houses but family units —in the city. Of these, 22,204 dwellings had been built by 1860. One-third of those would be tenements, more than 100 years old. The rehousing of those 22,204 families was as much a problem of the Coalition Government and the Cumann na nGaedheal Government as of the Housing Committee or the Fianna Fáil Government. It was a problem for the State from the time we won our independence.

The fact is that all Governments and successive Corporations neglected this problem. They allowed the tenements to grow old from neglect. Whether they built houses or not, they did very little about the demolition of those 22,000 dwellings which has been built before 1860. Consequently, the Corporation of this year are trying to do the work of Corporations and Governments of the past 42 years, and we are being kicked on the shins for trying to do the job which was the responsibility of previous Corporations, previous Governments, from the day the State was founded.

I suggest that 200 of these old houses should have been demolished each year since 1922. Had that been done, there would not be so many houses for demolition now, completely unfit for human habitation. We are now doing the work of the slackers of 40 years. We cannot house at once all the families on the waiting list. Unfortunately, they must suffer for a while because of the slackers who were on the job during the past 42 years.

I have the figures here. Despite the fact that 22,000 Dublin families had been living in tenements of more than 100 years of age, in 1956-57 only 25 of the tenements were demolished. In the past year, we have demolished 800. In a nutshell, the dirty work which should have been done by the slackers during the past 40 years has been thrown over on us. We realise we cannot house all the families on the waiting list and living in dangerous buildings at once, but for the work we have been doing, the members of the Housing Committee deserve gold medals and a month's holiday on the Riviera.

During the past year, the Housing Committee met 33 times and no meeting was shorter than three hours. Fine Gael should be ashamed of themselves. Recently a group of six members from the Housing Committee went to the continent to inspect system building. Not one of that group was a Fine Gael member because none of the Fine Gael members attended meetings. There was a little "nark" later and one Fine Gael member was picked from the City Council, not by the Housing Committee.

I hear all this tripe from Fine Gael and you must excuse me, Sir, if I get excited. This is the capital city and we naturally have countrymen coming up here. We do not go down the country—they come to us. One-third of the people living in Dublin are from the country and we will have a housing problem while we are looking after the whole country.

Despite this, I do not believe there will be a housing problem here in two years because of our planning and our development work. We can expect that 500 houses a year will be erected two years hence through system building and traditional building. Why are so many families looking for houses at once? We in the Housing Committee have had to do the backlog of work neglected by the slackers since 1922. As well, it is a fact that can be proved that during a period of two years, there was a rush out of this country. In 1959 and 1960, there was good money to be earned in England and there was a rush over there of Dublin families. People were able to earn £20 or £25 a week in overtime. Because of that rush, no one would take a house. According to information given to Deputy Ryan by the housing manager, in a given day there were 170 houses vacant at that time. The ratepayers were in a panic over the cost of maintenance of those vacant houses. You could not give houses away at that time.

Then something happened in England. The Rent Restrictions Act authorised land owners to treble their rents, to charge £5 and £6 a week for a single room. Our people who had left began the march back. Since 1960, 1,000 families have returned and 3,000 families who would normally have left did not go, probably due to the prosperity at home. Between the 1,000 who came back and the 3,000 who did not go, the crowd coming up from the country and the backlog of work which the slackers of the past 42 years left to us, we in the Housing Committee deserve gold medals and a month on the Riviera for the work we have been doing. Instead, we get kicks on the shins from ignorant people who know no better. It is all based on the policy that the public do not know and therefore that a lie will serve as good as the truth. I shall rebut what they say all the time. They say it does not matter, that they will say differently again and the crowd will believe them.

On the tinker question, I raised the problem on the Estimate for the Department of Education, thinking it was a job for that Department. It has been made the responsibility of the Department of Local Government. The Minister for Local Government has been asked to provide sites for tinkers. I wonder whether it is better to provide sites in that way or to send the children to industrial schools and by that means end the tinker problem. I believe in the latter proposal. I do not think that having sites around the cities will do anything but worsen this tinker problem. It certainly will not end the ignorance of the children and the wholesale begging and fighting that goes on from one end of the day to the other. Why it should be permitted to continue in this civilised age I do not know.

I was in Templeogue the other day and a horse and cart came along filled with rotten rags and mattresses and five children under six years of age were sitting among all the dirt. One child had a mass of sores on his face. They were tinkers. This is what we permit. I believe there should not be sites without the other side of the question being examined. All those children should be compelled to attend school. They should be made attend an industrial school and taught a trade there as well as being given an education. When that is done, I believe that those people may have a different outlook on life. They may then want to live normally and to take a municipal dwelling. We put quite a number of them into dwellings but they ran out of them. Of course, because of their ways, the neighbours will not hear tell of them. I should like something to be done about this important matter.

I should like the Minister not so much to press for the provision of sites as to deal with the problem in an effort to arrive at a permanent and satisfactory solution. I do not want to see the problem perpetuated. These tinker children should be put into an industrial school.

It is an extraordinary thing that I have had reason to appeal to the Minister for Education to allow a couple of children out of an industrial school. They were taken into custody for no reason other than that they left their school at the age of 14 and did not wait for the end of the school term. If the Minister for Education is prepared to go so far with children who have had a normal education as to put them into an industrial school, it beats me why children can roam around the countryside in rags, begging and ignorant and loitering around publichouses. The Minister's responsibility is to provide sites but the whole question should be re-examined.

Members of the Corporation feel that a local authority should have power to spend certain moneys on the repair of old dwellings so that the number of dwellings being demolished might be lessened and we would have a breather, so to speak. The practice at the moment would appear to be that if a dwelling needs serious repairs, the owner is so informed. Unless he indicates within a week that he will carry out the repairs, a demolition order is sought.

In a great many cases, the owners have not the means because nowadays repairs are costly. When an owner of limited means compares what he is asked to spend with the value of the tenement or building, he will not agree to do the work and that is the real reason so many houses are being demolished. In nine cases out of ten, the owner got a notice saying that certain repairs were to be carried out by a certain date and because the owners said they could not afford to have repairs carried out, and took no action, the Corporation had then to follow up with a demolition order and to remove it all.

It would ease the problem somewhat if local authorities had power to spend a couple of hundred pounds to remove the danger, if it is not serious. In some cases it may be very serious but in other cases an expenditure of a few hundred pounds would remove the danger. It seems that local authorities have no power except to prop up a place. They have not power to spend money on other people's property. If a landlord refuses to carry out repairs, in my opinion, it is an admission that he is prepared to accept demolition. There should be some legislation whereby the local authority would have power to take possession and not to pay the owner anything except site value because the building will be demolished.

The local authority should have power to spend, in moderation, a few hundred pounds which might extend by another five or ten years the life of the building and thus ease this terrible problem with which we are faced. So long as the owners refuse to carry out repairs the Corporation have no alternative but to get the demolition order. That is the real reason there are so many demolition orders this year as compared with other years. In any other year, they took chances. They knew the dwellings were bad but they took chances because they were trying to house the families on the list. However, because houses fell, the dangerous buildings people refuse to take any more chances. That is the problem.

Councillors cannot interfere with the dangerous buildings inspectors who say, in effect: "That is coming down; you will blame us if the house falls" and public representatives can do nothing about it. We raised the question a number of times: "Why not go in yourselves and raise a few hundred pounds for the work?" The answer is that there is no power. If some legislation were rushed through, we might save some of the houses for another five, ten or 15 years, which would give us breathing space. All we want is time.

Mrs Hogan O'Higgins

I want to say a few words about road safety. I know the Minister has given a certain amount of thought to this subject. The road safety campaign should be stepped up considerably. The Press, radio and television should be employed to a greater extent in this connection. If the Minister and his colleagues, the Minister for Education and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, had a conference on this question, I am sure that he and the Minister for Education could work out a system whereby a certain amount of time would be allowed each week or each month in the national schools for the teaching of the rules of the road to children. I know a number of teachers who are very good at this work but they have a very extensive curriculum to cope with and it is not easy to fit it in.

Driving through my constituency, I find that 9.30 a.m. and 3 p.m. are literally nightmare times. There are children on the right and on the left. When one is about to pass them, they dither and then scurry across at the last minute. It is not fair to the drivers or to the children. I am appalled when I open my paper each morning to read of those who are killed on the road. Appeals have been made to people to drive carefully. I feel that many road accidents are caused by sheer bad manners and speeding. Why is it that a normally well-mannered man or woman forgets his or her manners when sitting behind a wheel and drives madly around the country? The Minister should have conferences with his colleague, the Minister for Justice, about this matter and the penalties should be stricter for dangerous and careless driving. Perhaps that is not a popular thing to say but the number killed in this small country every year is appalling.

We were asked not to speak at great length because of the number of Deputies who wish to contribute to this debate but I should like to mention the problem of water and sewerage in my constituency. The regional water scheme is progressing very slowly. It is a shocking indictment that, after 45 years of native Government, there are still so many people in the country without water. Perhaps the trouble lies in the fact that the Minister and the members of his Department are practically all men. If he were a housewife and had to run his house for a fortnight without water, he would then give top priority to water and sewerage. Life in the country is difficult enough for a young housewife with a couple of children, but without water, it is practically impossible. I do not blame them for emigrating to Britain.

I cannot understand why the group schemes are progressing so slowly. There are a number of schemes in my constituency. I do not want to mention them individually. The initial work has been done. People have spent time and energy on making the drains and on doing all the initial work, but the schemes are now held up at both local and Government level. This is a pity. When people go to the bother of getting together and organising group schemes of this sort, they should get top priority in the Department. I appeal to the Minister to look into this matter.

Mr. Carty

In his introductory statement, when presenting this Estimate, the Minister dealt at some length with the question of housing, by both private persons and the local authorities. We were all pleased to hear that the preparation of the new Housing Bill is well advanced but I think it is very unfair to leave people in doubt for so long. The old Act expired last October. It is now June and we have not yet had a continuing Bill. The Minister, of course, announced the main proposals for increased housing grants for farmers, those who are anxious to build and those who have actually built, but many of these people are not assured by statements from either Ministers or county managers; they want to know what the law is and apparently there is no law at present covering the payment of housing grants for farmers at the new rates.

