Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 8 Jul 1965

Vol. 217 No. 6

Housing Bill, 1965: Second Stage.

Minister for Local Government (Mr. Blaney)

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time.

The objects of this Bill are set out in the explanatory memorandum which I have had circulated to Deputies. I can summarise them by saying that the Bill is intended to provide the legislative framework for the Government's housing programme as announced in the White Paper published last November.

Because of circumstances of which we are all aware, I had the choice of not circulating the Bill at all before the recess or of sending it to Deputies in stencilled form. Naturally, I took the view that Deputies would want to get the Bill at the earliest opportunity. Printed copies will be issued to Deputies as soon as circumstances permit. It is inevitable that there should be a number of minor errors in the stencilled version because of the urgency in which it had to be prepared. These will be corrected in the printed version.

The Bill will replace, with minor exceptions, all existing statute law on housing. As Deputies know, this is a vast subject. A glance at the formidable list of statutes set down for repeal in the First Schedule will confirm this. Over 25 per cent of the total housing stock of the country has been provided by local authorities acting largely under the powers conferred by the existing legislation and, on the conservative assumption that there is an average of four to five persons in each house, about three-quarters of a million of our people live in these houses. In addition, a further 130,000 or so houses have been provided with the aid of State and often local authority grants, so that, in all, over 40 per cent of the houses in the country have been built or aided under the Acts which the Bill proposes to replace. As these figures show, achievements under the Acts are of no mean order.

The different codes have, however, for long been showing signs of age. The first Labourers Act, dealing with rural housing, was passed in 1883. The first Housing of the Working Classes Act, dealing with urban housing, dates from 1890. Since then, more than 50 different Acts have been passed, amending, extending, incorporating and clarifying various provisions in the original Acts. The rural code has been applied in part to urban areas, and the urban code has been applied in large measure to rural areas. The result of all this, I need hardly say, is not a model of precision or clarity.

Further, in each code the main emphasis was originally quite different. The Labourers Acts aimed basically at the provision of houses. The Housing of the Working Classes Acts aimed at the elimination of slums and over-crowding—the provision of houses followed as a corollary.

The existence of so much statute law helps neither the persons trying to operate the law nor the persons whom it is intended to benefit. It leads often only to frustration and delay. In addition, the existence of different urban and rural codes runs completely counter to the whole conception of local government as a unified service. What is most important of all, the present set-up may be impeding the drive to provide decent housing for our people.

As Deputies will see from the First Schedule, the first exception to the proposal to repeal all existing housing legislation is part of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, dealing with compulsory land acquisition and with penalties for members of local authorities voting in relation to houses, buildings or land in which they are beneficially interested. The parts of the 1890 Act dealing with compulsory land acquisition are, in effect, part of the Lands Clauses code, which apply for many purposes other than housing. They were amended extensively by the Third Schedule to the Housing (Ireland) Act, 1919, and these amendments also are being retained.

The second exception to the proposal to repeal all housing legislation is the proposed retention of the Labourers Act, 1936, as amended by the Housing and Labourers Act, 1937. These two Acts deal with the vesting of labourers' cottages. Their retention is necessary since the law dealing with vested cottages during the period for the repayment of the purchase annuity is contained in them. Further, it is proposed to give existing tenants and persons appointed as tenants to new cottages within six months of the commencement of the relevant provision in the Bill, an opportunity to purchase under the terms of the 1936 Act, if they are qualified to do so. After a period of about 18 months from the coming into force of the provisions, the 1936 Act and the amending Act of 1937 will cease to apply to any further sales. The result will be that, for practical purposes, the housing law, apart from the provisions in the 1890 and 1919 Acts to which I have referred, will be contained in the present Bill, as enacted.

In addition to applying a common housing code to urban and rural areas, the Bill will deal with both private and local authority housing. Since the law on private housing was largely consolidated in the Housing (Loans and Grants) Act, 1962, I considered dealing separately with local authority and private housing legislation but rejected the course. With a programme of the size we are aiming at, the fewer separate compartments we have in housing law the better. Further, house purchase loans and supplementary grants by local authorities to help people to house themselves or reconstruct their homes are as much part of local authority housing policy as their direct building operations.

A further reason for re-enacting the Act of 1962 is that in this Bill important changes in the amount and variety of assistance for private housing are proposed. Section 16 deals with the special scheme of grants of up to £450 for farmers and other persons in rural areas housing themselves. Section 17 introduces a new scheme of grants for "dower" houses on holdings. Under it and other provisions, a person providing a small house for himself and surrendering his own house to a member of his family—for instance, a son or daughter getting married—or selling it to the Land Commission, may qualify for a State and supplementary grant for the new house totalling up to £350, together with rate remission.

The grants system, perhaps, concentrates too much in present conditions on the provision of two-storey houses. With the spread of our cities, the scarcity of building sites and the necessity to use urban land more intensively it becomes increasingly important to build high. Section 18 provides for a special scheme of State grants of up to £275 for separate, self-contained flats in buildings of three or more storeys, and of up to £325 where the building is of six or more storeys and a lift is installed. The local authority will be empowered under section 27 to pay supplementary grants up to an amount equal to the State grant, subject to such conditions as they think fit.

At present a person who derives his livelihood solely or mainly from agriculture may qualify for a reconstruction grant of up to two-thirds of the cost of the work, subject to certain statutory limits, if the valuation of his holding does not exceed £50. Sections 21 and 22 propose to increase this limit from £50 to £60.

Section 24 proposes a special scheme of grants for the improvement of local authority houses. This is something about which many representations have been made to me by local authority members and I am glad to be able to do something about it in this Bill. I should emphasise that these grants will not be paid for works of a maintenance character for which local authorities themselves are responsible. They are intended to encourage the provision of extra rooms, and the installation of water and sewerage facilities, where these are required, in local authority houses. The replacement or substantial reconstruction of a roof will also qualify for a grant under the section.

In so far as supplementary grants by local authorities are concerned, section 26 proposes to increase the income limit to £1,045 and specifically to enable local authorities to make allowances of up to £100 for each of four dependants when calculating income. In effect, therefore, the maximum income level for supplementary grants for some people will go up to £1,445. In so far as persons deriving their livelihood from agriculture are concerned, the valuation limit will go up from £50 to £60. For the avoidance of doubts section 26 will also validate allowances for dependants already made by housing authorities when assessing income for supplementary grants under the 1962 Act.

In section 32 the scheme of grants for the provision of accommodation for persons suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis is being recast and the maximum amount of the grant increased to £200. It is, perhaps, a commentary on the success of our efforts in other spheres that these grants are not now much availed of.

Under section 40 housing authorities will be enabled to make a loan of up to £200 for the reconstruction of a house, without formal security. In most cases, local authorities will not run any grave risk by operating the provisions of the section which should be a considerable help in getting much needed reconstruction work done without unnecessary formality.

The last proposal in Chapter III which I would like to mention is that contained in section 43 which enables a housing authority to guarantee an advance to a builder erecting or reconstructing a house. The amount of the guarantee is limited to the aggregate of the appropriate State and supplementary grants. This provision should enable small builders in rural areas to get over the difficulty of providing the initial finance to get started on a house.

As I said earlier, private and local authority housing can no longer be treated as separate watertight compartments. Both codes are concerned basically with the provision of houses. Under section 44 it is proposed that local authorities should be enabled to qualify for subsidy at up to one-third of the loan charges, subject to cost limits, on money borrowed for the acquisition and development of building sites. I have for many years been advocating the provision by local authorities of developed sites for private building and I hope that this provision will prove a stimulus to those local authorities who have not yet taken adequate steps to provide sites for persons who are able and willing to build their own houses. I would like to point out that the fraction of one-third cannot be regarded in isolation. It is part of a whole complex of aids, including State and supplementary grants, rate remissions, reduction of stamp duty, et cetera. I should say also that I intend this provision to come into operation immediately, so that local authorities can proceed now to acquire and develop land in anticipation of the enactment of the Bill, in the knowledge that the sites will not be disqualified for subsidy on the ground that they were provided too soon.

In so far as local authority housing generally is concerned, section 44 will also incorporate the principal provisions dealing with subsidy. It will validate the special subsidy scheme for housing of farmers whose land valuations do not exceed £5.

Major subsidy of up to two-thirds of loan charges, subject to cost limits, will be payable under the section for the provision by local authorities of houses for elderly persons, for those displaced by operations of housing authorities under the Bill in getting rid of overcrowded and unfit housing, or by dangerous building operations or by the development of obsolete areas under the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1963. Under the section, special subsidy will also be payable for the provision by local authorities of flats and buildings of six or more storeys.

The section also proposes to make subsidy a more positive instrument of policy. It will specifically authorise the use of subsidy to enforce conditions as to the maintenance and sale of local authority houses and building standards to be observed by local authorities.

The amount spent by local authorities on the maintenance of their houses varies from about £6 a year to about £20 a year. Nobody would contend that sums near the lower end of this scale are sufficient to maintain a house. What is happening, therefore, is that much valuable accommodation is deteriorating for lack of adequate maintenance, and local authorities and the Exchequer will ultimately be faced with a substantial bill for its replacement sooner than is necessary. By making proper maintenance a condition for the continued payment of full subsidy we hope to remedy this position.

The inclusion in the section of conditions as to the sale or lease of local authority houses and land not required for housing purposes will enable the specific sanction of the Minister to such sales or leases to be dispensed with. As long as the local authority observes general conditions which will be laid down they need not approach the Department for sanction. They can dispose of houses and other land on the approved conditions as they think fit.

Under the Bill we propose to get rid of references to "agricultural labourers" and "persons of the working classes" on which much of the old law depends and to enable local authorities to house anyone in need, irrespective of class. To ensure that renting schemes are sufficiently flexible for this extended scope of operations, it is proposed in section 44 that the Minister will be able to require, in connection with subsidy, certain conditions as to rents to be observed, for example, that rents be in accordance with schemes approved by him which take into account the financial circumstances of tenants. This provision is of vital importance to ensure that the old, the sick and the infirm are not charged rents above their capacity to pay, or, on the other hand, that persons with sufficient resources are not subsidised by their fellow workers, renting or buying their own houses and paying their full share of rates and taxes.

At this point it is well to remember that State subsidies for local authority housing are now almost £3 million a year and are rising steadily. In addition, local authorities subsidise their rents by a similar amount, making a total current subsidy for local authority housing of just under £6 million in 1965-66, or about £36 a year per house (other than urban houses which have been sold).

The average rent is about £31 a year. This figure, as every Deputy will know, conceals very wide variations in actual rents which range from 3d. or 6d. a week in some areas to about £4 a week in others—for widely different types of accommodation. The higher level more truly represents current building costs which are a vital factor in our housing programme. If because of the unrealistic rent policies of local authorities rates and other taxes have to rise too steeply to pay for the programme, then the rate of building will be slowed and the elimination of unfit and overcrowded housing conditions, which we all wish to see achieved, will be delayed.

Section 45 contains power for the Minister to pay subsidy direct to a body other than a housing authority. In general assistance for such bodies will be by way of State and supplementary grants — which may now under section 28 be paid to bodies as distinct from individuals. If the housing authority wish, they can provide further aid by way of loans, guarantees or annual contributions under section 12. The provision in section 45 is intended for exceptional circumstances —where, for instance, it may be considered desirable to have the National Building Agency, Limited, supplement the efforts of local authorities in particular areas.

The Housing White Paper mentions a figure of the order of 50,000 dwellings beyond economic repair. The occupants of many of these houses could be expected to provide their own accommodation with the aid of grants and loans. The remainder must look to local authorities. In addition, needs arising from increases in population and depreciation which each year brings a fresh batch of houses over the dividing line between the fit and unfit must be met, to some extent at least, by local authority building. The programme facing local authorities is, therefore, no small one. We propose in sections 53 to 55 to try to ensure that the programme is approached in an orderly and logical fashion.

Local authorities will be required to measure the needs of their areas and the cost of meeting them. Having done this they will draw up building programmes setting out the sort of help they will give to persons providing their own houses and the number of houses they will provide directly. They may either build themselves or group with other local authorities or perhaps arrange with an agency to build for them. By combining their needs in this way, local authorities should benefit themselves by getting work done at better prices and with more certainty than they would by offering smaller and less valuable contracts.

The building industry will benefit by having longer production runs, offering better opportunities to rationalise work methods, the supply of materials, and employment of men. I should mention that I have already asked local authorities to put in hands this survey of needs and the preparation of both short term and long term building programmes to meet these needs.

Under section 60 more freedom will be given to local authorities to draw up priority schemes for the allocation of tenancies. The schemes will be made by the elected members and once made must be followed by the manager in the actual allocation of the tenancies. As at present, it is proposed that in allocating tenancies regard must be had to the report and recommendation of the chief medical officer.

Part IV of the Bill deals with the powers of housing authorities to deal with overcrowded and unfit housing. Nobody is more conscious than I am that the only real solution to the problems of slums and overcrowding is the provision of an adequate supply of housing at reasonable cost. Pending the achievement of this objective, we must retain and strengthen the powers of local authorities to prevent as far as possible the abuse of overcrowding and the use of condemned property for human habitation. Part IV re-enacts the existing provisions on the subject in one piece, with important changes which clarify and strengthen the powers of local authorities.

Because of the rather detailed nature of the provisions, I think that they would be better left for discussion at later stages of the Bill. I should, however, mention that I have had under consideration the question of providing penalties for failure to comply with repair notices or demolition orders. As Deputies know, if a person fails to comply with these notices or orders, the local authority themselves may do the repairs or the demolition work and recover the cost, but there is no provision for penalties by way of fine or otherwise on the person who failed in the first instance to comply with the requirements of the local authority. Deputies will doubtless have views on this question which I should be glad to hear.