The Minister also announced that housing grants will be paid to those who started work on or after 1st October 1963, and, where there was any doubt, the person concerned was asked to make an affidavit. That is an invitation to commit fraud because if there is any doubt, I have no doubt when, according to the affidavit, the work would start. It is not fair to put such temptation in the path of applicants. A similar way and one that would avoid fraud would be to pay grants at the appropriate new rates to those who received no Government grant or instalment of such grant on or before 1st October. In County Galway some years ago when we were left discretionary power in this matter by a Housing Act, we decided on that policy and so avoided affidavits or declarations from people, many of which we had very good reason to suspect were not true.

The Minister recently announced in regard to private building that he was prepared to increase the maximum allowance that could be borrowed under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts from £2,000 to £2,500. That is a move in the right direction but if there is no increase in the income limit of £1,040, he is offering loans to people who will be unable to make repayments as a result of the income bar. If you borrow £2,250 from a county council and your income is in the region of £1,000, you will have to pay back more than one-sixth of your income in loan repayments and charges. That is the principle governing differential rents— that no tenant should be asked to pay one-sixth of his income in rent. You are now making loans to people who will be asked to pay more than one-sixth of their income in loan repayments. That is completely divorced from reality and the Minister should have a hard look at the income bar he has set because money values and income limits are changing from day to day and there has been a ninth round wage increase.

The same applies to supplementary grants for those who are covered by the £832 income limit. Those in receipt of £832 who are otherwise qualified for supplementary grants are debarred by statute from receiving them. That figure was introduced with the last Housing Bill and there have been several income modifications since then. That figure should also be reconsidered and adjusted upwards.

I am delighted that the Minister has been encouraging local authorities to purchase suitable lands and develop sites to help people requiring sites to build their own houses. Great difficulties are arising in the purchase of sites. In my town which was once described by the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Dillon, as "a remote settlement in the west of Ireland", housing sites are costing up to £1,150. That is no incentive to anybody to build his own house. Over the past couple of years, the Minister, by circular letter and public statements, has encouraged local authorities to buy suitable land and develop it and then let, lease, or sell sites to private individuals. Many local authorities are not taking advantage of that concession. Only quite recently we availed in Galway of our powers of voluntary purchase. The Minister should encourage more of them.

A new feature the Minister recently announced is the scheme whereby farmers with a land valuation of under £5 will be housed at the expense of the local authority. I note in the Minister's statement he proposes to make that concession applicable to houses or cottages built by local authorities on or after 1st of October last.

Coming to the question of local authority housing proper, there are one or two problems which were briefly referred to by the Minister and with which I want to deal. The matter of the vested cottage has been brought officially to the notice of the Minister by the General Council of County Councils and by resolutions passed at local authority meetings. Many county councils find it very difficult to regain possession of vested cottages that have been vacated, particularly when the owner dies without leaving any heir or when the owner leaves the country and nobody knows where he is. It is impossible, particularly in the type of case I have mentioned, to serve statutory notice for recovery on the owner of a vested cottage and consequently the cottage becomes derelict and falls into ruin. This is very hard on people living in the locality and waiting to be housed if they see the derelict house there for a long period. I ask the Minister, when he is introducing the new Bill, to take cognisance of this matter which has been brought to his notice already by others.

There is also the question of making purchase orders to encourage people to buy out their own cottages. The procedure at present is loose, involved and cumbersome. Part of it consists of the publication of the vesting order notices in money order offices in the county towns which must be done twice. When there are, as in Galway, over 100 money order offices, that publication on two occasions is a deterrent to the local authority to encourage the people to purchase their cottages. Consideration should be given to that matter in the preparation of the new Bill.

Under the 1936 Housing Act, it is possible to get permission to build extra accommodation on to a cottage but the people are prohibited from mortgaging their cottages for that purpose. When families go to secure the financial aid which they require to build another house on their plot of land, they find that they are precluded from mortgaging that property. That matter could also be dealt with in the new Bill.

I was rather amazed to hear Deputy Mrs. Hogan-O'Higgins asking the county councils and others to go ahead with water supply schemes, particularly in County Galway where many of the supporters of Deputy O'Higgins' Party opposed such schemes two or three years ago in common with the reactionary groups in the farming organisations who, at the time, came on deputations to Galway County Council and asked us not to go ahead with schemes of this kind as they would make our council bankrupt. It is a change of heart which I also welcome.

Reference was also made to the group scheme. This old chestnut is trotted out on all occasions as a substitute for water supply schemes. There has been only one group scheme brought to fruition in Galway in the past two years. It is very difficult to get people to join together to seek financial aid for such group schemes. One of the critics once said to me that in parts of rural Ireland the people would not join in the saying of the Rosary, let alone join in a group scheme. The group schemes are all right if you could get the people to band together in them but who is going to maintain them? The ultimate responsibility falls on the county council.

My colleague rightly stressed the importance of the road safety campaigns conducted by the Minister twice in the past year and also by the Safety First Association of Ireland. The Minister for Education, when introducing his Estimate, referred to the fact that he had set up an interdepartmental committee consisting of representatives of his Department, the Department of Local Government and the Department of Justice. Beyond that reference to the establishment of that committee, I heard no more about it but the old system which obtained in Dublin when I was teaching here 20 years ago could be revived with advantage.

In those days, a member of the Garda Síochána who was trained to give lectures to children called once or twice monthly to the national schools and addressed the pupils, telling them about the rules of the road and how they could and should protect themselves going to and coming from school. For some reason that was discontinued. It certainly does not take place in the country schools. In all my years teaching down the country, I never had a Guard come in and tell the children about road safety. That is something they could find time to do. If they can collect statistics about tillage, about sheep dipping and all the other matters, surely some time could be found to help to save human lives and to start the children off on the right way.

I must compliment the Department and the local authorities generally on the wonderful improvement that has taken place in our main roads over the past few years. In Galway, we are justly proud of our roads but other counties have roads which are just as good. The Minister referred to a survey that is in progress for the reclassification of roads. That is long overdue because many roads which in the past were regarded as secondary roads have now come into prominence for one reason or another. I have in mind the road from Gort to my home town which, prior to the development of Shannon Airport, was rightly regarded as a secondary road.

Since the airport became popular all the traffic to and from the north of Ireland, Monaghan, Donegal and some of the western midland counties has to go through Loughrea. This road could now be classed as a main road and should so be classed so as to get the 100 per cent road grant. I would appeal to the Minister to use his good offices with a view to having the preparation of the new Housing Bill speeded up so as to provide redress for the few anomalies I have mentioned in regard to loans and supplementary grants.

Mr. Barron

It is most annoying to hear people who are not members and who do not know what is happening coming in here and criticising the Housing Committee of Dublin Corporation. I understand that even to-day a Deputy referred to the few Corporation members who are attending to the work of housing in Dublin.

The City Manager will soon be retiring. From the time that he was appointed Housing Officer, in 1948 or 1949, up to the time that he was appointed City Manager, four-fifths of the work of slum clearance in Dublin had been done and one-fifth remained to be done when there was the unfortunate incident in Bolton Street. That incident was due to the fact that the Corporation has not power to see to it that any landlord who takes down a house has proper people in charge so that there would be no danger to the workers and no danger to the house beside that which is taken down.

People have come in here to talk about the housing situation in Dublin. When people were put out of dangerous buildings on the north side of the city and would not take places in Finglas, but preferred to remain on the street, the Deputy who spoke here this morning about the few Deputies who are also members of Dublin Corporation who were here to speak on housing in Dublin, was the very first who, without knowing anything at all about the matter, got into the Press for the purpose of publicity. It is most annoying to hear this kind of talk, which is solely for publicity purposes. With Deputy Sherwin, I am a member of the Housing Committee. We are present at practically every meeting of the Housing Committee. Since I became a member of the Corporation 14 years ago, I have missed only half a dozen meetings of that Committee. I know what is happening and what is being done. It is most annoying then to read newspaper comments or to have to listen to people condemning the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation.

At the present time, Dublin Corporation is able to house families of three and over from dangerous buildings. The only difficulty is in housing single persons or couples. There may be single persons living alone. There may be childless couples. There may be a brother and sister. There may be two sisters. At present the Corporation are not in a position to house such persons. They have done something in the matter. They bought 200 caravans in order to ease the position. In every scheme now 25 per cent of the dwellings will comprise either one or two rooms.

One would imagine that members, in their own time and at their own expense, attend the Housing Committee for fun instead of to look after the needs of the citizens.

It just happened that those houses fell—the one in Bolton Street because of the reason I have given, and the one in Fenian Street because of the frost and rainy season followed by great heat.

What have we done since? What are we doing now? Because of those incidents the people in charge of dangerous buildings will not take the risk and the responsibility of allowing people to live in dangerous buildings. Houses that could remain standing for another six, twelve or 18 months are being demolished. I know a few of them that were closed six months ago which are still standing and the Corporation cannot do anything about it for the simple reason that they have no power to spend money, as Deputy Sherwin said, on private property. If we as a local authority had power to do that, the position would be eased considerably. I do not know if that power will be given or if it can be given. When I asked about it on a former occasion I was told that we could have compulsory purchase but the procedure of compulsory purchase is very slow. It takes two or three years before you can get the property.

When houses are condemned and the landlords are not able to spend money on them they are bought up and small factories are built on the sites, whereas if the Corporation had the power they could demolish the houses and rebuild on the sites so that people could live in the city. If that were done, attendances at schools and churches in the city would be maintained and shopkeepers would have a way of living. In the case of shopkeepers, their overheads remain the same, their rates remain unchanged but their customers have gone to housing schemes on the outskirts of the city. If something were done along those lines it might be of help to the city. I would prefer to see the houses that are demolished being rebuilt for the accommodation of people rather than that small, twopence-halfpenny factories should be built on these sites.

The Minister should consider in the near future the question of giving power to the Corporation to take over immediately any of these houses, apart from houses that come under the name of dangerous buildings, but houses condemned as unfit for human habitation, so that the Corporation could demolish them and build on the sites.

Reference has been made to delay on the part of the Housing Committee and the Corporation. I can say that there has been no delay at any time on the part of the Housing Committee of Dublin Corporation or on the part of the council. But, as I said on a former occasion, it does happen that there is delay in the Department. The Department may not have sufficient officials. I do not know. I would suggest that if the professional men attached to the Corporation and the officials could meet their opposite numbers from the Custom House and discuss and determine plans, a great deal of time could be saved. In fact, in the present emergency time was saved by cutting red tape. The officials of the Corporation went down to the Custom House and it was arranged that contracts could be given to builders at the same rate as they had contracted for other work.

There has been a Commission on Itinerancy. We in the Corporation supported the plea that a site should be set aside near the city, where water and sewerage could be laid on, and that itinerants would be put in there when they came to the city. The itinerants are in the city for only about three or four months of the year. They are travelling around the country the rest of the time. It is disgraceful to have the officials of the Corporation hunting them from place to place. That should be stopped. I would ask the Minister to give the Corporation the authority to provide a site for these people. Let them go in there under proper control when they are around the city.

People avail of grants to repair their homes, but where there is no increase in the size of the dwelling the valuation should not be increased, but it is being increased after several years. I know several people who applied for the grant and who went to the Corporation and asked would the valuation be increased. They were told it would not, but after seven years it was increased. I should like the Minister to look into that matter.

I do not represent a farming constituency but I do not think that should prevent me from saying something about farmers. When a farmer has a stake in the country if he wants to build a house, a hayshed or outoffices, instead of getting a grant, he should get a loan free of interest or at one per cent. There is something about grants I do not like. I would prefer to have people stand on their own feet and be independent. If they get money, let them pay it back and be the owners of their property.

Mr. Reynolds

I was rather surprised to hear a Deputy from Longford-Westmeath thank the Minister for the increased road grants to his constituency for the coming year. Far be it from me to begrudge increased grants to any constituency, but there is an obligation on me to point out the reduction that is taking place in the grants for Leitrim. Unlike most other counties, Leitrim is made up of small farms. There are 10,900 holdings in the county, and of these 10,000 are under £20 valuation. I am sure the Minister will agree that today no farmer can exist on a valuation of £20 unless his income is supplemented. The only means he has of supplementing his income in that county is by road work. Unfortunately, we have no industries, with the exception of one small one in Carrick-on-Shannon.

It surprises me that last year's road grants were reduced by £8,800. In 1962, our total road grants were £164,000; in 1963, they were £164,000; in 1964, they were £171,700 and in the current year they are £162,900. That is a reduction of £8,800. That means there will be less employment for the small farmer who is dependent on this employment for his existence.

Not alone is the reduction that much; in fact, it is a slight bit more. In 1962, the wage was at the rate of £6 16s. a week; in 1964 it was the same rate; but this year the rate is £7 10s. This means that, with an increased wage and the reduction in the road grant, there will be much less employment for the farmers in the country. Even at this stage, the Minister should look at the situation to see if it would be possible to give some grant. For the past number of years we received a railway closing grant of £40,000. That has been completely wiped out. On a number of roads work has been started and half completed, because we have no money available, due to the withdrawal of the grant, to complete the work. I would appeal to the Minister to restore the £40,000 railway closing grant.

Unlike Dublin, in my constituency we have no great housing problem. Some Deputy said that 7,000 people were looking for houses in Dublin. Unfortunately, all the people who would be interested in getting houses in my constituency have emigrated, and the figures will prove that conclusively. However, we have a few problems in regard to housing grants. Some time last year the Minister increased housing grants to farmers by a substantial amount, but it surprised me and others that he did not increase the reconstruction grant. As I said, my constituency is made up of rather poor people. They cannot afford to build a new house, but with the aid of a reasonable grant from the Department, plus a supplementary grant from the local authority, they would be able to reconstruct their houses. I would appeal to the Minister to consider giving increased reconstruction grants.

There were a good many applications in my constituency from people who reconstructed their houses using either galvanised iron or asbestos sheeting. The strange thing is that some of them have got grants and others have been rejected. I admit they might have used the asbestos without the permission of the Department, but there would not be a great number. I would appeal to the Minister to look at the files again and see if he could give them some grant to help them pay their debts.

I had a rather interesting experience the other day. A man—not a farmer—told me he let a contract for the building of a new house at £2,875. Before the contract was signed and before the turnover tax was introduced the contractor came back and told him he would have to get another £130. He agreed to pay the £130 but, before the work commenced, the wage increase of 12 per cent came along and the contractor came back for another £240. That raised the cost of the house from £2,875 to £3,245, a total increase of £370 due entirely to the attitude of the Government, to say nothing of the substantial increases in the cost of building materials.

I do not want to delay the house because there are other speakers to follow me, but I should like to repeat that I believe the Minister for Local Government should compel heavy vehicles to have some type of red light at the front box of the lorry just behind the cab, clearly visible to oncoming vehicles at night. If my memory serves me correctly, the speed limit for heavily laden lorries is 35 miles per hour, even outside speed limit areas. Last Thursday on my way home I followed a seven ton lorry carrying at least three tons. It was travelling at about 60 m.p.h. Desperately strong action should be taken in these cases.

The only other matter to which I wish to refer is the burden of rates. Farmers get some relief and we can all rest assured that they will be looking for further relief because they are finding it very difficult to meet the burden of rates. People in towns are having a very rough voyage, particularly the old age pensioners who are trying to eke out an existence on their meagre pensions and pay rates. Some form of subsidy should be given to these people. The small business people particularly the family grocer in the west who carries on a mixed business, is finding competition very keen because of supermarkets, and so on; the margin of profit has been substantially reduced while the overheads have substantially increased. The Minister should have a look at the amount of rates these people are paying and try to give them substantial reliefs.

Mr. T. O'Donnell

I shall not detain the House very long but there are one or two matters on which I feel I should comment. The Minister at the commencement of his speech gave the number of houses completed by local authorities during the past year as only slightly higher than the previous year. This is very disappointing. I noted one or two matters in the Minister's speech which give ground for hoping that in the coming year the position may improve. I note the Minister's personal intervention in the matter of holding consultations with building interests in relation to the adoption of new techniques and new systems. I also note with particular interest his intervention in the matter of speeding up the building of houses in Dublin.

Coming from a constituency in which there is a deplorable housing situation, it is only natural that I should have something to say on this particular problem. On several occasions over the last two years I have referred here to the shocking housing situation in Limerick city. I regret to say the position is even worse than it was last year or the year before. I do not want to be accused of exaggerating the position. I believe in having facts and figures to sustain my argument.

The position in Limerick may be seen from the report on the housing of the working classes in Limerick city, a report produced some months ago at the request of the Limerick City Manager. A survey was carried out of the needs of the city. It was found that there are 1,335 families in need of rehousing. In addition, there are 900 dwellings which are occupied but which are unfit for occupation. We have a situation then in which roughly 1,400 families are seeking houses. What is the progress? Some weeks ago I asked a number of questions including one seeking information as to the number of houses built by Limerick Corporation in the financial years 1962-63 and 1963-64. The Minister informed me that in 1962-63 50 houses were built by Limerick Corporation and in 1963-64 101 houses were built. I have figures going back to 1956-57 when 200 houses were built. In 1958-59 no houses were built. In 1959-60 175 houses were built and in 1960-61 180 houses were built. In 1961-62 no houses were built. In the past six years a total of 434 houses was built in Limerick giving an average of 72 houses per year. It is quite clear that, if there is not a substantial improvement in the annual output of houses, we will never solve the problem in Limerick.

On 6th May I asked the Minister if he was satisfied with the progress being made by Limerick Corporation towards the solution of the housing problem and whether he would consider introducing emergency measures to deal with the problem. At column 1137 of volume 209 of the Official Report the Minister said that he was not satisfied with the progress being made by Limerick Corporation and, with regard to the second part of the question, he said: "I am not clear what the Deputy has in mind by emergency measures but I am very willing to take any steps open to me to assist the housing authority in overcoming their problems as quickly as possible".

Following publication of that reply the matter came up for discussion at a meeting of Limerick Corporation. Very strong views were expressed. On the one hand, we have the answer given by the Minister that he was not satisfied with the progress made by Limerick Corporation and, on the other hand, we had the Corporation under the impression that they are not responsible for the position. What is happening is that the blame is being passed from Limerick Corporation to the Minister and his Department, and back again. In the meantime we have 1,400 families in urgent need of housing. I ask the Minister to take immediate action, to do what he did in the case of Dublin Corporation, to exercise whatever powers he has to try to get this dreadful situation in Limerick remedied. I do not know whether it demands an inquiry or an investigation or whether consultations and round-table discussions should take place between the local authority and the Minister and his officials, but I urge the Minister to take action.

A number of speakers referred to group water schemes. I have referred to these schemes on previous occasions on this Estimate. I am one hundred per cent in favour of them. In fact, before my entry into this House, I was closely associated with the organisation of those schemes. It is only fair that credit should be given where credit is due, and credit should be given to Muintir na Tíre for pioneering this idea. It is an excellent means of providing water for rural homes. In the number of schemes with which I have been associated, we have not come across any insurmountable problems. There is one weakness in the matter of the organisation of the group schemes, that is, that there is possibly a need for more guidance from the Department. There might perhaps be a case for appointing extra organisers to encourage local groups to undertake the work and to explain to them what it is all about. I have certainly found—and I think it is the experience of Muintir na Tíre and every organisation which undertook the organisation of group water schemes—that where there is proper guidance from the beginning, and where proper advice is forthcoming, there is no difficulty whatsoever.