Part V deals with the acquisition of land. Under the Local Government (No. 2) Act, 1960, a procedure is provided which can be used by local authorities for acquiring land compulsorily for any purpose for which they are so authorised to acquire it. This procedure is based on provisions in the Housing of the Working Classes code which we are replacing. In Part V it is proposed, therefore, to replace the relevant provisions in the 1960 Act with the corresponding provisions in the present Bill. The new provisions will contain power for local authorities to acquire land by vesting order and will contain other changes designed to speed up land acquisition procedures.

The powers of housing authorities to dispose of dwellings and other land will be consolidated in Part VI. As I mentioned when discussing the subsidy provisions, it is proposed to dispense with the necessity for obtaining the Minister's consent to the disposal of property under the Bill if the disposal is carried out in accordance with general rules laid down.

At present, a county council in disposing of land acquired under the Labourers Acts must first offer it back to the person from whom it was acquired. The force of this provision is much diminished by later provisions enabling a local authority to use such land for the purposes of any of their powers or duties under the Labourers Acts, including the provision of sites for private building and for houses for persons, irrespective of whether they are agricultural labourers. Furthermore, land acquired by local authorities for any other purpose is not subject to this restriction. By the repeal of section 16 of the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1883, it is proposed to do away with the restriction so that, in future, county councils will be free to appropriate or dispose of surplus lands as they think fit.

The formal procedures for the sale of rural cottages laid down by the Labourers Act, 1936, are being replaced. The cost of preparing purchase schemes under the Act must alone often outweigh what the council could expect to receive from sales, particularly where the scheme deals with a small number of cottages. The right of existing tenants to purchase under the Act will be preserved for a sufficient time to enable them to opt to do so if they wish. Similarly, the terms of the Act will apply for a limited time to anyone appointed tenant within six months of the commencement of the relevant section. The Act of 1936 will continue to apply to sales at present being made under it, the repayment period for which extends over a number of years.

In Chapter III it is proposed to make a number of changes in the Act. These changes include provision that a cottage may be charged or mortgaged with the consent of the housing authority and that the housing authority may withhold consent to the alienation of a cottage where they are of opinion that the purchaser is not a person in need of housing or that the alienation would cause overcrowding or leave the person proposing to alienate without adequate and suitable housing. Further, it is proposed that where a housing authority intend to give consent they may require payment of an amount not less than that approved by the Minister. This provision would be used particularly where a cottage or plot was being sold for a commercial purpose.

Under section 101 it is proposed to make it clear that a cottage being purchased must be used as a normal place of residence by the purchaser. If it is left vacant for a long time the housing authority will have power to recover it, paying suitable compensation.

I think that I need not detain Deputies with any detailed exposition of Parts VII and VIII of the Bill which I have dealt with elsewhere, so far as is necessary.

In conclusion, I would say that, though this Bill is a long and fairly complex document, its aim is to reduce the bulk of housing law and thus make its administration easier. I am, however, under no illusion that the enactment of law can alone solve our housing problems. Much effort and a great deal of finance, both public and private, are required for that purpose. But I do comfort myself with the thought that if this Bill makes it easier, in the future, for persons to get houses and ensures a more equitable distribution of housing subsidies generally we will have done a good day's work.

Mr. Clinton

I understand that the arrangement is that the Fine Gael motion on housing will be taken in conjunction with the Bill.

An Ceann Comhairle

There cannot be two motions at the same time. The motion may be discussed and moved at the end.

Mr. Clinton

I see. The motion, then, will be moved at the end of the discussion on the Bill?

An Ceann Comhairle

Formally moved. The discussion can take place with the discussion on the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Clinton

The motion can be discussed with the Bill?

An Ceann Comhairle

That is right.

Mr. Clinton

As you are aware, this motion has been on the Order Paper for some considerable time and I intend in the remarks I have to make to concentrate on the motion because I see nothing in the Bill to overcome the crisis at present existing in the building industry. The Bill is largely a Bill to enable and encourage housing authorities to spend more money from the rates on housing purposes while the contribution from the State remains substantially the same. It is a Bill which represents fringe improvements and marginal benefits in addition to what we have already. It is a Bill which is to be welcomed in so far as it represents an improvement. It is a Bill which can be dealt with more effectively on Committee Stage.

We have put down the motion standing in our name because we feel that there is cause for serious concern at the failure of the Government to provide even the most urgent housing needs of the people and because of the manner in which they have allowed the housing programme to run down so drastically during the past eight years since they took office in 1957.

At present, there is a housing crisis and a problem of a type and size which seems to be completely beyond the capacity of the Government to solve. The position is all the more reprehensible in that it has not arisen accidentally. It is the direct result of deliberate Government policy as expressed in the First Programme for Economic Expansion Published in 1958 and restated in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion published in 1963-64.

I have omitted to take into the House with me these two publications but members of the House will be sufficiently familiar with them to remember that the fundamental point made in the first Programme was that productive capital expenditure would in future have to secure a greater priority, that social needs had been overcome in most of the country. One of the first social needs listed in the Programme was housing. Apparently expenditure on housing was not regarded as productive expenditure but was regarded as a social need that had been almost overcome in most of the country. This point was restated in the Second Programme in very similar terms, where it was suggested that in the sphere of public expenditure public authorities would observe the principles laid down in the first Programme that public capital outlay would have to give priority to projects which were not merely necessary but productive in the sense of yielding an adequate return to the community in competitive goods and services.

These are not exact quotations but they are near enough to indicate that the policy of the Government since 1957 has been that we have enough houses and do not want to build any more houses. Unfortunately, that policy has been faithfully carried out and that attitude to housing has not only been adhered to by the Minister for Local Government but has gone down through all the housing authorities. The brake went on. The managers of local authorities knew that the brake was on and that it was intended it should remain on. It is only in the past six months that there has been any noticeable change in the attitude of the officials of housing authorities. They seem now to be prepared to listen to public representatives and to do something about land acquisition and house building generally.

The Minister is fully aware of the position. He knows the enormous arrears and the serious backlog that exist. In recent months he has been expressing some concern about the position. I can only say that the Minister has no Government other than his own to blame for this. The circular he issued to local authorities in May last indicated his concern at the position, at the backlog, at the arrears. He emphasised that members of local authorities should do everything in their power to ensure that the position was changed. In the early part of the circular he indicated that he was prepared to relax many of the conditions pertaining to local authority business, that he was reducing the submissions to be made to the Department.

I have read carefully through this communication. Initially one gets the impression that local authorities are now much freer than they were, that they can go ahead with their building programmes, that there will be considerable reduction in the frustrating delays that they have had to endure but, in the latter part of the circular, the relaxation is so qualified as to mean ultimately practically no change. At the back of the circular, there is a memorandum on the documentation of building proposals showing all the details that must be submitted to the Department before a local authority can get a housing scheme under way.

This is completely senseless. If anything has held up the building of local authority houses in recent years, it has been the reluctance on the part of the Minister to relinquish departmental control of house building. The brake is still on. If the Minister were really sincere and wanted new houses to be built and built quickly, I can see no reason why he could not say to the local authority: "You have, at my request, estimated the needs in your area. We now have a fairly clear picture. It is obvious that during the next three or four years, you need to build 400 houses per year. I am prepared to contribute two-thirds of the actual cost. Go ahead now and build these houses. Use your own judgment. Use your own professional men, who are similarly qualified to the men in my Department. Select your sites. I will give you a broad outline of what we expect in the way of standards, but draw up your own plans and specifications. Come back to me when the houses are built and I will produce the money."

That is the only way we shall ever get local authority houses built. I have considerable experience working as a member of a local authority and I can say with the greatest conviction that as long as we have this divided responsibility as between the Department of Local Government and the housing authorities for the building of local authority houses, we shall never get them built or, if we do, it will be an extremely painful and long operation.

The members of a local authority have limited power. In my own local authority, we have never ceased to keep up pressure on the manager and on all the people in the local authority concerned to make the maximum effort, but we failed to get local authority houses built. On most occasions we were told that the Department were holding up this part of the scheme, were holding up this submission, or that proposal. As long as the officials in the local authority have even the excuse to tell the members that the scheme is being held up by the Department, that the Department have returned plans for certain alterations, that they have returned tenders because they are too high, and so on, as long as that continues, the houses will never be built.

Nobody must be more aware of that than the Minister himself who has been a member of a local authority for some years. It amazes me, in view of that experience, that he cannot see that it is sensible, if he wants houses built, to do it in this way. The employees of the local authorities are similarly qualified and equally able to see what plan is a good plan and what plan is not a good plan, what site is a good one and what site is not a good one. Added to that, they have the local knowledge which should be beneficial to them in arriving at their decisions.

I want to refer to this one-third and two-thirds subsidy. The Bill does little or nothing to encourage an increased number of local authority houses to be built. It is nonsense to talk of a two-thirds subsidy when we still have an upper limit of £1,650 for a fully serviced house. Recently in County Dublin, we accepted a tender for over 70 houses in an area a considerable distance outside the city. The cost of these houses—the builder's tender price—was something in the region of £2,300. Two-thirds subsidy, up to a maximum of £1,650, represents less than 50 per cent of the cost and the Minister should give up talking about two-thirds subsidy when he does not mean two-thirds subsidy. He should say half or less than half of the actual cost. This upper limit of £1,650 for fully serviced houses and £1,100 for unserviced houses is unrealistic. Everybody knows that building costs have rocketed since that upper limit was fixed. I ask the Minister to tell us in what way he hopes to get increased ouput from local authorities or what he has put in this Bill that will bring that about.

The one relaxation I am aware of that seems to be having some effect is that in regard to the purchase of sites for building. This relaxation depends a good deal on the courage of managers in going ahead and buying sites or on the caution of other managers who decide: "We must be careful. Look at the back of that communication. Look at the many ways in which this is qualified." County managers generally err on the cautious side. Most of the county managers will be inclined to take the cautious view and go through all the old procedures of submitting everything to the Department and consulting them on every stage of their building proposals.

It is quite likely that the Minister will reply to me by saying that the record of the Dublin County Council, of which I happen to be a member, is deplorable. I want to say in anticipation of that that nobody is more ashamed of the position in County Dublin than I am. That does not apply to me as one member of the county council. It applies to every member without exception and there are the same number of Fianna Fáil members as Fine Gael members. There are also Labour members. Every member of that council has kept up all the pressure possible. I went as far myself at one stage as to propose setting up a sworn inquiry into the building situation. We failed to get houses, built and we failed to get them built, in my submission, because we had not got the authority to do it. The overall responsibility was in the Minister's hands and he did not accept it.

The Minister has brought into this Bill additional powers which he can use if a housing authority fails to do its job. Heretofore, it meant that the whole housing authority would have to go. Now the Minister can bring in some other agency to supply the need, something less drastic, but I cannot remember reading correspondence from the Minister expressing disappointment or indicating a reprimand to the people responsible, the people who had been failing to build houses. In the area to which I have referred, Dublin county and Dublin city, we have at the present time approximately 12,000 families living in deplorable housing accommodation. They have been living in these conditions for a considerable period and, with every day that passes, their hope of getting relief is vanishing.

I said the Government had allowed the housing programme to drop deplorably. I must support that statement. It will be sufficient, I think, to remind the House that in the last three years of the inter-Party Government, no fewer than 31,000 houses were built with State aid. In the three years ending 1962, the number of houses built by State aid was approximately 17,000. These are round figures but it is easy to see that State-aided houses were reduced by half by 1962.

We know, too, that in the sphere of local authority housing the position was even worse. In 1957, something in the region of 4,780 houses were built. By 1962, the figure was down to roughly 1,200, down to practically a quarter of the 1957 figure. We know that in 1957 Dublin Corporation built approximately 1,500 houses and that by 1961 that figure was down to 277 houses. I think I need say very little more to prove beyond all doubt that there was a drastic drop in the number of houses built since the Fianna Fáil Government took office in 1957. The statistics are there to prove beyond yea or nay what happened.

I have already shown that this did not happen accidentally. It was deliberate policy, consistently pursued. I should like to hear the Minister explain why it happened. I should like to hear why the Government decided at that time that the housing needs of the people had been met in the greater part of the country. We now know the arrears there are. We know from the White Paper that, outside Dublin and Cork, there are no fewer than 50,000 houses incapable of economic repair. In the same White Paper, we are told that approximately 25,000 of these houses are occupied by families who would normally be a housing responsibility of the local authority. We have arrears then and a backlog of 25,000 local authority houses. Having waited for two years, we now have a Housing Bill that provides practically no relief and no stimulant which would result in increasing the output of local authority houses. We have a balance of 25,000 State-aided houses which need to be built immediately. We have 40,000 houses capable of repair and approximately 63,000 houses overcrowded. That gives us some idea of the enormous programme facing the country from the point of view of the provision of houses.

How is it or why is it that it took the Minister and the Government until the receipt of this housing survey last November to realise and to recognise that we had a deplorable housing situation? Every public representative, and particularly every public representative who is also a member of a local authority, is aware that in every local authority area, he is being harassed by unfortunate people living in deplorable housing conditions. Not only are these people living in deplorable housing conditions but in Dublin city there are still many families living in institutions like Griffith Barracks. I do not know how any Government can stand up after eight continuous years in government against the criticism that is due to them because of the shocking housing situation. It is all right to blame a previous Government for a short time, but you cannot go on for eight years blaming them. It is all right for Deputy Burke in my constituency to say that when the inter-Party Government left office, they did not have a bag of cement.

Mr. P.J. Burke

That is true.

Mr. James Tully

They had put the cement into houses. That is why.

Mr. Clinton

It may be true that there was no cement but the inter-Party Government did build houses. In 1955, 1956 and 1957, they spent approximately £10 million to £12 million aiding house building.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I was very quiet and charitable up to this. Do not draw me now, like a good Deputy.

Mr. Barrett

Start trembling.

Mr. Clinton

I know Deputy Burke will talk when I have finished. I was reminded very often in the course of the election campaign of the fact that they did not have a bag of cement left.

Mr. P.J. Burke

That is true.

Mr. Clinton

All I can say is that it has taken a long time to get a bag of cement. Deputy Burke's colleague in County Dublin, the Minister for Social Welfare, also deplored the fact that houses have not been built. But he gave a different excuse. The excuse he gave was that it must have been because Fianna Fáil had not a majority in the council. To me that is a fantastic statement.

As I said, I have yet to see a reprimand. I have heard the Minister criticise the performance of local authorities—there is no doubt about that—but I have not seen him taking any effective steps. There is only a small relaxation in the purchase of housing sites. Certain provisions have been made in the Bill which represent merely marginal improvements. One of the things in the Bill I am glad to see, however, is the encouragement to provide serviced sites and the proposal to pay one-third of the cost of these serviced sites. I hope, when we get the one-third, it will be one-third and that there will not be an upper limit.

In the private house-building sector, we know that there is at the present time both chaos and crisis. There is no money for private building from any source. None of the building societies is advancing money; none of the insurance companies is advancing money; and none of the banks is providing this type of accommodation. That is the situation facing the country. That is the responsibility facing the Government. If none of the ordinary sources can provide money for house-building, it is the duty and responsibility of the Government to step in and provide the money.

I do not have to produce proof, but I can do so, if necessary, because I have several letters from unfortunate people who are failing to get the necessary financial accommodation to get into their houses in some cases even where they have instalments paid. I have seen letters coming back from the building societies saying: "Not before November." That could mean any time in the next three, four or five years. There is no indication that this source of credit for house-building will open up and I think we are facing one of the most deplorable years in house-building that we have had for many years. A valuable organisation has been built up by the building contractors which I think we shall see falling to pieces. We shall see serious unemployment in the building industry with many of the skilled operatives, who are so scarce and the number of whom is so totally inadequate if we are to tackle the housing problem seriously, forced to emigrate again. I can see the serious unemployment problem and many of the building contractors facing ruin, contractors who have put an enormous amount of work into organisation and an enormous amount of capital into their business.

I expected at a time like this, when we have such a housing crisis, that the Minister would take advantage of the situation in which he is introducing a Housing Bill to announce immediate relief for these people. In the Estimates for the present year we have increased money provided; the amount for housing has been increased by £4.5 million. I am satisfied that £4.5 million will never be spent in the year. Last year money for housing was provided in the Minister's Estimate and we failed to spend that amount of money by no less than £1.5 million. We have provided £4.5 million extra this year but there is no indication of the plan or programme for either securing this money or spending it. I do not believe, if the Government went to the country in the morning, that they would get it from any source because I do not think it is there.

When one sees bank managers calling in overdrafts of from £50 to £500 one realises how serious the credit situation is. The Government have failed in their responsibility to provide houses. They have marked time and kept on the brake for eight years and now it is impossible to do the job. The cost of housing has rocketed in that time and we now have no money from any source for building. I implore the Minister, if he sees any source from which he can secure the money, to take off the brake on local authority housing. He knows the brake I have referred to.

Mr. Blaney

I do not. I do not know what the Deputy is talking about and I do not think the Deputy does either.

Mr. Clinton

I am beginning to get the impression that the Minister does not understand what the housing problem is.

Mr. Blaney

Nor does the Deputy. The Deputy and his council are the people who will not do the job and he knows that very well. The Deputy has been trying all morning to confuse the issue and he has succeeded in confusing nobody but himself.

Mr. Clinton

That is the Minister's view, but it is not the view held by me. The overall responsibiliy for building houses rests with the Minister and he has the worst record of any Minister I have known over many years in the sphere of building. He knows what is holding it up and he has done nothing effective about it. After eight years, our performance last year was not half as good as it was when we had the previous Government in office and we know what the present Government think of their performance.

I should like to know how the Minister intends to overcome the present crisis or what plans the Government have to overcome it, what plans they have to wipe out the enormous arrears that have built up during the administration of the Government since 1957 because I cannot see anything in the Bill or in the Minister's proposals that will give us hope of relief at any reasonable future time. At present, money for building is not available from any source that I know of in the country.

I knew the Minister would be critical of the local authority of which I happen to be a member. He has every right to be critical of them, but in my view he has taken no effective action to carry out his responsibility when we built in the course of the last eight years as few as 14 houses in one year, when we needed some 300. We built an average of 45 houses a year over those years. No firm action was taken by the Minister responsible.

The position in Dublin city is even worse, ten thousand times worse. I represent Ballyfermot and it would make a man weep to visit that area and listen to the stories of unfortunate people who are living in small houses in which there are no fewer than 15 or 20 occupants. We are told the Corporation is now down to housing families of five but there is no reference to the fact that in most cases the five are in one room of a house where there are probably 15 others or ten others and where many of the family are adults and where segregation of the sexes is absolutely impossible.

I would advise the Minister to take off the brake and really do something about building. If he cannot get the money from the Government—and I believe it was fixed policy that he should not—I advise him to follow the example of his colleague, Deputy Paddy Smith, and resign. Certainly, I should not like to face the next world having failed to come to the aid and relief of the many I see suffering extreme hardship in the city and county of Dublin because of the failure of the Government to provide the money which would enable the necessary houses to be built.

Mr. James Tully

This Housing Bill which has been so long delayed must get a certain amount of welcome from the Labour Party because quite a number of its proposals are matters that we have been asking the Minister and the Government to put into operation for quite a number of years. I do not propose to fight any battles of long ago about whose responsibility it was in the thirties, forties, fifties or even in the sixties to provide accommodation. It is sufficient to say that the country generally is dissatisfied with the development of the housing programme. While in a haphazard way we now have a substantial number of houses under construction and under repair, the problem of housing those who need houses in a very short space of time does not appear to have been tackled up to now and I suggest is not being tackled in the Bill.

The Minister, of course, includes in the Bill quite a number of new provisions and he brings together quite a number of old ones. It may be rather surprising to people here who always shout about the shocking things which were imposed on the country by the oppressors for 700 years to find that most of the housing legislation up to now is pre-1922. If we can give the Minister credit for nothing else, we can give him credit for deciding that the laws of the country should now be made by the Parliament of the country. From what I have read I understand that many of the things being brought together here were contained in legislation introduced in the Parliament of the Six Counties in 1945. We are not objecting to that if it tends to improve the general progress but it would be unfortunate if we were to base our legislation on something already 20 years old. It is a pity we did not start at the ground and try to bring in decent legislation now.

The explanatory memorandum is reasonably good. The Minister's statement today does not help very much. Having included so much in the explanatory memorandum, he possibly felt it would be better not to gild the lily further. No matter what way we approach housing, we must face up to the fact that one set of people seem to be holding up the building of houses. The Minister says it is not the Government. If it is not the Government it must be the local authorities. I know from my personal experience and knowledge of other local authorities that the members of local authorities are as anxious as anybody can be to provide houses for those who need them, but the managers stand between them and having the housing programme carried out. Will the Minister now say in this Bill that he will give the necessary authority to local authority members to see to it that, where a manager is not willing to co-operate, the powers will be handed over to those who are anxious to solve the problem?

Mr. Blaney

You have that power already. Suspend him and fire him, if he is not doing the job.

Mr. Coughlan

If that were true, we could sack every manager in the country.

Mr. James Tully

The bait I had floating down the stream was gobbled up too quickly by the Minister. Again and again in this House the question of the refusal of the managers to do things which local authorities thought should be done in relation to housing legislation has been raised by way of Parliamentary question, and on every occasion the Minister has replied that section 4 of the 1955 Act would deal with it. I wonder what the Minister would do if tomorrow morning or in a month's time he had on his office table, as he very well could have, section 4 resolutions carried by the 27 county councils in this country requesting that their managers be suspended? The Minister appreciates that, if that happens, it would result in the authority of the managers, such as it is, being completely undermined.

From discussions I have had with him, I know that the Minister is anxious to see that the right thing is done. The one way of doing the right thing is not to have it inserted in the Bill that if a manager refuses to carry out the instructions of a council a formal motion of suspension should be moved, but instead the Minister should take from the managers the authority to build houses and give it to the members of local authorities. If that is included in the Bill a lot of our troubles—and the Minister's troubles—will disappear in a short space of time.

Mr. Coughlan

And we will build more houses.

Mr. James Tully

There is no point in having the present situation where local authority after local authority meet, discuss the question of housing and produce evidence that houses are needed, and then find that all the little tricks of the trade which can be worked by these people in authority have been worked in order to hold up housing. The Minister gave me yesterday a reply which is typical of what happens. I asked him what had happened to a housing scheme in Slane, County Meath. He said the scheme had been submitted to him in 1963. Early in 1964 it had been sent back to the county council with a request that certain things which the Department thought should be done be carried out, and he added he had not got a reply. That is not the information the local authority got from the same manager. His representative stated no later than last Monday that the Department of Local Government were holding up this scheme. Our manager in Meath is not the worst manager in the country. The evidence of the number of houses being built there proves that on occasion he can be very cooperative. Possibly we have succeeded in getting houses built by a reasonable approach, houses which have not been built in other counties. Yet the example I have given is there, and I am sure Deputies could give dozens of examples where this sort of thing happens. The local authority are told one thing, but the Department have a different story altogether. If we are going to carry on with that kind of cod there is no point going through this big Bill and deciding we will do this, that or the other thing unless the members of local authorities have power to deal with the matter immediately and not after a notice of suspension has been served and after months have passed.

The Bills which we have been discussing over the last few days were described by a number of us, perhaps, rather enviously, as lawyers' Bills. We felt that the Succession Bill and the Finance Bill were Bills in which the lawyers had a great advantage over us lesser mortals. I think we can call this the "county councillors' Bill." Before it goes through, we hope to prove that we know more about it than any lawyer or anybody else and that we know more about it than the Minister and his advisers.

The position about the Bill itself is that, in the proposals to do things and change things, the Minister has gone a certain way with the views of Deputies, but he seems to have veered off them at places where we feel he should have been very firm. For instance, he has decided in section 44 and section 45 that the floor area limit of 1,400 square feet for a grant house will be raised to 1,500 square feet. We think that is right. Possibly, he might have raised it a bit more. Up to now the situation has been that most houses built consist of three bedrooms, two living rooms, a bathroom and kitchen. They have to be squeezed in pretty tightly to get them into 1,400 square feet. Most people are now anxious to have a four bedroom house. Most families would prefer if they could build such a house, but they cannot build it within the present requirements and I doubt if 1,500 square feet will be a sufficient extension. What happens is that the house is built and after a few years the owner finds his family cannot fit comfortably into the three bedrooms. He makes a special request to the Minister for permission to erect extra rooms and get a further grant. That money would have been of great assistance to him in the first place and he could have built a four bedroom house then at lesser cost than the combined cost of the two jobs.

The question of the increased grant to people who live off agriculture, the £450, and the question of persons living in condemned and overcrowded conditions who may now qualify have been a help. This is in operation, we know, since last October 12 months. It proves that this Bill has been a rather longer time than usual in getting under way. I give credit to the Minister for advising local authorities that, because the Bill was likely to be a long time coming, they might take advantage of the increased supplementary grants. When we talk of a grant of £450, we tend to forget—maybe it is hoped we might forget—that the houses being built at present, on which there is a grant of £900 if the full supplementary is paid, are in many cases costing two and a half times as much as they cost two years ago. In addition to that, while this extra grant has been made, no provision has been made for an increase in the ordinary grant. We are inclined to say that the fellows in certain circumstances can get a £450 grant. We forget that so many other people could, and should, get extra assistance but they are being ignored altogether.

The question of the £175 grant to the people who are erecting a dower house is something I am glad about but I am not quite clear what the Minister has in mind. I know, in my own experience, of people who have built a small house beside the old house in which the old people could live. These people qualify for a normal grant. Can we take it now that the man who decides, instead of building a little two-roomed house which is very little use to anybody, to build a fairly decent house and that eventually another of his children, when he and his wife pass on, occupies that house, the grant for that house is limited to £175? Where does this thing come in? Perhaps the Minister might explain this because so far it is Greek to me.

Section 18 refers to a grant of £275 which may be paid in certain cases for flats or maisonettes in a building of three or more storeys. If the building is of six or more storeys, and a lift is installed, the maximum grant— for a flat with four or more rooms— will be £325. I should like a little more information about that. Is it suggested by the Minister that the people in this city who are building luxury flats, running them up and getting up to £20 a week, will qualify for this grant or is there a certain qualification which is not mentioned here for that type of person? Perhaps the Minister would also clarify that when he comes to explain it later.

I do not know what has happened as a result of the experimental houses. I see some monstrosities down the country which have been erected by people in order to qualify for grants for the prototype house. They have been discouraged, and rightly so, by the Department. When people build houses, they should at least be built in such a way that they do not spoil the appearance of the whole neighbourhood.

With regard to the valuation limit under which certain categories of farmers may qualify for supplementary grants, I notice this is to be increased from £50 to £60. The Minister was cutting his finger in view of the fact that the income limit has gone up. The Minister should have put that figure in at much more than £60. If we are to go back to the valuation which was mentioned in the Health Act, then the £60 valuation is too low. Perhaps the Minister can do something about this.

The question of grants to be paid to housing authorities for the addition of extra rooms, the replacement or substantial reconstruction of a roof or the installation of water and sewerage facilities in local authority dwellings is a good idea. The Minister was very well advised to introduce that sort of thing because it will allow the old vested houses and the old vested cottages which seem to have been left there for years to be improved. If this is done, it will certainly improve the appearance of the houses.