Mr. Crinion

There has been quite an amount of talk about housing during this debate. We must look at the housing position on a constructive basis. The Department have taken two years, 1961 and 1962, as a base. Let us take the number of grants given in 1961 and in 1963. Exactly double the amount given in 1961 was given in 1963. In that way we see the concrete results of the grants given by the Department. People have availed of them. They are an incentive. People have been encouraged to use them. I always feel we should encourage people to do something they would like to do themselves. When a person has repaired an old house, it seems to give him and his family an uplift. Their environment is improved. The Minister and his Department are to be complimented on giving these grants.

In my constituency a large number of people are building their own homes. A few years ago, they would have been thinking in terms of looking to the county council, but now they can buy plans from the Government Publications Office, designed by the Department of Local Government. Those plans are practical and quite easy to follow. They have the added advantage that people can build their houses where they like. Possibly there is a snag in getting a plot, but in the past year the Minister has permitted the subdivision of vested cottage gardens and that has provided sites for new houses. The county councils are to build group schemes but in the country people like to live by themselves because they have always done so. They can get loans under the SDA, from the bank, or from any of a number of other sources and they can have a house for practically the same price as they would pay in rent per week if they got a house from the local authorities. When people have provided their own homes, they feel they have achieved something. They are much happier because they have the house they wanted and they have selected the site. They have had a choice instead of just taking the luck of the draw.

The new farm grants have been a tremendous incentive to the farming community. In quite a number of cases, the one thing the small farmer could not provide for himself was a home. These extra grants of up to £900 are a fair incentive to him to go ahead and build his own home. No one will begrudge the small farmer getting a bigger loan or a bigger grant than anyone else in the community. His home must be near his holding.

Quite a number of skilled workers who went away to England in the past ten years are coming back. I have had numerous requests from them about building new houses. Many of them come back and rent a house or stay with their parents while building their own house. When they come back there is a ready source of employment in the building trade which is every bit as good as they can get abroad, particularly in England, and there is no Irishman who would not prefer to live at home than to live away from his native shores. In that way the new housing grants are an incentive to people to come back and build their own homes. That is concrete proof of the work that has been done by the Department, and their foresight over the past years.

There are always a few criticisms one can make of every Department. A Department is the same as ourselves —none is perfect. I feel that town planning appeals are unnecessarily held up in the Department. I would not mind delay of two or three months but at times it could be a year and some machinery should be devised to speed them up. Where county councils are initiating a building scheme, such schemes are held up for too long. Deputy Sherwin said that it takes two years from the time a housing committee initiate a scheme until the houses are built. In the country it is taking much longer than that. We would be quite happy if it were a matter of only two years but very often it runs into four, five or six years before the houses are built.

I see a great future for group water schemes and this is an aspect of the Minister's Department which I think could be pushed more. Possibly more publicity could be used in this regard. It was very interesting to see the RDS exhibition this year of the group water scheme—I do not know in which county it was—providing water for a number of farms and homes in the particular area. I think the difficulty is that people are afraid that if the electric pump fails or something else fails the whole scheme will fall down. If that fear could be overcome, there would be a large number of applications for group schemes. They would snowball in the same way as applications for housing grants have in past years.

The schemes can be provided cheaply and they help to develop a community spirit as they get the people to come together and work together. We all know that there need be no such fear of a breakdown because usually the ESB looks after the pump, while in the case of a reservoir the chances of any failure are very remote. If in years to come piped water schemes are developed, they will link up with existing schemes. The cost of a group scheme to the individual is far smaller than if he undertook a scheme himself. I know people who have put in their own water schemes and received a grant and it cost them a lot more than if they had joined with their neighbours. These schemes can run for up to one mile or a little more. I am interested in one scheme which runs for about a mile and a half and takes in 35 houses. It is that type of effort that we would like to see.

One aspect of housing which I omitted to refer to is in regard to SDA loans. I am glad to see that the Minister is increasing the limit from £2,000 to £2,250. He has realised that the cost of building houses has increased in the past year. One aspect in which I should like the Minister to interest himself is in relation to county councils giving an SDA loan who always undervalue the house. I have never seen a contractor building a house for the value which the county council architect put on it. They are inclined to reduce the value by roughly 5/- a square foot less than a contractor could do it. That is on average but it is often a lot more. My feeling is that the county council are safeguarding themselves so that the loans will not be too high. In some cases it is hindering the good work the Department have been doing, and if a more accurate value were ascribed to the house, it would be better because it is often difficult for those people to provide the ten per cent which they have to put up. Reading the Act it seems grand but the manner in which it is put into operation is another matter.

In regard to roads, we have seen what is possibly one of the first dual carriageways in the country being laid in my constituency. The sooner it is finished, the better, for it will certainly speed up traffic out of Dublin and certainly be of great benefit to all motorists travelling on it. Another point is in regard to the taking over of roads by the county council. I do not know how this matter can be overcome. These roads are going into rural homes. The people in the homes have been there for generations; they are the backbone of the country, and something should be done, possibly by way of grant to the county council, to have these roads taken over. There may be quite a number of families living on them and it is often difficult to get them to come together to provide money to have them taken over. It is terrible to think of the conditions of these boreens, particularly in the winter months. I have been down quite a number of them since I became a Deputy and I was amazed to see their condition. The Department might consider some means whereby they could encourage county councils to take them over and thus give these people a decent approach to their homes.

In conclusion, I should like to thank the officials in the Minister's Department and compliment them for the courteous manner in which they have dealt with my inquiries in the past year.

Mr. Barrett

If I deal with housing in Cork city again this year, as I usually do, I should like the Minister to realise that anything I say about housing in Cork is not really in particular but is of general application and applies to Limerick, Dublin and other centres with large populations. The figures the Minister gave yesterday indicate that, no matter how far we have progressed, we have only scratched the skin of the problem which confronts us. Frankly, from the regularity with which we have to stand up here to implore the Minister to encourage more local government building, I feel there is not the proper disposition in the Minister's Department. It is all very well for the Minister to say it is a matter for Cork Corporation, for Limerick Corporation or Dublin Corporation. I think it is a national problem. It is a fundamental responsibility of the Minister.

I believe if the Minister threw the same industry into encouraging local government building as he has into other things that are very praiseworthy, like the road safety campaign, we would not have to complain here year after year about the shortage of houses in our respective constituencies. This year we built only 280 houses in Cork. A while ago Deputy T. O'Donnell had to complain about the fact that houses are not being built in his area. In case there is any complacency about the fact that we built 280 houses in my constituency of Cork city this year, I want to remind the Minister that previously we built 490 houses in one year.

The great difficulty about Departments or ministries is that they deal with these problems as statistics. They are told from Cork city there are 1,500 families still awaiting housing. The Minister and the Department clap themselves on the back and say they have already housed 7,000 families or, worse, they thump their chest and use the very same words. The situation is that there are more than 1,500 families looking for houses in Cork because so far the only statistics we have are those relating to people who are deemed by the local authority to be eligible. The young people who are following the natural law of life, who are hoping to get married and settle down and rear families are not at the moment eligible for local government housing. When that is considered as an aspect of our Christian society I often wonder if it would be more appropriate to put the adjective in inverted commas. The Christian ideal is that the family is a fundamental unit of society. A young man and woman settling down in married life should get every encouragement from the Minister and the local authority.

We pride ourselves on having got rid of the slums. We have done no such thing in the city of Cork. I do not know but I believe the situation is the same in Dublin. What we have done is this: we have driven people out to what were formerly good addresses. We have done away with one slum to create other slums, with this very important difference, that we give them slum dwellings at what are known as flat prices. In the city of Cork, people are paying as much as £2 or £2 5s. a week for what are undoubtedly slum dwellings.

I know some other members of our Party wish to speak before the Minister gets in. I merely want to point out the history of these houses in the better class districts. These were houses which were built for better class people, for professional classes, and so on. They were big three-storey houses with an attic. These people always had one or two servants and somebody to walk up the stairs and make the beds. These houses have been converted into five, six and, in some cases, seven flats. Would the Minister consider this? When these houses were built—and they are still in the same condition—one bathroom was provided, maybe an outside toilet as well; one hallway was provided. The whole planning was on the assumption that one unit of society would live there. Now there are four, five or six families occupying these houses and mothers have to carry one baby in their arms and another in their womb up three or four flights of stairs, leave the pram and bring it up afterwards with the assistance of the husband.

That is not hearsay. That is not a figment of my imagination. Those are the facts as I know them myself. Those are the facts as the Minister should know them. The Department deal with the matter of houses in this country as a matter of statistics, one, two, three, four or five families, instead of getting somebody to etch in the fundamental tragedies that lie behind the statistics, to etch in the facts that are a standing reproach to the Minister and his Department and maybe a standing reproach to the local body to which I belong, the Cork Corporation.

I had hoped we were getting down to a realistic appraisal of the situation in Cork Corporation a few years ago, when we built, as I said, 491 houses in one year and 391 in another year. I believe that is the death of any incentive in the Corporation because we felt that we had done so well we could rest on our oars. This is no time to rest on our oars.

I want to bring to the Minister's attention as briefly as I can some quite important matters. The Minister already appreciates there is a shortage of tradesmen in the building trade in Cork. I believe there is a shortage of tradesmen generally. Would the Minister consider what should get priority in the matter of the use of skilled tradesmen? Is it more important, for instance, that luxury hotels should be built in Cork or that this House should be extended than that families living in the circumstances I have described and to which I can testify, should be properly housed? Eventually the Minister will have to make up his mind on this matter.

I know these tradesmen are free to go where they like. However, if the Department were to make it clear to tradesmen that in the Cork Corporation, the Dublin Corporation and various other bodies where direct labour schemes are in operation there would be continuity of employment over a long number of years and at no stage would their employment end suddenly, we might be in a position where we would not lose tradesmen to other undertakings. If that does not succeed, some other measures should be taken. What the measures are I do not know. I have various suggestions myself but the Minister should take cognisance of this problem. The shortage of tradesmen should not be allowed to interfere with the building of local authority houses.

Another matter to which I wish to refer is of general application as well as of particular application to Cork city. There is a tendency nowadays to provide car parks on the sites of what were originally working-class dwellings. These dwellings were taken down and acquired and I am quite certain they were acquired for the purpose of building other dwellings there. It is most important that the original intention of the local authority and the Department should be adhered to. In these areas where there are car parks there are plenty of schools and plenty of churches. Development costs would be at the very minimum. I commend that suggestion to the Minister and I would ask him to attend to it.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): On every Local Government Estimate, one finds the Minister talking about the large amounts of money he is giving to each local body and, as usual, he has colleagues on the far side of the House who stand up afterwards to praise him for being a very generous fellow. All these subventions which local bodies receive are in large measure an expression of the archaic monetary system under which local finances are run, that is, the rating system. Our rates are based on valuations made over 100 years ago and in many cases these valuations have been spread out over a number of years. In some places revaluations have taken place. Furthermore, the value of many of these properties has completely altered in the years past. As a measure of value in the modern sense, many of the figures are completely obsolete.

The main difficulties about rates based on the valuation system is that they are not properly related to the capacity to pay. They are not related either to the family income or the family expenditure. That may not matter so much perhaps to a man with a large income living in a small rated house. He has perhaps no family and his main taxation may be income tax. However, it may mean a lot to a medium sized or large farmer. It is probably his sole taxation system and to him a rating system which is not properly related to his income can be unjust and, in his eyes, would naturally seem unfair.

Having regard to the farming community in general, over the past ten or 11 years, their rates have steadily climbed. Some assistance has been given in the last few years by way of rebate relating to agricultural land, but that was the last measure taken to relieve the mounting difficulties of the farming community as regards rates. If you take the income of the four major classes of our society, you will find, for example, that in 1953 the domestic income from wages and salaries amounted to £218 million whereas in 1963 it had climbed to £370 million. Profits from agriculture and fishing in 1953 was £107 million and in 1963 it amounted to over £123 million. Similarly, industrial profits in 1953 were £26 million and in 1963, £48 million. "Other income" in 1963 was £54 million and in 1962, £87 million. In other words, there has been a considerable expansion of the income of other sectors of the community, whereas the farming community income has remained almost static and yet, in so far as county rates are concerned, they have continued to pay the major share of these rates. In spite of the subventions given to them by way of agricultural grants, the farming community have suffered as against the rest of the community down through the years, both in respect of their income and in respect of rates.

That is one aspect of it. I know they get employment grants and food and housing grants but these are all ad hoc measures. In short, if you examine the position at each county council meeting, it will be clear that the rates are not struck at the county council meeting but are struck down through the years. Various meetings are held and various propositions are agreed to and money is passed. Consequently, at the annual county council meeting, a figure is presented. In other words, rates become an arbitrary levy on the community and the Minister for Local Government comes before the House and tries to level things out and introduce some kind of redistribution. He introduces his arbitrary subventions but there you have the unfortunate ratepayer trying to exist between an arbitrary levy placed on him by the local council and an arbitrary subvention coming to his aid from the Minister. Altogether, it is an unsatisfactory system of taxation.

There is a further difficulty with regard to rates applying between one county and another where there are great differences in valuation which of necessity bring in very different incomes. Therefore, there is a danger, and it exists, of an inequality of surpluses when there is a poor county with less efficient services than another wealthier county. Again, there are the ad hoc arrangements of the Minister for Local Government trying to bring in a subvention for a tourist grant for the poorer county in order to try to give it equal services with the better off county.

It would appear that the rating system as a form of financing services is inefficient. It also introduces the question of valuation injustices. If a man makes structural alterations in his premises without altering the size of the premises, his valuation may be raised. It is raised irrespective of whether he is using the premises for business or for professional purposes. If a man is not using his house for business or professional purposes and he improves it without altering its geographical size, surely he has not increased his income? Yet, in terms of rates, he has to pay more and if he is an income tax payer, his Schedule A scale is raised and he has to pay more there. As regards rates, he is subject to increased payment, even though his income has not altered as a result of the alteration. If he finally retires and occupies the same house, even though his income has gone down, he may still be subject to rising rates.

I should like to appeal to the Minister to make some effort to introduce a more modern taxation system or, at least, to modify the existing system in order to make it more reasonable and more equitable. I know it is not as easy to derate in this country as it is to derate in Britain. As this is an agricultural country, rates are a fraction of our national revenue but it may be possible as an ad hoc measure to pin down our rates as regards counties to agricultural profits and pin down the urban rates to wage and salary income, or gross national product or some such figure. It is quite unfair to allow so imperfect and inequitable a tax charge to soar as it has been soaring during the years in such an arbitrary manner. Various methods have been suggested by which local bodies might get new sources of revenue. I do not know what new sources can be given to them. Water rates would mean little or nothing in my constituency. Hospital charges, where people pay 3d. or 4d. a day, would not yield very much. I do not think you could raise revenue from cottage rents. Neither could you from entertainment tax, because the cinemas are not doing so well and the dancehalls, because of Government policy, are immune. Perhaps petrol tax might do something, but how would you distribute such revenue among local bodies—how would you assess the percentage each should get? I understand a group in the Custom House are examining the general position, and the Health Services Committee appointed by this House may examine the position without doing anything to solve it. There may be some hope from the National Economic Institute who are also examining the matter.

Because my time is limited, the only other point I shall allude to is a reply I got today during Question Time from the Minister. I asked him whether he had received a report from the Tipperary South Riding County Council on the number of approved applicants for houses. I asked him if he had received that report, when he had received it and the number of approved applicants there were awaiting houses. The Minister, in his reply, said:

I have got no record whatsoever from Tipperary South Riding County Council showing the estimated needs of housing in its area since April, 1956, when the number was 230.

The Minister may blame the county manager or the council or anybody he likes, but I am blaming him. He, a responsible person, acknowledges here—I had to put down this question twice, wording it differently in order to get the information—that he has had no information about housing from the Tipperary South Riding County Council since April, 1956. This is an appalling admission. It is an admission of absolute negligence on the part of the Minister and the Department. They may be negligent in the Tipperary South Riding County Council, but surely the Minister was in a position to find out the number of approved applicants there were. I got that information about housing conditions at a meeting of the county council.

Mr. J. Brennan

Surely it is the county council's job to initiate building?

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): Surely the Minister should not have allowed things to pass since 1956 without attempting to find out the number of approved applicants in South Tipperary? He told me today he has had no report whatsoever from Tipperary South Riding showing the estimated needs of housing in the area since April, 1956, when the number was 230. I do not for a moment believe this is the sole instance; a number of similar questions have been asked by Deputies in the past few weeks and the reply he gives invariably is that the information is not in his Department. Today he frankly admits the information has not been furnished. I hold no brief for the South Tipperary County Council. They should furnish the annual housing report.

Mr. J. Brennan

The number of applicants is not always——

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): That is an old reply. There should be an annual housing report to councillors and to the Minister. Only a month ago, following the submission by me of a notice of motion, it was agreed to furnish an annual report to the Tipperary South Riding County Council. This move should not have come from me. This annual housing report should have been available throughout the past 20 years. Is it not an appalling admission on the part of the Minister?

Mr. J. Brennan

When I was a county council member, we used to screen the applicants.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): We should not have a situation where the Minister must stand up and admit that he has not had information on housing from the Tipperary South Riding County Council since 1956. Is that plan in the Blue Book?

Mr. Coogan rose.

Acting Chairman (Mr. Colley)

I would remind the Deputy that he must conclude by 6.10 p.m.

Mr. Coogan

I shall be very brief and hope I am not interrupted. I must refer to Fianna Fáil policy in relation to building. They are content to build luxury hotels for tourists and to wine and dine in them with the tourists, but they are not prepared to build houses for the unfortunate people who are badly in need of houses. In my town there is serious overcrowding. Young families have married into their parents' homes and the other sons and daughters in exile cannot come to stay at home during their holidays. That is the unfortunate position—people who would like to rear their children in Christian surroundings cannot do so. I do not see any hope of their being able to do so in the foreseeable future.

The policy of the Government in relation to housing in my town has been to build 40 houses there. I challenge the Minister to refute that. He has been responsible for the building of 40 houses in a town where his predecessor had hundreds built. While such a situation exists, there is little hope for the people on waiting lists.

I suggest the Minister should put his mind to easing the burden of rates on town dwellers. There have been rate remissions for farmers and I suggest it is time something was done in respect of townsmen. There is also a problem for townspeople because of differential rents. The Minister should investigate the position and see that the same conditions as regards rents apply to towns as to county council administrative areas. Otherwise, because of the increasing cost of living brought about by deliberate Government action, I can foresee wholesale evictions because of tenants' inability to pay their rents.

When I speak of the housing needs of places in my constituency like Mervue, I cannot help but suggest that the scheme on which millions will be spent in rebuilding this House should be deferred and the money spent on building houses for the people who need them.

Acting Chairman

The Deputy's time is up.

Mr. Coogan

In a few words, the Government should leave this scheme in abeyance for a couple of years until our people are properly housed. The House will bear with me for a moment. I want to refer to diesel fumes and to the urgent necessity that something be done about them. I also want to refer to roads, speed limits and the fact that different counties have put proposals before him which the Minister might consider. Local people know best what is needed. I should like to know who is responsible——

Acting Chairman

The Deputy must conclude.

Mr. Coogan

I want to refer to the fact that some speed limit signs are covered up by overgrown bushes. Who is responsible for that?

Acting Chairman

I must insist upon the Deputy resuming his seat.

Mr. Coogan

There are roads in my area which are a damn disgrace. The doctor or the priest or the ambulance cannot drive on them. In the Custom House, they are used to concrete roads. It is time we had a change.

Acting Chairman

I call upon the Minister to conclude.

Mr. Coogan

The Chair has saved the Minister there. I had a few more for him.