With regard to the income limit for supplementary grants to farmers for new houses, the Minister has given 1st July as the date in this case. In view of the fact that another provision of the Act operates from 1st October 1963, would the Minister not consider, in the interests of fair play, to date this back also to 1st October 1963? I can understand the Minister's difficulties in regard to this provision. It is a new provision but surely it is only reasonable, if one provision of the Act dates back for 18 months, another provision of the Act should not be dated back for a week or ten days. Would the Minister, in regard to section 26, agree to putting it back further than 1st July 1965?

I am intrigued by section 28, which refers to the provision of grants to bodies approved by the Minister. There is reference to this, too, in section 45. The Minister will be enabled to pay a subsidy to people other than housing authorities. He can pay it to the National Building Agency, provided the houses are on developed sites. Is it intended to include public utility societies under that heading, because we have quite a number of public utility societies who are doing a very good job on this basis? Those people have found a difficulty in regard to this matter, that is, the question of the grants they are paid individually. Would it be possible even that the local authority might provide the public utility societies with the necessary money to have this work carried out?

Housing authorities will be especially enabled to enforce the conditions subject to which they pay supplementary grants under section 34. I do not know exactly what the Minister is coming at there. I do not want to see a situation where officials of the local authority must inspect houses to ensure that repairs or improvements which appear to be OK to the Minister's officials have to be corrected by the local authority. If we are duplicating the work, we are making trouble for ourselves and the people who are availing of these facilities.

Section 39 enables housing authorities to make loans for the provision of houses on the security of a second mortgage or charge. I am glad the Minister has put that in. It is one of the bones of contention in quite a number of local authorities. I understand the local authorities are prepared, in anticipation of this legislation now to allow this sort of thing to be done.

Mr. Clinton

Except in Dublin.

Mr. James Tully

I thought it referred to County Dublin. If it is not the same for every place, some will be out of step and the matter will be challenged. This would lead to a situation in which difficulties would arise. This is something about which we have pestered the Minister before and on which he has very strong views. I am glad he now proposes to rectify it in this Bill.

Section 43 guarantees advances to builders for the erection of houses, or the reconstruction of a house, or the provision and installation of a private water supply or sewerage facilities, in respect of which a grant has been allocated. It provides that it shall not be for an amount exceeding the aggregate of the amount of the said grant. Can the Minister not go further? After all, these grants and supplementary grants may be only £550. The cost of erecting a house is now something between £2,500 and £3,000. In some cases it may be a little less, but in many cases it is much more, so £550 is a relatively small sum. Could the Minister not agree that arrangements could be made for the local authorities to guarantee to builders that loans for houses would be made available to them, and in that way ensure that the houses will be built?

Deputy Clinton commented on the fact that money is not available. I know that in Dublin, and in the other cities, money is very scarce. If one goes to a bank—any bank—and asks for a few thousand pounds to build a house, no matter what the collateral is, the answer in most cases is "No". I know that building societies will not look at applications from country districts. Luckily, so far, the Local Loans Fund seems to be available to people who are anxious to build houses. It may be necessary for the Minister to provide very much extended credit to this fund for the purpose of meeting all the claims and requests from people who want to build, because if they are turned down all round—and the Minister says plenty of money is available— naturally they will turn to the Minister for the money.

We know that a fairly stringent limit is operated by most local authorities in the case of people who apply for loans from the Local Loans Fund, and I think the Minister could solve many of everyone's problems, including his own, by raising the limit at which people may borrow money from the Local Loans Fund, and by making the necessary money available. If the building societies are getting a bit tied up, financially and otherwise, it is amazing the effect it might have on these societies if the Minister said that more money would be made available from another source, and if they found that there was more than one basket of eggs.

I have very strong views on local authority housing subsidies. It is quite true to say that this 66? subsidy is a lot of cod. Very few of the local authority houses which will be built from 1965 onwards will qualify for the 66? subsidy on loan charges. It may be said that this is not the Minister's fault or the Government's fault, but whose fault is it? Surely if the Minister is anxious to have the subsidy paid, the obvious way is to increase the amount over which the subsidy can be paid. If it was reasonable ten years ago that the subsidy should be paid up to a maximum of £1,650, surely it is reasonable now, with falling money values, that the subsidy should be paid up to £2,250. There is nothing wrong with that.

I would also ask the Minister to ensure that when the subsidy is being paid, it is paid on the housing scheme for which it is intended. I feel that the local authorities have been fiddling, as it were, with this type of subsidy. In fact, in some cases one wonders what has happened. Apart from the fact that local authorities are subject to audits by the Department of Local Government, and are normally honest people—I know they are not putting the money in their pockets—it appears as if the subsidies are disappearing because if they were going into the houses, the rent would not be as high, possibly, as the rents charged. Some little scrutiny of this matter might benefit the Department and would certainly benefit the tenants.

I do not know whether the Minister has considered the point that in view of the much higher cost of acquiring land that cost should be added to ensure that the subsidy is paid on a higher amount than £1,560. I think he should consider that. Until very recently when the local authorities in the rural areas built a house, they usually built it on an acre of land. We now find that in the Dunboyne-Dunshaughlin area, an acre of land costs around £2,000. It is impossible to give an acre of land per house, and even if four houses are built at a cost of £500 per site, an agricultural labourer with £8.2 a week finds it extremely difficult to pay the rent he has to pay on a house costing £2,250, plus a £500 site charge. Even when the subsidy to which the Minister referred is paid in full, it will be very hard for him to meet that rent, and it automatically falls back on the rates. The Minister might have another look at that before Committee Stage.

Section 44 deals with something which I considered ridiculous and still consider ridiculous. It provides that the Minister will be empowered to pay a special subsidy to county councils for a house in a rural area for a person who derives his livelihood or a substantial proportion of it from agriculture and who occupies land the rateable valuation of which does not exceed £5.

I do not know whether the Minister in that section was bringing in special legislation for Donegal. It appears as if it is special legislation for Donegal, Mayo, parts of Galway and Kerry, and perhaps some far-flung portions of Cork, but certainly he did not intend that this should apply to anyone in the midlands or the east of the country. I do not think there should be special legislation for different sections of the country. I objected to it last week in relation to social welfare, and I object now to special legislation being introduced in relation to housing for different sections of the community. Legislation should apply all round.

Let us take my own county. In Meath, a poor law valuation of £5 would represent a holding of four acres. I do not know what the Minister thinks of a man who is employed as a farm labourer and has four acres of land which he got from the Land Commission. Until a few years ago the Land Commission gave five acres which would cut him out completely. Does the Minister consider that a man with a valuation of £5 should be ruled out?

I think the Minister might possibly have another look at that. We in County Meath believe that a man with a valuation of less than £20 is eligible for a county council cottage. If he is eligible for a county council cottage with a valuation up to £20, how does the Minister think that somebody who has only a £5 valuation should be deprived of the additional grant? In effect, what he is saying is that while the county council at a cost of something around £2,000, or over it, are supposed to build a county council cottage for a man with £20 valuation, if a man has over £5 valuation, the Minister will not help him to build his own house. He might as well be a man with up to £60 valuation. I do not think that is right at all and I would suggest to the Minister that the £5 should be increased to £20.

Again, in relation to sections 56 and 57, the explanatory memorandum reads:

To ensure orderly development of housing estates, the powers of housing authorities to provide roads, shops, open spaces, and sites for churches, schools, offices, factories, etc., as well as developed sites for private housing will be clarified.

This is a section about which, while we may agree with it, the Minister would have to be terribly careful in its administration. There is the danger that sites which would be available for certain purposes would reappear as something different. Speculators, and indeed we have sharks here as well as everywhere else, who are waiting around for easy pickings would be able to collect a substantial amount of profit on sites to be developed by local authorities under a Government grant. The Minister will be well advised to watch out for that.

In section 58, I am glad the Minister has decided that the provisions governing the management and control of local authority houses will not prohibit sub-letting. I always thought there was something rather unchristian about the fact that a man, living with his wife in a council house, whose son got married and had nowhere to live and was inclined to go back and live with the father and mother, if they were prepared to take him in, could not take in his son because if he did, it would be a breach of the tenancy agreement and they could be evicted by the local authority. Thousands of people do this and take a chance on it but the county manager, again with the Minister's consent, prevents those people from being rehoused. I am glad that has been cleared up. In my own county, this regulation has not been in operation for a long time and, except in exceptional circumstances, it has not been applied.

Section 60 rather intrigues me. The Minister is of two minds and he tries to put the two minds into the Bill at the one time. It says:

Instead of being prescribed by the Minister, the scale of priorities in the allocation of houses will be settled by housing authorities within broad lines laid down by statute.

In fact, in the Bill where reference is made to this, it is pointed out that, as well, the recommendation of the county medical officer of health must be taken into consideration. Would the Minister tell me whether he proposes to allow local authorities to make their own bye-laws for the purpose of allocating houses or whether he proposes to continue the situation where the county manager can say: "No matter what you want to do, the medical officer recommends that so-and-so must get a house"? Therefore, he gets it, even if everybody else thinks it is wrong that he should get it. Perhaps we could have this clarified. It is an important provision and important provisions such as this should be dealt with in the proper way.

In relation to section 76 the explanatory memorandum reads:

Specific power will be given to housing authorities to acquire land compulsorily in advance where the Minister is satisfied that there is a reasonable expectation that the land will be required by the authority to attain the objectives of their building programme.

May I ask one simple question on this? Will the Minister get his information, as to whether or not the land is required, from the manager or from the members of the local authority? If the manager is asked, he will say in 99 cases out of 100 that the land is not required. If the members of the local authority are asked, they will say the land is required. That section is not worth the paper it is written on, unless there is some way by which the manager can find out whether the members do in fact want this land acquired. That is one thing which should be cleared up quickly.

In sections 6 and 87 there is reference to the question of the land which has been acquired by a local authority for the purpose of building houses. Portion of it is made available so that further houses, while it is still rented can be built on the site. At the present time it must be offered back to the original landowner or his representative who made the land available in the first place. It is proposed to repeal that and I think that is a good idea. It was terribly outdated to find that in the case of somebody who perhaps 80 or 90 years ago made available a site for a labourer's cottage, now his descendants, or distant relatives, or others not related to him at all, are being asked whether they want the half an acre back. One will find the odd contrary fellow who will say he does want it. Thereby he prevents a decent deserving person from having a house built. I am glad the Minister is removing that. There might have been merit in it at first but there is no merit in it now.

On Chapter III of Part VI, it says:

Sales of cottages under the Labourers Act, 1936, will continue for a limited period after which all sales of dwellings by housing authorities will come under the same statutory provisions.

This is one about which we shall have to be careful. People who had houses built many years ago and who had been living in them for 60 or 70 years or more may be very anxious to vest their houses, but the local authority will not allow them to be vested until the repairs are carried out. I see that a period of 18 months is allowed during which these people get an opportunity of making up their minds. If they have not vested in 18 months, there is included in the new tenancy agreement the additional charge, whatever it is likely to be, for repairs or improvements and that can be the basis on which the vesting order is made.

Again, I am aware of the situation where local authorities have been refusing to vest cottages on the ground that they are not in good repair and, at the same time, refusing to repair the houses under the guise that no money is available, that enough money is not available or that there is too long a waiting list, and so on. This is a section about which the Minister will have to be careful. He will have to go into it to see that grave hardship is not imposed by the action of officials who may deliberately hold up repairs to a house, knowing that, if they do, after 18 months the unfortunate people will have to vest and pay much higher repayments than they would if it were done at first.

In addition to that, we have the question of appeals. The Minister proposes that where appeals have been submitted against the condition of the cottage when it is vested, those appeals should be subject to a deposit of a certain amount, which is returnable if the appeals are found to be in order, and not returnable, I assume, if the appeals are found not to be in order. Perhaps the Minister could tell me, but perhaps it is not a fair question, whether it is not a fact that that sort of thinking comes from one body only, that is, from the City and County Managers Association. These people admit that they are being pestered by people who submit appeals to the Minister. I think the object of this is to try to frighten people, particularly old people, who vest their houses, who have not very much money and who are anxious to have certain repairs carried out, away from appealing to the Minister, as they are entitled by law to do.

In dealing with this section, I felt the Minister could have been a little more helpful because he is aware of the farcical situation that exists at present where somebody applies for repairs to a house before vesting it; the house is examined and in some cases, repairs, or some of them, may be carried out and the local authority officials declare that the house is in a fit state. Up to 1958 the tenant had to sign a document that he was satisfied with the repairs. That is no longer necessary, but if the council decide the house is in a fit state, the house is vested and the tenant then has the right to appeal. Eventually, the Minister sends down an inspector to examine the house and he may find that what the tenant said was right and that the repairs must be carried out. A copy of the notice is sent to the local authority and to the tenant listing the repairs that must be carried out and ultimately some of the repairs may be carried out. Then who inspects the house? The original official who declared in the first place that no repairs were necessary.

That position is so stupid that somebody should have realised it was the wrong way to do it. I know that the Minister in reply to a Parliamentary Question said to me that the cost of sending down an inspector the second time would be too great. No matter how great the cost, the repairs, when they have been carried out, should be inspected by somebody other than the same official who carried out the first inspection. Such a provision should be included in some way in the section. If the tenant is to be made to pay a deposit before he submits an appeal, he should have some right to ensure that the repairs which were reasonably ordered have been carried out in the proper way.

There is another thing which the Minister has apparently overlooked, that is, that very often when the tenant dies, the new tenant may be the widow, son or daughter of the original tenant. In that case the rent very often is increased and increased far more than some of us think it should be. This also is affected by sections 97 to 101. There is one point on which the Minister may be surprised at my comment, that is, the question of the right of the tenant to purchase the annuity by lump sum. This is something which has to be treated very carefully. While I am all in favour of the tenant having this right in regard to the cottage in which he has lived for many years, I believe it would be entirely wrong if as a result of this section people in certain areas were able to get possession after a short number of years of cottages and were then able to obtain from the prospective purchaser the cost of redemption of the annuity and sell the cottage to people who were never intended to occupy such houses.

The Minister may say that provision is made that the local authority should ensure that this cannot happen but the Minister is aware that when the annuity is redeemed, the right to determine whether or not the purchaser is the right person is completely removed. This is so terribly serious that there is only one way in which it can be dealt with. If the Minister insists on putting in this lump sum, I suggest he should insert a section giving the original builder, the local authority, the right of first refusal to that house. If that is included, it will solve a lot of the difficulty but if not, there is grave danger that some houses in certain rather choice areas will pass into the hands of people for whom they were never intended.

Unfortunately some of us have had experience of a house being built many years ago on a farm where the farmer gave authority to the local authority to build a house for a farm worker. The house has passed into the hands of a son and the farm has passed into the hands of the farmer's son who is not as decent a man as the father—which sometimes happens— and the farmer purchases the house. In one case I know of, he knocked in a side wall and made a stable out of the premises. That sort of thing should not be allowed. He did it because he did not want a labourer's cottage on the land and his way to get over that was to repossess it and make a stable out of it. That is an isolated case but it could happen again.

It is to the great relief of everybody that the Minister has removed the absolute prohibition on the subdivision of cottage plots and has allowed the county council to give a loan on the half-plot for the purpose of having a house erected. This is something about which a number of us had rows with the county managers and I am glad that this has been done and that the managers are now seeing the light of day.

One thing about which I am not quite clear in regard to the duty of a county council to put a cottage into good repair and sanitary condition before making a vesting order is "will be modified to require them only to put the cottage into good structural condition and this requirement will be applied also to the sale of urban houses." Where is the catch in this? Surely there is something meant which I cannot understand. I should be very glad if the Minister would let me know to what exactly it refers. In addition, I notice that "power will be included for the Minister to prescribe a fee to accompany appeals on the carrying out of work under the section", which is section 102.

What is the meaning of the statement in regard to section 108 which says that "housing authorities will be enabled specifically to provide technical assistance for the provision of sites and dwelling by other persons, including housing associations or cooperative societies"? What kind of technical assistance does the Minister visualise? Further on, it says that "in consequence of the Bill, section 201 of the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878 which requires sanitary authorities to make contracts the value of which is over £50 in writing, and where the contract is for £100 or more, to advertise for tenders and take sufficient security for due performance, will cease to apply". Does that mean that in future the manager may not have to advertise or is there something I have missed?

Another thing which could also be clarified in Part I of the interpretation is where it says: "As at present county councils, county borough corporations, borough corporations, urban district councils and town commissioners will be housing authorities. Town commissioners will, however, not be housing authorities for the purpose of making supplementary grants." Further down, it says that towns with a population of under 1,000 are in fact rural areas. Does the Minister mean that in future the supplementary grants which are at present, in our county, paid for the towns will in future have to be borne by the town which has a population of over 1,000? Is that the meaning of that section? No? I am glad that is the position.

There is one other matter. There is a regulation whereby if the Land Commission take over land, they must make available to the local authority, if so required, land for housing. It is proposed to repeal that. Why? Surely that provision should not be interfered with?

To sum up, while we welcome the Bill as an attempt by the Minister to brush up housing legislation, it still falls very far short of what most of us would wish. For instance, in relation to land acquisition procedure, by agreement and compulsory purchase, it proposes very little improvement. Could the Minister not make some arrangement by which this sort of thing could have a time limit on it and so ensure that there would be none of this long delay which we have at present?

Furthermore, no provision is made to acquire land for private building in order to protect the public from soaring land prices. We all know that builders are speculating in areas which are most likely to be developed not alone in Dublin but in towns and districts throughout the country. They are attempting to acquire land and are using their intelligence and money to acquire land which is likely to become building land in a short time. They then use the land to supply much needed building sites to private people and charge very excessive prices for it.

One thing which I think is very important, and it is not provided for in the Bill, is the question of staff to deal with the situation. I think at present we have in every county a situation where, no matter how big the housing problem is, the county manager will refuse to employ extra staff to deal with it. That means that, no matter how anxious anybody may be to have the work done, he can stymie it and sit tight and say that the existing staff must deal with it. The Minister's Department are as much to blame in this as the local authorities.

Deputies are only too well aware of the present position where applications for construction and reconstruction grants are being held up by his Department mainly because they say they cannot get engineering staff and if they have the engineering staff they are unable to process even the paying orders. They apparently have not the staff to ensure, after the order for payment is made, that it can be paid out in reasonable time. I am not blaming the existing staff. I am sure they are doing as much as and more than is expected of them. The engineering staff are working all sorts of hours to catch up on the backlog. However, it is very hard to explain to a person who has built a new house or has reconstructed his house or has brought water and sewerage to it, when he comes to you—accompained usually by the builder—that the Department of Local Government have not got enough staff to deal with his application. This is something which the Minister could, before ever this Bill is passed, do something about. I know it is not because he wants to do it that it is happening. He says it is not because of a shortage of money. That is usually the reason given, that the Government have not the money and therefore they are holding it up: I would not accuse the Minister of giving that excuse. I think it is true that the wheels of this particular organisation are getting clogged up with claims for payment which the claimants are not getting. One fact which the Minister seems to have overlooked is that this sort of thing is doing more harm to housing improvement in the country even than the fact that people cannot get money from the building societies.

I should like the Minister to explain fully the implications of the decision to grant a subsidy of one-third of loan charges to encourage local authorities to develop land for private building. Does the Minister include the cost of the land in that or is it only the development of the site?

Mr. Clinton

The service of sites.

Mr. James Tully

Does it include the cost of the land?

Mr. Blaney

You cannot service what you have not got.

Mr. James Tully

I should be very glad to use the information at a later date.

Mr. Blaney

It would be subject to a cost limit. It will not be just one-third of any price for any site.

Mr. James Tully

I know—the £2,000: that is understandable. But it is intended, where there is a reasonable cost, to include it. I think that about covers all the points I wanted to make on this Stage. As I said at the start, this is a county councillors' Bill. This is one which the county councillors should know more about than anybody else. It is a Bill also which during Committee Stage here in the autumn or in the winter, should have a very interesting passage through this House.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I usually welcome any legislation that is——

Sir Anthony Esmonde

——introduced by Fianna Fáil.

Mr. P.J. Burke

——introduced for the benefit of the people I represent.

Mr. Coughlan

Ballyfermot.

Mr. P.J. Burke

Yes, my dear man. I have plenty of friends out there, too. I listened to the speech of my colleague, and an ordinary good type of man he is, a decent man, Deputy Clinton.

Mr. Clinton

That is a good start.

Mr. P.J. Burke

He has had a good deal of experience. He is a good attender at the county council meetings. However, I never heard him so impracticable as I heard him this morning. As a matter of fact, it would be better if you could forget that he is a practical county councillor the same as Deputy James Tully, who made such a very intelligent and constructive contribution to this Bill this morning. I am sorry for my colleague, Deputy Clinton, because he is a good fellow, but his contribution today was all cod.

Mr. Coughlan

Cod.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

The Party loyalties are obvious.

Mr. P.J. Burke

Nothing wrong was ever done except by this Party and then, if you do not mind, he drew me and said, in effect: "Deputy Burke said there was not the price of a bag of cement left when we left office."

Mr. Clinton

The bag of cement, not the price.

Mr. P.J. Burke

As a matter of fact, what Deputy Burke said was true. I shall refer to it. There were 1,000 loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts outstanding in County Dublin. Blame yourself, Deputy Clinton, for drawing me.

Mr. Coughlan

You are an innocent chap: there is no doubt about it.

Mr. P.J. Burke

In County Dublin 1,000 houses were built and the builders and the workers went overnight out of the country. There were 1,800 houses idle in the Dublin Corporation area as a result of that. The machinery of government failed.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

What is the position now?

Mr. P.J. Burke

I hope it will never fail again either in your or my time.

Mr. Clinton

You are fairly close to it now.

Mr. P.J. Burke

God forbid that we should ever have to go through that again.

Mr. Treacy

It is creaking badly at the moment.

Mr. P.J. Burke

No. The financial position of the country is sound. I should like our friends, nationally and internationally, to know that.

Mr. Treacy

Ask our glorified moneylenders.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I am grateful to the Deputy for his co-operation in helping me to make my speech.

Mr. Coughlan

Is Deputy Burke not in a very forgiving mood this morning?

Mr. P.J. Burke

That was the position in which we found ourselves in County Dublin in 1956 and 1957. I was co-opted a member of the Dublin County Council in 1959. In 1956, I put down a question in this House which was very relevant. In Lucan, 88 houses were to be built. This was the last straw. This was all the houses that were to be built. All the other housing machinery had closed up at this time. The reply of the Minister for Local Government was that the Departmental inspector on the advice of the medical officer for County Dublin, had stated that only 44 houses were needed. That was not the case at all. There were at least 88 houses needed. Why was such a reply given? It was simply to stop people getting houses. That was the type of stuff we were up against. I am sorry my colleague across the House should attempt to tell us what we have done and what we should have done.

Mr. Clinton

The records are there.

Mr. P.J. Burke

There was no machinery there to acquire an acre of land.

Mr. Coughlan

You put the skids under them.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I tried to. We had not an earthly chance. Now the position is a healthier one. We hope to have most of 322 houses completed at the end of this month. We have a contract out for 297 more and we have acquired about 400 acres. If Deputy Clinton pulls his weight with me we shall do far better. Having had my pound of flesh from my colleague across the floor, I shall now come to the practical side.

One of the impediments to better progress in house building is the slowness of the machinery available to local authorities for the acquisition of land. I tabled a motion at a Dublin County Council meeting recently requesting the law agent and the manager to go into the whole matter of land acquisition with a view to speeding up the procedure. From the time a decision is taken to acquire land until development is started under present conditions, three years elapse. That is in respect of compulsory acquisition. If we get sites voluntarily the legal machinery is still slow, even in crisis conditions. The Bill before us has a section which will speed that up. A lot of local authority work in the matter of housing is very frustrating because of delays in land acquisition.

Accordingly, I welcome any provision that will speed that up. I welcome as well the section which provides that county council plots can be divided in order to have an extra house built on each. In County Dublin we have a number of acre and half-acre plots going to waste. While certain county councils have succeeded in building houses on vested plots throughout the country, in County Dublin our legal adviser has told us we have no authority to do it. This Bill will give us that authority: it will enable us to build houses on these plots, provided by tenants who want to house married sons or daughters.

During the past year, the Minister for Local Government has acted on appeals by me and other Deputies that the two-third subsidy should be given to county council sub-tenants being rehoused. We had quite a number of such sub-tenants in both city and county. They are being given the two-thirds subsidy now. One section of the community not considered in that respect are the caravan dwellers and I am most anxious the two-third subsidy should be extended to people forced through bad housing conditions to live in caravans.

Mr. Coughlan

The subsidy is not given to sub-tenants.

Mr. P.J. Burke

In Dublin County Council we give it to sub-tenants now. I am referring to people being rehoused from caravans They get only one-third subsidy and we are anxious to have the two-thirds subsidy extended to them.

Mr. Coughlan

That will be news to the people of Limerick. During the past ten years, we have been trying to get this subsidy for sub-tenants but we have not been able to do anything. The corporation are not authorised and the Minister told us in Limerick that we could not do it.

Mr. P.J. Burke

On the question of the £450 Government grant and a similar local authority grant for farmers whose valuation does not exceed £25, I should like to emphasise that in County Dublin a farm of £25 valuation is very small, especially in the hills in south County Dublin. There, farmers must subsidise their small farms by working on the roads and elsewhere. They try to carry on the farm in the evenings after work. They might have 17 acres or only ten acres of old mountain. Because they were not making their living solely from the land they were not entitled to this grant. The Minister has extended it to them and this will benefit a lot of my people in south County Dublin.

Mr. Clinton

Not to talk of mine.

Mr. P.J. Burke

It is not too bad at all. The section dealing with rehousing of old people is very useful. While Dublin Corporation have availed of existing provisions in this respect, Dublin County Council have not and we hope they will do better under the new legislation.

I should like to reply to another point made by Deputy Clinton. The Minister for Local Government has 5,000 houses under construction. Of these he is responsible for 3,000.

Mr. Clinton

It is about time his conscience hit him.

Mr. P.J. Burke

We have more than 2,000 under construction in the county.

Mr. Clinton

They will not be built for four years.

An Ceann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. P.J. Burke

The Minister has been urging us to carry on with the good work. I remind Deputy Clinton of this in case he begins to make speeches in the country. I want to have it on record.

Another section in the Bill deals with dower houses. Of course, Deputy Coughlan would not know anything about them.

Mr. Coughlan

Not a thing. County Dublin will do me.

Mr. P.J. Burke

The dower houses will be very much appreciated by people in rural Ireland It will stop the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law having a little pick at each other. I shall not delay the House going into the Bill section by section. I shall do that on Committee Stage. I welcome the Bill generally, particularly the statement of the Minister that there will be an additional £5 million available for housing in the next year.

Mr. Clinton

It is £4,500,000.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I look at housing as being as essential as hospitals. If a man has a good home, he is a happy man. If a man leaves a hospital and returns to an overcrowded house or rooms, the good work done in the hospital will be undone. We have had such experience in the city and county of Dublin. It is our hope that every obstacle in the way of the local authority will be removed so that the building of houses can be expedited when the necessary money is available. I cannot over emphasise the urgency of the work that local authorities have to do on behalf of the people.