Minister for Local Government (Mr. Blaney)

Time bombs were mentioned. Just on that note, I shall begin but not continue. It is only a short while since I had to send what was tantamount to a time bomb to the Deputy's city in order to get them to move on with the building of houses for people in the city of Galway.

Mr. Coogan

I know what the holdup was.

Mr. Blaney

The Deputy does not have to tell me anything about it. Deputy Jones mentioned group water schemes and others. Then he said they should be chlorinated in order to make the water purer, and so on. The cost would probably be considerable and it would not be likely to be effective in many cases. When we are investigating sources of supply for group schemes we insist that a potable supply of water is available. Further than that I cannot go at this stage. Unless the Deputy has some particular cases in mind which he feels could meet up with the additional cost of chlorination in general, I would not insist that it must be done in all cases.

Some Deputy mentioned that the increased grants for farmers for the erection of new houses should be extended to all workers. These grants are a special facility for the farming community, particularly for the less well off farmers who have been passed over in all the housing drives throughout the years because they could not avail of the grants held out to the community as a whole and who are not of the disposition to seek to have houses built for them by the local authority on a rental basis. Indeed, in many cases, the local authority would not provide them for them. In providing increased grants, I am treating these people as a special category which demands special attention from the Government and the Exchequer. As such, these grants have been raised by 50 per cent above those available to the rest of the community. Further than that I am not prepared to concede, at this stage, at any rate.

Deputy Jones mentioned fire standards in connection with commercial dance halls and pleaded for greater safety. The inter-Departmental Committee's Report on Revised Standards which have been drawn up has been received and copies of these revised standards have been issued to all fire brigade authorities. The local fire brigade authority are consulted by the local authority when planning permission is sought for a building of that type. I have no doubt that the proposer of a project for a commercial dance hall is made fully aware, in advance of building, of the actual standards required and fire prevention precautions that must be taken in order to make the hall an acceptable place to be licensed by the court and to be allowed by the local authority to be used. If there is any laxity in this matter I should like it to be known that it cannot be tolerated. I am glad Deputy Jones mentioned it. If I find from any source that proper fire standards are not being insisted upon by any local authority we shall have something to say to the local authority concerned.

Deputy T. Lynch complained of the extension of the length of vehicles now permitted on our roads from 30' to 36'. Other Deputies mentioned that trailers are a dangerous development and should be abandoned. With regard to the extension to 36' that we have fairly recently inaugurated, it is in keeping with our practice in recent years to adhere to and to follow the international conventions that have agreed, after discussion, on the various standards and usages that may be permitted on our roads and the types and sizes of vehicles that should be allowed on them. It would probably be a retrograde step to think in terms of banning these vehicles from our roads and making the size of vehicles smaller in view of traffic developments which have been taking place here over a long number of years. I have in mind, particularly, the great volume of heavier traffic now leaving the railways for a number of years past. That move has become accelerated. If at this stage—in the middle of the stream, as it were—we were to say: "You may not use the larger vehicles that are available to you for road transport", I do not know how our freight would be hauled in the greater part of our country.

Swimming pools have been praised and condemned and, of course, there was the catchcry that we do not want swimming pools until we have enough houses. I do not suggest that local authorities should down tools on housing and concentrate on swimming pools but this is one of the types of community service which our local authorities feel they are obliged to give our people. When money was not available for it, there was a terrific hue and cry that money should be made available for it. For a number of years it was held that, until we got further ahead with our water and sewerage schemes, money should not be made available to our local authorities to provide this particular amenity. Now that it has been provided, I would point out that on many occasions I advocated such a grant assistance scheme. We now find these Jeremiahs coming in here and saying we should leave this project aside as, until we have coped with our housing, we do not need swimming pools. We need both. I do not see why, in quite a number of cases, our local authorities cannot go on with both and give this very desirable amenity to our people, particularly to our young people. Not only will it improve them physically but it will also make them better equipped to look after themselves when they wander far from home and go swimming in other places and not only save their own lives but maybe help to save other people's lives, all too many of which are still being lost unnecessarily each year in swimming tragedies.

Deputy Corry is concerned about industries which are not able to have workers near the factories. Unfortunately, over the years, there were far more workers available in this country than we had factories for. It seems to me to be an indictment on those who have chosen the sites for factories that they are short of workers before they are really starting. The National Building Agency is described by Deputy Corry as reintroducing landlords and shoneen landlordism in its worst possible form in giving houses to industrialists who he feels will have no sympathy for our people. He says they are not even like the landlords of old because the fellows concerned are foreigners, from different European countries. It is a lot of cod to talk in that way. The services of the National Building Agency are available to these people if they are concerned about getting houses for their workers. If those houses are not being provided or are not likely to be provided for a considerable time, if they are prepared to commit themselves to paper for the total repayment of the cost of the houses needed for those workers, the National Building Agency is there, funded by the Government, to give them that service, a service which is being availed of. I can see nothing wrong with it.

Deputy Crotty complained—he never does anything but complain—about the arterial road grant in his county. It takes a bit of complaining to complain about an increase but he complained that while the arterial road grant was increased from £30,000 to £90,000, the county road grant was cut to some extent. Deputy Crotty and other members of the House who may think they have a grievance in this matter should be fully aware that this is the third year's allocation based on the new formula made known to every local authority in the country three years ago under which, as the local authorities succeed in having more than 50 per cent of their county road mileage dust-free, then for every percentage over and above that their grant is cut by two per cent.

The point should be made that there are counties as low as 25 per cent dust-free and we want those to be brought up as we want a uniform standard throughout the country. We have only a limited pool of money for the various road demands and as the number of miles that have been improved increases—remember a county road grant is an improvement grant and not a maintenance grant—it follows that the mileage to be dealt with will become less and less each year. For instance, in Kilkenny they have made striking advances in recent years, not only due to the road grants they have been getting but due to the increased amount of money made available to them in recent years and furthermore due to the fact that on average throughout the country in recent years, by the introduction of new methods of treating county roads, it is true that it is now possible to improve over two miles of road for the cost of one mile five years ago, despite the increase in costs in the meantime.

All that comes into this complaint of Deputy Crotty's inasmuch as Kilkenny has gone quite a long way towards achieving a completely dust-free mileage and they are really getting the same treatment in regard to their county road moneys as every other county and as every other county, including Kilkenny, has got for the past three seasons of allocation. Why that should be regarded now as a matter to cause an outcry about I do not know because the fact is that I have gone out of my way to try to ensure that no county would actually have less money for roads altogether than it had in the previous year. That includes even the special railway road allocations which were made and which ceased after a five-year period. They were not cut off as some Deputies alleged. Special assistance out of public funds was provided for counties which made a case in respect of these roads. These allocations have ceased in some counties this year and I have tried by various means, including increasing arterial road grants, to balance matters up and leave these counties as near as possible to the position in which they were last year. In the great majority of cases the total moneys allocated are greater this year than last year and last year's allocation was greater than that of the year before and the year before that again.

Arterial roads and main roads we have heard quite a lot about. We have been told wasteful expenditure is taking place. I want to say again—it does not seem to matter how often I say it; we seem to get the same complaints here—that while proposals are sent up to my Department for sanction by road authorities, with the knowledge of the elected members of the authorities, they have been given a special say in the matter for the past five years or more which entitles them to say if they are not satisfied with what their county engineer proposes. They are welcome, and are invited, to put up alternative proposals. I ask those who are complaining today about unduly costly jobs being done on the roads: how many of the local representatives have availed of this offer from me and my Department over the past five years? How many of them have availed of it this year and how many of them have come in to prove the points they are making here about wasteful expenditure on their main and arterial roads? I have no knowledge that they have made this uproar in the proper way through their council and have submitted any scheme to me to counteract what they regard as wasteful expenditure and until I get that from those who make those allegations in this House, I think the allegations are a bit hollow.

For every mile of unimproved county roads in the entire country today £120 is being allocated as against £80 a few years ago. That, added to the improved methods which give twice the amount of work for the same amount of money, will be readily understood to mean that we are in fact progressing very rapidly with the county road programme and at the same time, facing up to the other work we must face if it is not to cost a great deal more in the immediate future, the improvement of the main and arterial roads.

Some people have asked what plans we have for arterial roads and roads generally. I have made it clear over the past few years that we are doing a traffic survey all over the country to find out the volume of traffic using the roads so that we may be in a position scientifically and practically to assess the needs of the road network. Until that survey has been completed—that has not yet been done— I cannot say that we have any new plan. But so far as arterial roads radiating from Dublin city are concerned, without waiting for the final figures of the volume of traffic using these roads, it is quite obvious from the manner in which they are choked with traffic in recent years that we must proceed with them even before we get the final figures which I think will confirm that work on these roads is absolutely urgent and cannot be delayed much longer. In fact, work on some of the roads radiating from Dublin has been delayed too long.

When I hear people talking about that, as some Deputies talk of it, saying we shall have to do something about it, it really makes me rather cynical because I remember back in the days of 1947 when they were offered £500,000 which was put in reserve for them but which they have not in fact yet spent on the jobs which were intended to begin the programme of arterial road improvement in respect of roads leading to and from Dublin. Notwithstanding that, we are now glad to get the co-operation of these same people who would not lift a finger to spend this money in the past. The fact that they did not co-operate then will not in any way take from the assistance they can expect from me and my Department. We are all with them in trying to make these improvements as quickly as possible because they are too long overdue.

Mr. Clinton

That is an oversimplification of the matter.

Mr. Blaney

The time is limited. I am not going to go into any oversimplification. I could possibly say that back in reply to the Deputy far more meaningfully.

Mr. Corish

The Minister mentioned the Bray road in his speech. Could he tell us any more about it?

Mr. Blaney

I do not remember mentioning it.

Mr. Corish

I think you did. You have no additional information?

Mr. Blaney

It was a long speech and I do not even remember the context in which I might have mentioned it. So far as I am concerned, if it is a question of getting on with it I am "raring" to go.

Mr. Tully

The Minister can rest assured that the Bray road will not be done for several years, unless he can dig up another goldmine.

Mr. Blaney

It was never a question of finance. As the Deputy knows, it was held up by a political ramp and I have now informed those concerned to come along as quickly as possible with their plans because this matter is rather urgent. Deputy Dillon questioned the wisdom of the regional water supply schemes when, as he asserted, such good work can be done by group schemes and he asked for the comparative costs of each type of scheme. That is probably a question which was asked in all good faith but it is one which is impossible to answer. The two schemes are not comparable in any way whatever.

The regional scheme is a scheme laid down not merely to provide water for the immediate needs of the community but it must be planned to meet in every foreseeable way any possible development and increased demand up to 50 years ahead. Whether everybody along the line takes the supply or not, we still have to be prepared for potential additions if they come in later on. As matters stand, the overall cost per house of houses served by these regional schemes would compare unfavourably with the cost per house for a little scheme developed in somebody's back garden where a well may be dug or where one exists and where there may be natural gravitational fall. It is obvious that there is unlikely to be real comparison between the two methods of approach.

The implication of the question would seem to be that if there is a big difference in cost between the two systems we should take the cheaper one. That is a fallacy because water is not available everywhere and it has got to be made available at a pretty high cost in some cases by the local authority in order that those who are unfortunate enough not to have their own supply can enjoy the essential service. In order to give these people such a service the local authority has to step in and do it for them and in such case the cost per house per scheme cannot be fairly compared with the cost of any group scheme serving two or 32 houses and which does not have to have regard to the additional matters that would increase the cost of a regional scheme. The group schemes are only concerned with providing a sufficient supply for the immediate needs of those concerned. That is the only intention of the group and they are free of the necessity of planning ahead to the day when they may want five times the amount of water.

Deputy Coughlan wishes to have the grants under the derelict sites scheme increased and Deputy O'Sullivan of Cork questions whether the overall provision under this heading is adequate. In so far as we can calculate on the demands we have been receiving for grants under this scheme in the last financial year and with a little addition for any extra demand there may be this year, we think that the provision is adequate. It may be a little less or a little more. But we hope our provision is not too high and that all the money we have provided will be sought for these very desirable schemes.

There was mention by Deputy Tully of a grant application being refused in Navan town and I take it he was speaking about a derelict sites grant. If the applicant had applied before the work was done I believe that he would have been entitled to the grant but it is quite obvious that this is a service for which prior approval must be obtained before a grant can be paid. Unless we have official knowledge by way of notice of what it is proposed to do we cannot calculate what the work is likely to cost.

Mr. Corish

You would never know whether it was there or not.

Mr. Blaney

This is a question of an application for a derelict sites grant about which we are not being sticky. It does not work out that we can pay grants for something we do not know about before the job is done. We have to account for the money we spend to you-know-who and just saying that the fellow has said that he did the work and that it has cost so much is no excuse for us as far as the spending of the money is concerned. We have been lax in the application of our schemes in general but we are not interested in paying out money unless we know the work has been done. We would wish that everybody applying for housing grants would do so in advance of building and we would appeal to the community, through the members of this House, to apply in advance of starting the work and get approval in advance. We find difficulties in the payment of grants that could have been avoided had we known what it was proposed to do and what the work would cost before it was done. We never refuse anybody merely because they have done the work before they apply but it would help their applications if they sought approval before they started on the work. That must apply especially in regard to the derelict sites scheme because we do not know anything about the old site and how much it took to remove it.

Deputy Coughlan remarked in regard to the group schemes that there was not sufficient contact with the people and that the local representatives should keep more closely in touch. I have appealed for many years that members of local authorities should interest themselves in these matters, that they should see what they can do in any particular way to help and that they should become leaders in this matter of organising group schemes. I am all with Deputy Coughlan when he says that the local representatives should have more contact with them. I look to the local representatives. I have asked them on several occasions not only to keep in touch but to be the sponsors because of their unique position in the communities they represent. Knowing the situation from the councils' point of view, knowing where the public regional scheme will go, knowing at this stage from the blueprint what areas will not be served, they are in a specially privileged position to go into a townland or two townlands or to a district and to say: "Look; if you wait until the council's scheme gets here, you will be very old. Why not get together and do a group scheme; connect up at some distance with the line that will pass by or take some local source?"

I would appeal to local councillors to regard this as something they can do better than anybody else. Without their active assistance, the group scheme cannot be tied in to the overall regional scheme system in the country in the way we had hoped in order that the greatest possible number of people can get piped water at the earliest possible opportunity.

Deputy O'Sullivan, again from Cork, mentioned interminable delays in payment of housing grants. All I can say in this case is that Deputy O'Sullivan does get in touch with my Department on average probably as frequently as most other Deputies. I am not aware of any interminable delays in the payment of grants in his area. I am not even aware at this stage, having heard him complain about the situation, that there is any undue backlog of inspections to be carried out or payments to be made. If such a backlog does exist, it is certainly not known to me and that goes for almost any other area. That is not to say that in the payment of grants and the handling of grants and instalments of grants, over probably anything up to 40,000 payments in a year, we cannot slip up and do not slip up but I do say that this charge of interminable delays in the payment of grants is not one that I will generally accept as giving a true picture of the administration of these matters in my Department at this stage.

Deputy Declan Costello in a short statement really wades in, as I have heard him wade in before, quoting from the same document, the First Programme for Economic Expansion, from which he has abstracted certain passages which would indicate the provision of capital for social matters, social building, and so on, which would include housing. Of course, he works it down that it really only applied to housing and suggested that in that first Programme it was the intention of the Government to reduce such capital and, therefore, that it was their avowed intention to reduce building progress in the country.

Despite the criticisms that may have been made, despite my own feeling about the fact that we are not doing enough in this regard and have not been doing enough for some little time past, the figures of the amount of money used in this direction do not bear out what Deputy Costello has based his case on. Nor, for that matter, does it augur very well for the likely success of his new Fine Gael mystery programme which, incidentally, stems from the same argument that he has been using here, for the very good reason that his argument is based very much on the false premise that we have been cutting down on capital for these various social services.

Let us take 1957-58 in so far as these services are concerned. We find that at the time of the emanation of the first programme the amount of money spent in my Department for the various services I am responsible for, including houses, was just over £9 million. We find that the total amount spent up to 31st March last for the year 1963-64 is not, as Deputy Costello would lead us to believe or infer, lower than £9 million but, in fact, has increased to £13.945 million. If his programme is as solid as is the basis on which he has rested it, God knows, it will be little better than the last policy which we saw, which was dug up in haste and flashed around the country in the hope that it would save the day in the two by-elections that we recently had in Cork and Kildare. However, that is Fine Gael's problem and it is not for me to worry over the manner in which this has been arrived at.

Deputy Corish mentioned here that he would wish to see a copy of the introductory speech and, of course, went on to say that he would probably prefer not to see a copy of the closing speech. If things were to be balanced properly the two should be sent out.

Mr. Corish

I came in to listen to the Minister.

Mr. Blaney

The Deputy can take it home with him in that way, so. In so far as that is concerned and in so far as the suggestion that this might be useful to local authority members is concerned, I shall certainly consider the idea and if no members of the House take objection or exception to the circulation of it to Deputies, if we can do it in any way rapidly, I certainly would have no inhibitions about doing it, particularly on being invited to do it by a Deputy who, whether he is of the Opposition or not, certainly is not of my own Party and certainly cannot be said to be biassed in his request. There may be something in it that could be useful to members of councils and, as I say, I will consider that, if there is nobody in the Opposition, that is, if it is still across there, who does not want this done. If anybody says "no", I will not do it but if nobody says "no" I will do it.

Mr. T. Lynch

There were many more Deputies on this side than there were on the other side during the debate.

Mr. Blaney

That is something that is very debatable. I heard a Deputy over there criticise this side of the House for not having enough Deputies present. I have been sitting here. I did have a good few rests and went out for the odd smoke but Fine Gael Deputies were not very evident in numbers at any time during the debate.

Mr. Clinton

The Minister did not look back too often.

Mr. Blaney

Apart from looking back, I was looking forward. We usually do that on this side of the House, both in Government and in Opposition.

Deputy Mrs. Hogan-O'Higgins, for whose contribution I was not present, requested, as did some other Deputies, that we should step up Press, radio and television publicity and propaganda on road safety. I cannot disagree with that but, on the other hand, many of those who advise me seem to think that if you plug something too long and too consistently it loses any appeal it might have had. So, if at times we seem to have none of this propaganda and then a spate of it, it is generated not by mere haphazard guessing as to when we should go and stop but rather on a calculated basis that concentration can do good for a short period followed by a break, when discontinuance is likely to be better. Personally, I am not altogether convinced that that is so, but up to the moment I have been guided by those who are in a fairly good way to advise as to getting propaganda across.

Deputy Carty mentioned the delay in regard to the Housing Bill which, he says, leaves people in the awkward position of not knowing what they are going to do and that the legislation that was current has now gone out of date in regard to housing grants. This latter statement is not true. The law now in existence for the ordinary grants of up to £300 for new houses, and so on, is one which will not go out of date unless it is decided by this House to be out of date, which we have not so far considered doing. Therefore, the law as it was up to the end of last March still continues unless it is changed by this House and the new Bill will be merely an addition to those sums for the farmers of the community of 50 per cent on top of the new house grants already obtainable.

In so far as payment of these grants is concerned, as I said earlier, we do intend to pay these even in advance of the House actually passing the legislation and in so far as the supplementary grants are concerned we have made it known a considerable time back to the local authorities that they may rest assured that the intention to bring in legislation which will cover them for these payments will be carried out. It is up to them whether they will, in fact, pay the additional supplementary grants before the law is actually passed. I am not telling them to do it or not to do it. I am merely telling them what we ourselves propose to do and, if they propose to follow suit, certainly, we will not take exception to it. To prove that our intention is genuine, I may add that the money we would propose to provide during the year by way of increased grants is already provided for in the Estimates, and I do not think anyone would object if the local authorities followed suit.