The Minister is authorising local authorities to overrule decisions of the manager and the medical officer in the allocation of houses. While we welcome that decision, we do not want to revert to the pre-1941 position when a tenant got a house only because he had a number of councillors to vote that he should be given a house. I should not like to see that kind of thing recurring. In this democracy, if any of us feels that any man has been wronged by a medical officer, the decision should be left to the member of the local authority and no bureaucrat should overrule that right. I have nothing to say of our county manager. He has his own job to do. The medical officer has his job to do. Irrespective of who is medical officer or county manager, I am all for upholding the right of the elected representative to have a say sometimes. On a few occasions we had to stand shoulder to shoulder to prevent evictions for which there was no necessity. While we did not want to interfere, we did it in the interests of justice and I am very proud of any act of that kind in defence of our people. While it is very essential to have the managerial system——

An Ceann Comhairle

Well, now.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I am dealing with the matter only as it relates to this Housing Bill.

Mr. Coughlan

To County Dublin.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I am not speaking of any particular manager. I say that public representatives should have that right. If they so desire, and if they think the work they expect to be done is not being done by the county manager or his officials, their resolution should be final. If we are elected by the people to carry out legislation.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is travelling far away from the Housing Bill.

Mr. P.J. Burke

Thank you for your kindness.

Mr. Barrett

Deputy Burke was rejoicing about the new powers being given to members of local authorities in reference to the management and control of houses. He read section 58 of the Bill. If he had gone a little further, he would have found out there is the usual catch imposed in such things by bureaucrats, as to the manner in which local authorities can look after their business. Deputy Burke evidently came to the conclusion, having read section 58 subsection (1), that the management and control of any dwelling of which the housing authority are owner shall be vested in and exercised by the authority. If poor Deputy Burke went on to subsection (4), he would have found that this was entirely subject to such regulations as may be made by the Minister, and the regulations which may be made by the Minister are profuse. They are specific in some cases but finally they come down to this, that the regulations which may be made by the Minister may include such other matters as the Minister may consider necessary or expedient for the purpose of securing the proper and efficient management of such dwellings. It is not "considered necessary or expedient by Deputy Burke in his capacity as a local representative"; it is not "considered necessary or expedient by Deputy Barrett in his capacity as a local representative." or "by the Lord Mayor of Cork in his capacity as a local representative." It is by somebody who advises the Minister as to how these people should secure the proper and efficient management of such dwellings.

I want to tell the Minister again that I resent that as much as possible. Deputy Tully said earlier that this was a Bill for local representatives. I believe it is. I look around me and see many local representatives on both sides of the House. If the local representatives who are also members of this House are not capable of legislating for the manner in which they should secure the proper and efficient management of local authority dwellings, I do not know who is capable of doing it. Evidently, the Department thinks that there is somebody somewhere who is better equipped to deal with these matters than the men and women in this House who, day after day, have coming in to them the people who are living in these houses and people who would like to live in these houses, if given the opportunity. I doubt if the gentleman who will make these regulations ever met anywhere any of these people who have any of these problems with which these regulations should deal.

Mr. Coughlan

He is nameless and faceless.

Mr. Barrett

I would ask the Minister to do something in connection with this matter. I would ask him to take over on behalf of the local representatives of whom Deputy Tully spoke in this House, the right for these local representatives to legislate specifically here instead of giving to some unknown person the opportunity at some future date to bring into operation something which has the force of law and which, of course, in theory, we can alter but which is not usually altered and which is very often overlooked until some day the manager throws it down in front of you in the local authority and says: "These are the regulations". That may be the first time that even members of this House see the regulations. I would appeal to the Minister to do some rethinking on that matter.

Deputy Tully dealt with section 58. He rejoiced, as indeed I would rejoice if it were true, in the provision which, it is alleged in the explanatory memorandum, will not prohibit sub-letting. If that were true, my heart would rejoice. If that were true, the heart of the Lord Mayor of Cork, who is on the other side of the House, would rejoice. There are people who are anxious to do something that any ordinary father or mother would do. When their sons and daughters get married and come back from the honeymoon and have nowhere to go, they want to bring them into the home, and very often have room for them, but even if there were three vacant bedrooms, they are not permitted to bring them into the house under the present dispensation.

It is alleged in the explanatory memorandum that section 58 is curing that. I would ask anybody in any part of the House to read section 58 and show us where that is indicated. It is certainly not indicated specifically and I do not think it is even indicated by implication. I would like the Minister to deal with that matter and to show us where exactly section 58 purports to do away with the prohibition of sub-letting.

I would certainly welcome such a provision if it were in section 58 and there are certain provisions in the Bill that I welcome. There is no need for me to mention them because they have been mentioned by Deputy Clinton and Deputy James Tully.

I welcome the Bill generally in the sense that it is at least an attempt to codify the housing law but there is no good in this House passing this Bill of 116 sections and four Schedules because it will do nothing to alter the situation in regard to housing unless there is a change on the part of the Minister and the Minister's Party.

When we said here over the past few years there was an emergency about housing, that the people were not being housed and that there was a backlog of would-be tenants that was growing daily, we were told that housing was non-productive. As Deputy Clinton said today, the situation in regard to housing is entirely due to the deliberate neglect of the Government Party.

We are told we are confusing the issue and that we are trying to confuse the people. The only person who is confused about this matter is the Minister. Nobody else is the slightest bit confused. The people in Cork are not confused. The Fianna Fáil Deputies from Cork city know them as well as I do because they are trooping up their stairs as they have been trooping up mine. There is nobody confused about the housing situation except the Minister who sits down there and says there is no emergency.

If the Minister says that, he does not think it, because the Minister has been impelled by the emergency situation that has arisen—and he has spoken of it in terms of an emergency—to implore Cork Corporation to go into a consortium with Limerick Corporation and Shannon Airport to try to get houses built for the people whom the Minister has overlooked for the past eight years. I am glad that at last the Government are departing from the unrealistic attitude which they adopted in the First and Second Programmes that housing was non-productive. I am glad the Minister for Finance has stated in answer to a question on 16th June that he would regard housing as productive.

That might indicate a change of heart on the part of the Government Party but, no matter what the Minister may say, no matter how the Minister may interrupt Deputy Clinton about the brake that was put on housing, no matter how much he may deny it, there is an inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the fact that, in the case of every local authority from the day the Fianna Fáil Party went back into power, there was a falling off in housing. I would not mind if it just happened in Cork Corporation, if it just happened in Dublin Corporation or in Waterford Corporation or in Limerick Corporation, but when it has happened in every one of the local bodies almost simultaneously with the change of Government, I ask myself would any intelligent, logical man come to the conclusion that simply because there was a change of Government, some strange change came over every one of these local authorities. The Minister is trying to wash his hands of this. He is not being fair and he is not stating the facts when he says to the local authorities it is their responsibility to build houses.

The Deputies from Cork city know as well as I do the efforts that were made by Cork Corporation to build houses. The last year the inter-Party Government were in office, there were 491 houses built in Cork city by Cork Corporation by traditional methods. This week there was a meeting with the Building Federation in Cork city and the City Manager informed the Building Federation that we could not hope to get more than 100 houses in any year in the future under traditional methods and that we had not got 200 houses a year under traditional methods over the past few years. When the inter-Party Government went out of power, there was machinery under which, by traditional methods, 500 houses a year could be built in places like Cork city and more perhaps in places like Dublin. The deliberate neglect of the Government has led to the situation in which we now find ourselves.

The White Paper indicated that about 50,000 houses would be needed to replace unfit dwellings, together with a figure of some 8,000 more thereafter to replace houses which had reached the ultimate stage of deterioration. It is all very well to pass a fine fat Bill, turn it into an Act and say: "There you are. This is the machinery by which you can do it." There is no point in that if the machinery is to continue to be deliberately hampered by the system of employing two different sets of experts to draw up plans of a simple nature for two terraces of houses, one of them employed by the local authority and the other by the central authority. The only possible function the second lot have fulfilled from my experience of them—and I am speaking from long experience as a member of the Cork Corporation—is that they can delay indefinitely the implementation of the plans by the local authority experts. The plans for a terrace of houses are sent up and they are sent back and you are told you must put a mansard roof at that end and a mansard roof at the other end. The plans are sent back again and the mansard roof is put at both ends, but then it is discovered that something else has to be put in the centre.

There is no doubt in the world that there were deliberate delays in the Department of Local Government which have succeeded in frustrating the wishes of every section of political thought in Cork Corporation. Year after year we religiously set a target for the City Manager. We told him one year we wanted 400 houses. We got about 221. The next year we told him, because our spirits were depressed as a result of our earlier experience, that we wanted 300, although we knew it was not sufficient to meet the needs of the people. We got only 200. We have got only 200 each year and I do not think we got 200 this year. This is contrary to the wishes of every—and I mean "every"—elected member of Cork Corporation. It is not due to any malaise or any ennui on the part of the members of Cork Corporation and we must seek further to find the reason.

What I am afraid of is that under this Bill we shall continue to have the same attitude from the Department. It is all very well to say we intend to eliminate antiquated formalities and procedures. One of the most antiquated formalities I can imagine is that two different sets of officials, the experts to whom I have already referred, have to see the same set of drawings, the implication being that, of course, the experts employed by Cork Corporation and other public bodies are not capable of drawing up a simple plan for a three-bedroomed house with bathroom, toilet, sitting-room, and so on.

Another matter with which I want to deal is the provision for the raising of the ceiling for loans and grants. If the Department want to find work for the officials who, at the moment, are employed vetting the plans sent up by local authorites, they could well be diverted to dealing with applications for loans. Everybody here has from time to time come across the situation in which a man has been promised a loan. He had to go to the bank and, while waiting for the loan, he was at quite considerable expense procuring money on which he had to pay interest.

In view of the emergency situation in regard to housing and the fact that so many of our houses are crumbling from old age, and I include in those residential houses in the centre of cities like Dublin, Cork, and other places, it is very important that the Department should insist that any house which is at the moment being used as a dwelling should not be converted in any circumstances into anything else.

Dwelling houses are still being turned into flats, offices and so on in the city of Cork. That means the corporation have to go out and develop virgin land and then send people right out into the country, far removed from their places of work and from schools. The only alternative to that is developing schools and factories in these new areas. The Department should insist, as far as possible, that people who are living in the centre of a city, in houses which are crumbling, should not be rehoused out in the country.

I welcome the provision in regard to old people, but I think this is too little and it is coming too late. I think the Minister is simply shrugging off his responsibility and passing it on to local authorities. These old people are not the responsibility of the local authority, though they will become that under this Bill because there is provision whereby the local authority may, by loan, guarantee or periodic contribution, assist organisations providing houses for elderly people.

What are we doing for the newly-weds? The Department must be quite tired of listening to me on this subject, pointing out that, as far as this Christian Parliament is concerned, no provision whatsoever is made for a man who is getting married to enable him to start married life in a house of his own. The provisions in section 58 will be of some assistance, but, from the point of view of cities generally, nothing is being done for newly-weds and nothing is promised to them in this Bill. As far as this Bill is concerned, as far as this Parliament is concerned, as far as Government policy is concerned, the sacrament of matrimony does not exist: young people should not get married unless they are prepared to live on the side of the street, in a caravan, or something like that. It is impossible for them to get houses.

The Bill, in making provision for subsidies for lifts in these six-storey blocks of flats, envisages something which is not at all popular in this country. It is certainly not popular in the constituency I represent. People do not like these high-storeyed buildings. The building of flats in Cork has led to the telling of more lies by tenants than anything else because they will think up any excuse to get out of a flat. We have no six-storey flats. Our highest is three storeys. If this Bill indicates a change of policy on the part of the Department in relation to higher blocks of flats, I advise the Minister now that it would not be judicious for him to proceed along these lines. I do not know what the situation in Dublin is. Perhaps people have grown accustomed to the idea but the reaction to flats in Cork and, I believe, in the country generally, is not very satisfactory.

I want to repeat now what I said at the beginning. There are many aspects of the Bill which commend themselves to me but it is no good having something down in black and white unless there is a change not just in the letter of our legislation but also in the spirit of its administration. It is very important that we should get that change. The Government are being driven at last to a realisation of the dissatisfaction of the people. It is a good thing to know they are at least talking now in terms of emergency. We on this side of the House have been talking in those terms for the past five years. It is a good thing to know that the Minister for Finance, whatever about the Minister for Local Government, is now talking about housing in terms of productivity. Up to this housing has not been regarded as productive. There is some hope now that something will be done for our house-hungry people. Unfortunately it is going to be done at a time when there is no money available, at a time when the Department and those looking for houses are going to find it harder even than they found it at any time during the past eight years, during which the Department twiddled their thumbs whilst the people were crying out for houses.

Mr. Treacy

We, in the Labour Party, have always contended that the rehousing of our people is one of the most important social services we can provide. There has been a good deal of talk about this housing Bill over the past six months. We and the people generally and, in particular, those directly involved in this dilemma in relation to housing, had a right to expect a practical, realistic measure which would take full account of the size of the problem and positive steps to remedy it. At the moment there are over 63,000 dwellings unfit for habitation. Here, in the city of Dublin, there are at least 8,000 people on the waiting list.

According to the Government's White Paper, we require at least 13,000 houses per year. In recent years our rate of erection has been less than half that. One can see the magnitude of the problem and the gap that has to be filled. Where housing is concerned, the country is in a state of disquiet. The Government seem unsure of both purpose and role. That is particularly evident in housing. The blatant, cocksure attitude of Government Ministers in the last election no longer survives. During the election they stated all was well with our economy; it was strong and viable. Today the veneer of smug complacency has cracked and the Government have at last been forced to face the stark reality of an economic crisis.

The signs and portents hem us in on every side. The economy is running down and that is revealed particularly in the housing situation. The evidence is there for all to see. We have had in recent times a spiralling of prices generally which is not due to the attitude of any one section of the community, or lack of responsibility on the part of any one section, but has come about as a direct result of Government policy and was precipitated primarily by the introduction of the turnover tax two years ago. This increase has shown itself most particularly in housing. The price of sites has at least trebled in the past 18 months and has quadrupled in many cases. The cost of the average three-roomed house has gone up by £1,000 in recent times. Despite all these compelling factors, it is becoming more and more difficult for the average person to secure a new house or to meet the kind of rent the local authority is obliged to impose. There is nothing in this Bill to give relief to these people.