Innumerable other matters have been raised but, lest I should not have time, I should like to return to the main theme of the debate—the question of housing in general, with particular reference to housing in Dublin and other cities. I listened to a great part of the speech of Deputy Sherwin this evening. In case I have not time to cover the matter fully, I would recommend Deputies to read his résumé of what has led up to the present overall position in regard to housing. About 75 per cent of old Dublin is made up of a rotten core of decaying and absolete buildings. Somebody will probably say that this Government are responsible for that position. These houses were substantially built and they do not become decaying and obsolete overnight. We have been left a legacy over the past 40 years or more—to deal only with the period of native government— when nothing was done about the removal of these buildings. The situation is more obvious in Dublin, although nothing was done in our other cities and towns either.

It was mentioned here, without the proper emphasis, that what we lacked was proper planning. I agree entirely. The Planning Act, which took a number of years to prepare and a long time to get through this House, had to be enacted before proper planning could mean anything. Proper planning means not only drawing lines on a map; it means that we get on with the practical work of clearing the slums, which should have been done in the past. I am not blaming the people of those days, because they had much to do rehousing the people and had not time to devote to wiping out these slums. They filled their houses on the outskirts of the cities. Priority was given to the people with the greater number in family. The old tenements were left only partly derelict, unfortunately, because the old single people and the couples without children remained on in them. Their numbers increased over the years. The stage was eventually reached a year ago that what could only be expected of these old buildings happened—they fell down. They should have been taken down and replaced, but the necessary legislation for that type of development was not then available. It is only in recent times that even Deputies are coming to appreciate that proper planning is not merely a question of providing houses for people. If we are to get on with the job, we must face up to the fact that 75 per cent of old Dublin is in a decayed and rotting condition.

If blame is to be apportioned for this situation, there is no Party who can wash their hands and say it is not their fault. This has gone on over the years. If the tragedies had not happened, I do not say the situation would have continued; but certainly we would not have had this change of mind on the part of Deputies who are beginning to see that an overall plan does not merely mean lines on a map but the practical work of clearing these houses, closing them up and not allowing them to be reoccupied as they were in the past.

If we are to make real progress now, we must set about a proper planning programme. We must not only do as we did in 1948—assess the number of houses immediately needed—but we must get down to finding out the number of unfit houses in every region. We have been doing that for the past four years through our housing survey. We must add to that a projection into the future—of course, it must be guesswork—on certain guiding principles. Adding the two together, we can say that for a minimum period of five years this is the number of houses to be done and this is the amount we are prepared to spend on the redevelopment of our cities. We cannot go on willy nilly, as we have in the past, without having regard to this overall plan.

In order to make progress, there must be a proper plan. There must be a practical approach. We must not only draw new maps, but we must do the practical, difficult and costly job of wiping out these old buildings and replacing them in a better way. We must disperse our people into new areas, if necessary; bring some of them back to the old areas, in order to make those areas relive; and not go on with this "blitzing" of the centre of our city, denuding it of population and leaving it, so to speak, a derelict centre. I do not say that purely on sentimental grounds; on good economic grounds we cannot afford to have the centre of any city, which costs a great deal in services such as roads and so on, lying idle. The greater number of hours it is used out of the 24 hours, the more economic it becomes for us to redevelop it.

Unless we are prepared to do that, think in terms of clearing whole blocks at a time and rebuilding them to a proper plan based on a scientific and economic approach, then the sooner we forget about falling buildings in Dublin city the better it will be, because that is a heritage to which many have added. I am not blaming anyone in particular because many are responsible for the accumulation. Those who lived through the days when those areas were being cleared left the buildings standing to be occupied by elderly single and married people who were not regarded as a first priority for new houses. That is why we have this accumulation of buildings falling down and this accumulation of elderly people who one would now think, listening to some of the speakers here, were dragged up out of the ground by some malevolent force in the Government Party. They have been there for years. Their number has been added to over the years. It is only when the buildings started coming down that we seemed to become aware that we had a job on hands which had been started but had never been completed properly. That is why the rotten hard core is still there. That is why there are still people living in these old condemned tenements. They were not housed when they should have been and, in the interim, they have been forgotten. That is what we should remember when we talk about the need for more building, more development, more housing.

It staggers me to hear the Leader of the Opposition boast, as he has boasted in the past three years on every occasion when this Estimate was before the House, how delighted he is to be able to stand up here and say that his Government built more houses in Dublin in 1956 than were needed. Does it ever occur to him in his waking moments that there is only one way of looking at that position? Does it never occur to him that the real situation was that, because of the activities of the Government then in office, the position was not that they had built too many houses but that they had too few people to occupy them? And one may legitimately ask them where had these people gone. Even allowing that the boast is true, which I do not admit for a moment, how was it that this self-same Government, who could boast of building too many houses in Dublin, were not even aware of the thousands and thousands of unfit houses throughout the country? How was it they did not even try, as I have been endeavouring to ascertain for the past four years, what the number of unfit houses was? If they want to boast about building too many houses, then let them also boast about the other situation. Why build too many in Dublin when there were thousands too few in the rest of the country? There are 70,000 unfit houses throughout the country; 40,000 of these can be repaired at an economic cost. Of the remaining 30,000, there are 25,000 in rural Ireland utterly unfit for human habitation. It has taken four years of prompting, pushing, probing and stabbing local authorities to get the figures which have made it possible for me and my Department to assess the problem as it exists.

Mr. Casey

But the Minister will not pass the schemes when they come up to him.

Mr. Blaney

These are the people whom I did not interrupt today. I would ask Deputy Casey not to interrupt me now. I have only five minutes more.

Mr. Casey

I am sorry; but the Minister will not pass a scheme when they come up from the local authorities.

Mr. Blaney

The money that goes into local authority housing comes out of the Central Fund. A great part of it never comes back to the Central Fund. Over the years the two-thirds subsidy has been the rule rather than the exception. Yet, people get up here and say to me and to the Government that they have competent personnel to plan this, that and the other, and they should be allowed to get on with the work. With whose money will they get on with the work? I have to account for the money to the Department for Finance, the Department of Finance has to account to the Government, and the Government to the country. Yet, we are told we should leave all to these people down the country. One would think local funds were standing the cost. By and large, it is the Central Government that stands the cost and it is the Central Government that must be satisfied to some degree as to what is being done with the money spent.

The only thing that sickens me in the Department of Local Government is that it takes so long from the time one disseminates the idea, gets it back from the local authorities, and gets it really under way so that one can see results. That takes years and years. Believe me, it is more frustrating to me than it is to many members of local authorities. I only wish the situation were different. I only wish I were in a position to do some of the job that now falls on the Dublin Corporation. It is 12 months now since that Corporation was in my Department and I assert that, if the position were different, I would be a year ahead to-day, and that goes for every housing authority in the country and their housing problems.

I do not say this in order to cast any reflection on local authorities. I was a member of a local authority. I know what members have to go through. I know the delays, delays one cannot avoid unless one is prepared to take or give dictatorial powers. If we are not prepared to do that, then we must put up with the time lag. The timelag is more frustrating to me than it is to anyone else because I know what could be done and I know what should be done. I know there is no lack of money. Yet, it is not being done. That is what gets under my skin particularly when I am pilloried by all Parties and pushed and prompted to have more schemes, more houses, and get more done. I should love to do that. If I had the money I dispense to local authorities and the power to do things, I could get things done much quicker.

That brings me to my final point. In Dublin and throughout the country generally, there is a very definite shortage of skilled labour. It is all very well for people to say that we should stop building luxury hotels, or the office block outside Leinster House, stop building everything except houses for the ordinary people. That happened in 1956 and then housing stopped completely. If you squeeze out certain facets of building, then you can stop everything except ordinary housing. We must try to keep both going together and the more of both we have going together, the greater the demand will be and the more we will have available to us by way of finances to get on with building. Once one restricts, one kills building, as it was killed in 1956-57. What we have to do is supplement it.

There are systems available to us, such as pre-fabs, which produce a finished product either by way of flat or house comparable with the best built by traditional methods in this or any other country. We can have that system here tomorrow if we really set our minds to it. It can be restricted to a certain limited number of houses for a given short period of time so that there can be no question of its being introduced in order to usurp skilled workers thereby putting them out of work. That is one thing I will not stand for and one thing those associated with our unions can be satisfied we will not tolerate. We can have that system tomorrow. It can do a fast job. It can give an excellent product. I believe it is the only way in which we can really get to grips with the demand for housing at the moment. If we do not do it, then all I can say to those local authorities who will not go along with it is that they can stew in their own juice.

Mr. Corish

May I ask a question?

Mr. Barron

May I ask a question? Can the Minister point to just one case where Dublin Corporation delayed in replying to any query from the Department of Local Government?

An Ceann Comhairle

That is not a question; that is an argument.

Mr. Blaney

I want to keep on good terms with Dublin Corporation. I have endeavoured to do so for years, and I hope to continue doing so. That is the only way we will get the work done.

Mr. Corish

Can the Minister say whether any circular regarding the letting regulations has issued?

Mr. Blaney

It has not.

Mr. Corish

Will it?

Mr. Blaney

It will. It contains the information I have already indicated it would contain plus other information.

Mr. Treacy

Can the Minister indicate when he may be in a position to clarify the position about the grants for new houses in respect of the income limits set down in the 1962 Act?

Mr. Blaney

Relating to the income limits in respect of which some councils have availed of the discretion and others have not? That again will be in the Bill. It is clarified in the Bill, although it is there and can be done at present.

Mr. Treacy

When can we expect the Bill?

Mr. Blaney

Before we leave for the summer.

Question: "That the Vote be referred back for reconsideration" put, and a division being demanded, it was postponed in accordance with the Order of the Dáil of 14th November, 1963, until 10.15 p.m. tonight.