We welcome some of the proposals in the Bill but the fact is that in these times of high prices the State and local authority grants for new house building have not been increased. Neither is there greater aid to local authorities and this is to be greatly deplored. I think it is true that back in 1948 those housing grants were fixed at £275. There has been a colossal increase in the cost of living since then and it is extremely alarming to realise that the Government have not recognised the need to increase these grants. The only category for whom extra grants have been provided are farmers who can now get a maximum grant of £450. The average citizen can still only hope to get £275, just as he could get very many years ago. It is inadequate, to say the least, and it is greatly to be regretted that the Minister did not avail of this opportunity to bring the measure up to date by providing realistic financial aid as an essential part of its backing. Without that, this voluminous document is worth nothing.

It may speed up the acquisition of sites; it may eliminate a lot of red tape in very many sectors. It does good work in correlating many antiquated Housing Acts but it does nothing practical by way of providing much-needed financial aid to accelerate housing progress. Indeed, rather than provide more financial aid for this purpose, it tends to pass the buck of responsibility to the local authorities. Instead of the Central Fund coming to the rescue of housing, the attitude of the Minister and his Department, in recent months in particular, is that financial responsibility must be passed back more and more to the local authority ratepayers. This was particularly evident from the attitude adopted a short time ago on the introduction of his Estimate when the Minister had the brazen audacity to suggest that rents of pre-1950 houses should be increased because, in his opinion and that of his advisers, these rents were uneconomic, these tenants were getting away with something. He sent out a clarion call to all county managers that they should forthwith take steps to increase the rents of all these pre-1950 houses. There must be from 50,000 to 60,000 tenants of such houses in our community, and perhaps many more.

When one compares these houses built, say, in the 1930s with the modern dwellings of 1965, they fare poorly. One type may now be regarded as substandard; in very many instances they were badly built. They lack all the modern amenites of bathrooms, indoor flush toilets, terrazzo floors, built-in presses and all these things that are regarded as normal in an up-to-date house. Yet, the Minister compares these houses with dwellings of the modern standard and seeks to impose on one large section of the community an unfair increase in rent. I am glad to say that when that sort of imposition was attempted in the past, it failed, and I believe any attempt by the Government to increase the rents of these houses will be resisted with all the power and influence that local tenant societies can muster. I believe the attempt will be defeated and frustrated. In many cases these substandard houses are now showing serious signs of deterioration, and if a fair examination were carried out by impartial engineers, many of the pre-1950 houses would, and should be condemned.

I have often wondered why local authorities had the audacity to try to collect rents from some of these houses, cold, damp, dilapidated dwellings, comprising nothing more than four walls and a partition which purported to provide rooms. That attitude of mind in the Minister is to be greatly deplored. I hope he will desist from his attempts to impose these increases he has mentioned, and if and when such an imposition is attempted, I trust it will be resisted.

The previous speaker spoke of the necessity to do something practical in respect of the housing of newly-weds. I have always maintained that newly-weds were not fairly treated and that the attitude of many county managers and housing authorities towards them was quite wrong. They are on record as saying that most of us, when married, had to wait a long time before getting houses. It was assumed that their attitude meant that newly-weds are expected to go through a long purgatory of waiting until such time as some children arrive in the family before they can hope for a new house. That is no Christian attitude—to condemn these newly-weds to live in rat-infested hovels in rural areas and five-storey tenement flats in towns and cities. Many of us could paint a lurid picture of the hardship, suffering and threat to health in these cases. Many of us are aware of the great mental torture inflicted on newly-weds and young families because of the interminable period of waiting involved.

Our marriage rate—it is not surprising when you consider our antisocial attitude to newly-weds—is the lowest in Europe. At 5.5 per cent per thousand of the population, it is one-third lower than that of any country in Europe. This is mainly attributable to the economic malaise which has set in in this country—the lack of opportunity, a sense of frustration and a lack of security. It is attributable also to a lack of houses. If our young people of marriageable age could be given hope of having a house within a reasonable time, we would not have the exodus of emigration, the drift from the rural areas to the cities and towns and we would eliminate a lot of human suffering because of ill health. These are all matters for which the country finds it extremely difficult to pay the bill.

I want to refer briefly to the scheme of grants for the repair of houses. I have always welcomed these grants. I congratulate the man who conceived the idea of providing grants for the repair of old property. It has done a lot of good, not merely by eliminating bad housing conditions and shifting the burden of responsibility of rehousing from the local authorities, but it has also enhanced the appearance of many of our towns and villages which otherwise would show ugly eyesores.

These grants are not very long in operation. The people who availed of them are to be congratulated. In their ignorance they assumed they were free grants. Now, after seven years, they have got a rude awakening. Those who availed of these grants should be told that it is foolish to think of them as free in the strict sense of that word. The Department of Local Government should be honest enough to tell those people that after the expiration of seven years, the property will be revalued, and it is then they will get a shock. I assert there are thousands of demented people who carried out reconstruction work and secured grants and who found, after the expiration of the seven year period, that their valuations were increased out of all proportion. That is true. I sense an amount of uneasiness on the part of the Parliamentary Secretary.

Mr. P. Brennan

That could happen, whether they got a grant or not.

Mr. Treacy

The Parliamentary Secretary can contradict me if he likes, but I believe there is a list kept of all those who secured these grants and after seven years, they are promptly investigated by the valuation officers and their valuations increased out of all proportion. In some instances, they have been doubled. Many people have told me that, if they realised their valuations were to be increased to this extent, sometimes for minimal repairs, they would never have availed of these grants and would have tried to do the work out of their own resources, however slender those might be.

Mr. P. Brennan

They could be still subject to revaluation.

Mr. Treacy

I appreciate that. However, we feel local authorities may be co-operating in this matter. There are records of the number of people who avail of these grants. It is no coincidence that they are promptly investigated at the expiration of the seven years, and up goes the valuation. I have been appalled by the increases. Rates are high enough at present without a Government Department inflicting this crushing burden on people. People availing of these allegedly free grants should be advised that they must undergo this test by the valuation officers and may anticipate a steep increase in valuation and in obligation to rates in saecula saeculorum.

There are many features of this measure I welcome, particularly that in respect of county council cottages where the vested tenants may now be able to redeem these cottages within a reasonable period and not have to wait until the expiration of the repayment period, which may be from 30 to 40 years. I welcome also the provision for the accommodation of persons suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis.

I welcome the provision in the Bill which makes it possible for local authorities to guarantee the building provider in respect of erection and construction. I welcome the provision of a £200 grant for the reconstruction and improvement of houses. As I have knowledge of the kind of hardheaded businessmen which county managers can be, I cannot envisage any county manager making available even an amount of money such as £200 without satisfying himself that the applicant is a fairly good risk at least. The type of people I would have in mind for assistance of this kind might not be the people the county manager would regard as reliable to that extent.

With regard to the provision of houses for TB sufferers, I am glad to see something is being done in this regard because, for some time past, I have felt that persons suffering from tuberculosis were not receiving the kind of priority which we believe they are entitled to in the matter of re-housing. I felt also that local authorities, being unable to provide the finances themselves, being a little avaricious for money for housing purposes, were tending to assess need on the basis of the subsidy forthcoming rather than on the strict basis of health, overcrowding or any of these vitally important factors. Many of us must admit that subsidies in respect of housing are very important and we like to think and hope each person will secure a two-thirds subsidy for every new house. I have felt for some time that local authorities were inclined to be pecuniary-minded in this regard and looked for subsidies as the first essential and need on health grounds after that. It is right and proper that these unfortunate categories of people should get first preference. I consider this matter sufficiently important to comment on it in this House. That is one aspect of the Bill which should be very carefully noted by the officers of the local authority.

I am pleased that the Bill also provides that the outmoded and archaic figure of £832 a year as the income limit and means test which was up to now applicable to persons who applied for a local authority new house grant is to be abolished altogether and that a new figure of £1,045 is to be substituted. This is to be welcomed but the higher figure, in my opinion, is still too low. There are bound, of necessity, to be very many thousands of potential new housebuilders who are outside that figure of £1,045. As a result of wage increases, very many tradesmen, artisans and highly skilled industrial workers have now come up to the four figures of approximately £1,000, or a little over. A figure of £1,000 nowadays is not regarded as excessive by any standards, especially having regard to the high cost of living in this country. It is true to say that the £1,045 ceiling is still too low and leaves outside quite a sizeable number of people, especially the white collar workers, the middle income people who were the natural housebuilders of the past. They will still be left outside and will have to build their new houses without the support of £275 from the local authorities.

Mr. P. Brennan

They get extra, if they have dependants.

Mr. Treacy

There is also the very welcome feature of £100 for each dependant, up to four, which gives them possibly £400. I have been poring through this voluminous document. I read somewhere that the means test for loans from local authorities had also been increased but I have not been able to come across it in this measure up to now.

Mr. P. Brennan

Does the Deputy mean the £1,200?

Mr. Treacy

I mean from £1,040 up to £1,200.

Mr. P. Brennan

It is there.

Mr. Treacy

I could not find it. The loan from local authorities has been increased from £1,040 to £1,200.

Mr. P. Brennan

There is a difference between Dublin city, Cork and the rest of the country.

Mr. Treacy

I am very sorry that this very important aspect of the means test for the loan was not given better coverage in this Bill.

Mr. P. Brennan

The local authorities have already been informed about this.

Mr. Treacy

At the same time, the matter of increasing the limit of £832 to £1,040 is contained in the Bill.

Mr. P. Brennan

That is being done by legislation but the other is done by ordinary ministerial order.

Mr. Treacy

The two things have always been done together. The question of the facilities one gets, the question of whether one would qualify for a loan, how much of a loan one could get and the provision of the grant from the State and the local authority are all integral parts of this matter and they ought not to be divorced, as the Parliamentary Secretary thinks they should. The liberalisation of these matters, for which we have cried out for some years past, is a very welcome decision. Again, a loan of £2,500, even allowing for local authority grants and State grants, is still, in my opinion, inadequate to meet the cost of a present day house. It is rather a pity that this ceiling was put in at all.

Let us admit the average house has gone up by £1,000. Cognisance should be taken of that fact and there ought to be no ceiling at all on the amount of money one can borrow from the local authority for building of this kind. I do not see why the Department should provide £2,500 for the local authority and stop there. The real problem is that an applicant whose house now costs £3,000 or £4,000 has to find the balance from his capital, and he probably has to go to another source. You have this duplication of borrowing which causes a lot of inconvenience to new house borrowers at the present time. The amount of money required for the average dwelling nowadays, within reason, should be provided by the local authorities. This would obviate the hardship, inconvenience and colossal worry of finding the balance of, say, £1,000 from some other sources. It is all right for the person who has the required initial amount of some hundreds, but for the person who is depending on borrowing, the amount of money available from the State through the local authorities is, in my opinion, inadequate to meet the cost of the building of a new house at the present time.

I did not anticipate that this Bill would come before us so soon this week, but there are some aspects of it on which I should like to dwell. One such aspect is the question of cottage repairs. From my scant reading of the Bill, I think the facilities which county council tenants had in respect of the kind of repairs to which they were entitled from the local authority, with an appeal to the Minister's Department to which they were also entitled, are worsened in this measure. I believe this worsening is out of all proportion.

Up to now a person vesting a county council cottage had the right to an adequate repair job being carried out. If dissatisfied, he had a right of appeal to the Minister, and the Minister sent down impartial observers from the Department, and if any other repairs required to be done, there was an obligation on the local authority to carry them out. Under this Bill the rights which the vested tenant had are worsened, in that the new section contains the provision that the obligation now on the local authority is to carry out structural repairs only.

One can well imagine the Minister's embarrassment about this question of cottage repairs, or vesting repairs, because most of the appeals against cottage repairs which were submitted to to the Minister's Department have been upheld. I understand that it is true to say that on average, 1,000 appeals against cottage repairs are sent up to the Minister's Department every year, and that four-fifths of these appeals are upheld by the Minister's inspectors. In other words, an abnormally bad job of work has been done in respect of repairs for vesting in rural Ireland. It is shocking that four out of five of these cottages were deemed to be badly repaired, and on re-investigation, additional repairs had to be carried out. I can appreciate that that must be a source of embarrassment to all concerned.

It is particularly wrong that the rights of those tenants to an adequate repair job are now reduced to merely structural repairs. We in the housing authorities know the interpretation which engineers and housing officials will place on the difference between a thorough job and merely structural repairs. We will be told that structural repairs amount to the remedying of serious defects in the house, such as a serious crack in the wall, and many things that required to be done will be regarded as of no consequence, and struck out.

By and large the person vesting a cottage in the future under this Bill cannot hope for the same adequate repair job, and the same thorough investigation as he enjoyed under the old statute. If the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister can tell me I am wrong in this interpretation, I shall be pleased to accept that assurance, but I do not think I am wrong. I think the Minister's Department have been "got at" to smother up this colossal amount of bad repairs, and this dereliction of duty on the part of the housing authorities, by putting in a stipulation that the county councils vesting cottages in future are required by law to carry out structural repairs only. Tenants' appeals will be shot down in the future. It is a scandal that their rights will be reduced in the future by a subterfuge adopted in this Bill. It is very much to be deplored. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to have another look at that matter—he has been a member of a local authority for a long number of years—and to retain the provision which safeguards the tenants who are vesting their cottages.

Again, it is a pity that the anomalies in regard to vesting between rural and urban communities were not rectified. It is significant that the tenant vesting the council cottage may do so without any great difficulty at all. Very little red tape is involved, and there are no legal fees of any kind. In the urban and borough areas, one cannot purchase a house without regimentation, documentation and legalities, and there are very severe legal fees. All this has a most dissuading effect on house purchasers. If the question of legal fees could be resolved in respect of the purchase of houses in the urban areas, I believe many more people would be prepared to purchase their houses.

By and large in all the circumstances of this day and age, when we are experiencing great difficulty in the provision of credit, and when it is realised that the building industry is one of the greatest employment factors we know of—apart from the social need of housing and the elimination of human suffering by the provision of new houses for those who need them—the building industry is of vital importance to our economy, and it must be preserved.

The Government have a bounden obligation to see to it that the glorified moneylenders of this country—our banks or our building agencies—are not allowed to precipitate an economic crisis as a result of their begrudging the money required for this essential service. The Government have talked about a fall-back in our economy in 1956 and 1957 as a result of external circumstances. We heard them talk here on every Estimate about a credit squeeze we had long ago, but there is a credit squeeze in Ireland today, and it is no use for any Government spokesman to deny it. All the evidence is there that there is a slowing down on house building, that more and more people are finding it more and more difficult to get the money they require for house building.

The Government must face up to the challenge of the moneylenders. They must be sufficiently courageous —and this Party will stand by them in this regard—to stand up to the moneylenders and say: "We will not permit you to create an economic crisis in our country." The building industry is too important to the nation. There are 392,000 persons employed in building construction in this country. Apart from our urgent need of rehousing, we cannot afford to lose the skills and talents and genius of those people employed in the building craft industry.

We must not permit a situation to arise in which the necessary amount of money is not forthcoming. Money is the life-blood of this nation. It is particularly essential in housing. The Minister should not seek to delude this House or to dupe or fool the country into thinking that the Central Bank and all the banks are not curtailing credit. Like a ripple in a pond, this curtailment of credit which has shown the first evil signs in house building will affect every facet of our economy if it is not now arrested. If it is not challenged now, we could be in the throes of an economic crisis within a short time.

I admonish this Government now in the name of the Labour Party to take their courage in their hands and take control of the monetary and credit system of this country in the interest of the people, and not in the interest of a few usurers, exploiters or extortioners, who care not what will happen to our economy so long as they and their ilk are all right. No progressive country tolerates this kind of situation in this day and age. The only reason that prices have soared, that prices for sites and costs of house-building have increased, and that rents are gone up to such an extent that people are unable to contend with them, is that we have allowed these moneylenders to make a racket out of this essential service.

It is true to say that the Minister could reduce the cost of overall building, construction and rents in the morning if he directed, by an Act of the Oireachtas, that money for these essential purposes be made available at a preferential interest rate, a rate of interest which prevails in all progressive countries. In New Zealand and Australia and in most progressive countries, you will find that this essential service is financed with State backing and that credit is controlled to the extent of ensuring that money is available for this purpose at a reduced rate of interest. Thereby this important essential service is taken out of the hands of these glorified moneylenders to whom I have had to refer today.

The housing of our people is of too great importance, and the building industry as a whole employing too many people, to be trifled with by the banks or any other lending agencies. I ask this Government to see to it that the thousands of houses required are built, that our housebuilding is accelerated and that the necessary money is forthcoming to meet all contingencies.

It is to be greatly deplored that in this Bill cognisance has not been taken of the colossal increase in costs and that grants were not increased in proportion to give the required incentive to build to all those thousands of people who require houses at the present time.

For the good features of the Bill, we commend the Minister. We are entitled to be critical and, I hope, constructively so. We are entitled to say at this juncture that it is a pity the Minister did not make this Housing Bill of 1965 a more realistic and more effective measure. The work to be done is colossal when one examines the human need involved. The future of the industry does not look too good at the present time—there is no denying that fact—unless certain safeguards are now taken. So whatever measures this Government and this Minister may take in relation to the preservation of this industry, and indeed of the economy as a whole, I, on behalf of the Labour Party, for whom I have the honour to speak in this House, extend our fullest support.

Mr. Healy

I did not intend to comment on the Bill at this stage because I felt it was something we could deal with more effectively and thoroughly on Committee Stage. I would not have intervened but for the fact that I think Deputy Barrett may have given the impression that he was speaking on behalf of all the members of the Cork Corporation in drawing attention to the fact that we were in the House.

I think it would be right to place on record that I feel he rather overstated the case. He mentioned that in 1956 Cork Corporation built 491 houses. He should know as well as everybody else that that is a completely unrealistic figure. Although 491 houses were completed in 1956, it would be interesting to find out when the land was acquired, and paid for, for the building of these houses, and also how many years the building was in progress before the houses were completed. It is not at all interesting to talk about the fact that 491 houses were built in 1956 and that a lesser number were built in 1958-1959, or even in 1960. He was a member of Cork Corporation then, as I was, and we know that in 1956-57 money was not available for housing. I shall not go into the reason why that was so, but it is a fact that cannot be contradicted.

Mr. L'Estrange

Any more than it is now.

Mr. Healy

It is also right to say that whatever difficulties we may have had with the Department of Local Government and whatever delays were experienced, they were certainly secondary to the fact that we had not land available for sites, even if we had money, and we certainly had not skilled tradesmen. That has been a problem for many years past. In a way it can be regarded in the light of the fact that tremendous building has been going on in Cork by way of factories, banks, warehouses, and so on, and that has taken from the pool of tradesmen available to us. For that reason, we have had to slow down on housing, much as we regret it.

I do not want anybody to think that I do not realise as much as Deputy Barrett the need for houses in Cork city. I would draw attention to the fact that it is the Minister for Local Government who has now come to our rescue and offered a solution to our building problem, not alone in system building but in the building of a considerable number of houses which we would have no hope of undertaking on our own initiative. It now seems, by a decision taken by Cork Corporation last Tuesday night when they accepted the Minister's proposal, that we should have 2,800 new houses built in Cork in the next four or five years. That would completely ease any state of emergency which now exists.

It is also well to say in fairness that when I came into Cork Corporation, it was nothing unusual to have accommodation consisting of one room occupied by a father and mother and five, six, seven, eight or nine children. Now at least that has been brought to the point where we have not more than the parents and two children in one room. That of course is not desirable and it is very necessary to get rid of this situation as soon as possible.

There is also the problem of sub-tenants who are dealt with in this Bill. This is all very welcome and admirable and as a member not alone of Cork County Council but of Cork Corporation, I hope to have much more to say on Committee Stage. In the meantime, I shall content myself with welcoming these provisions which, I am glad to say, have been welcomed by all sides of the House. This is a definite step forward and I feel sure that the Minister will be reasonable in regard to the suggestions that have been made that more authority should be given to the local officers and authorities. If we are employing highly-paid architects and engineers in relation to our housing, then very many of the decisions should be left to them, rather than that these matters should be sent to Dublin where, even with the best intentions, there is still inevitable delay which leads to frustration and also to an increase in costs. I welcome the measure and I hope that we will have a full discussion on Committee Stage.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

I understand that we are taking the Fine Gael motion on housing in conjunction with the debate on this Bill?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is so.

Sir Anthony Esmonde

Having listened to speakers on this Bill so far, there would appear to be unanimity of thought amongst all shades of opinion that the Government have fallen down on housing. If there is any doubt in the minds of our political opponents that such is the case, then the short speech we have just heard from the Lord Mayor of Cork should clear their minds. I understood him to say that Cork Corporation hope to build 2,700 houses in the next four years as against about 180 to 200 a year over the past four years. That is an indication that Fianna Fáil are now alive to the fact that what we have been stressing in this House— that there was a credit squeeze and a falling down in regard to the building of houses—is true in substance and in fact. Such being the case, I hope they will vote for our amendment, if it comes to a vote.

Several Deputies referred to newly-weds. It does seem to me that in a voluminous document such as this, which we Deputies have had to hand only for the past couple of days, some reference should have been made to the matter of newly-weds. It must have been crystal-clear to the Minister and his advisers that one of the great demands in our society at present is the provision of houses for newly-weds. I would go even further and say that in my constituency young couples have come to me and told me that they intended to get married, say, in September, as actually happened the other day, and have asked me if I would recommend them for a house in a new housing scheme. Apart from the fact that newly-weds cannot get a house when they are married, there is the point that they have not even the right to put their names down for a house prior to their marriage. Everybody knows that people who intend to get married have to make arrangements beforehand; they have to buy furniture and generally put themselves in a position of being able to set up house. Therefore, ipso facto this Bill does nothing for newly-weds, does nothing to provide houses for them, and holds out no hope for them in the future.

The position is that people can get married and go into lodgings and then they can usually wait until they have been blessed with one or two children before they get a chance of getting a house. Surely something should be done in this Bill to ensure that a certain number of houses will be allocated to people intending to get married so that they can make their plans, buy furniture and so on. If people who intend to get married start to provide utensils and other necessaries for their house, then in the majority of cases, if they are thrifty enough to do this beforehand, they have to store them. I fail to understand why in this terrifically long Bill that very important matter has been excluded altogether.

I welcome other provisions in the Bill. It is right that there should be some direction in regard to procuring houses for old people, a particular type of house and a cheaper type of house as well. I do not think that it specifically states that local authorities should concentrate in each housing scheme on the provision of a certain number of these houses. I am well aware that there are many old people today who are housed in bad houses which they have occupied over the years, houses which have reached the stage where they are past repairs, and the owner would have no opportunity of getting any financial return if he did repair them. These old people do not want to leave these houses to move into other houses because they have not got the wherewithal to pay the rent.

These people are one of the first charges on us, after the newly-weds. It is one of our first charges to secure a housing scheme for old people and to insist—and as far as I can see the Department of Local Government have power to insist on everything— that a certain percentage of houses should be built for these people. Therefore I welcome that section.

Another thing which seems to have been long overdue is the increase in the floor area from 1,400 square feet to 1,500 square feet, and perhaps even 1,500 feet is not enough. Is there any particular reason why we should limit anyone who wants to build a house to any particular size? Surely it is socially and economically advantageous to encourage everybody who is intending, and has the means to do it, to build a house. I know of many cases of people who wish to build houses but who, when they found on application that these restrictions were imposed on them and they could not get the grant, gave up the idea of building.

Another matter which seems to be entirely absent from this Bill is any attempt to endeavour to encourage private enterprise in housebuilding. Today when the State controls so much of our finances and of our national income, housebuilding by societies, institutions and private individuals, even for the purpose of letting, is no longer a profitable operation. I mention that point because it means that the fewer such houses are built, the greater demand there will be on local authority houses. The local authorities today appear to be the only people who are able to build houses, provided they are permitted to do so by the Department of Local Government, and greater numbers of people are looking for these houses as the result of the stagnation in private enterprise building.

The maximum grant one can obtain for building a house is £675, as far as I read the Bill, and there is the lower provision for those under £5 valuation who, in the majority of instances, would not be able to build a house and therefore it seems superfluous to put this into the Bill. Of course, it makes good reading and suggests that the Government are helping the people in some way. I feel it would be good policy on the part of the Government to give an extensive grant to private builders.

I want to put this case to the Minister. He probably meets it in his constituency, much the same as I do. There are many people drawing salaries up to £1,200 a year or so who may have four or five children, or even two or three children. They want to build their own houses. They want to own their houses and it is socially and ethically desirable that they should do so. However, they have no available money. In the past, they tried to obtain loans under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts in relation to which it takes a month of Sundays to get anything done. They are probably lucky if they can get the full particulars through in as much as a couple of years and then they may find there is some snag at the end. Nevertheless, if their application is accepted under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts, they must themselves provide a sizeable sum in capital, which they have not available.

In this House, we vote money and subsidies to local authorities for the building of houses. Why should we not give an equal subsidy, or even more, to an individual who wants to build a house for himself? In the United Kingdom, after the war, after they had endured the bombings, the trials and the tribulations they went through, there was a tremendous demand for houses. It was not met by local authorities or Government subsidy alone but by the fact that private individuals were encouraged to build houses. It was met by giving substantial grants to individuals to do so, in some cases grants as high as 50 per cent. However, the houses were built.

Every section of this House must agree that there is a tremendous housing shortage in this State. Whether we come from the city of Dublin or from rural constituencies, where we have our town problems as well as our absolute rural problems, there are people looking for houses. An instance of this is the fact that in my own area a vested labourer's cottage was put up for sale the other day and is still on the market: the price is rising all the time. It is practically the only house available in the area at the moment and persons of every social standard are trying to get into that house for the purpose of getting a roof over their heads.

The Minister mentioned income groups. I suggest that he give to people with incomes below £1,200 a year a sizeable donation or grant to build a house. If he does that, there will be an immediate upsurge in the building of houses. I am aware of several instances in the area in which I live of people with incomes of about that size who could not get a house. They had good jobs in this country and were drawing around that salary but ultimately they emigrated to Britain where apparently they have the facilities for private individuals to build and buy houses which do not exist here. We have to face that problem.

I do not want to make any greater case for the private individual over and above State housing than is necessary. However, unless you draw such people as that out of the well of the demand for houses, and encourage them to build for themselves you will not have enough houses available in the lifetime of this Dáil, no matter if the Minister made available all the money he had and encouraged his officials to hasten the different schemes sent up to them and to see that they are carried out rather than have the endless procrastination and delay that is going on.

In Gorey, County Wexford, near where I live, a housing scheme has been in the offing for, I believe, three years now. The original scheme was rejected by the Department of Local Government. In that, they were possibly right because, in so rejecting, they felt a great number of houses could be built in the area concerned. That was a long time ago. Unfortunately, this has been going on for quite a long time. Letters were sent to the Department of Local Government which were replied to. There would be a delay of perhaps two or three months while experts considered matters which very often are of minor importance, say, the general structure of a house, or something like that, which does not really affect it. The matter continues further. It goes back to the local authority who look at the letters and ultimately send a letter in answer to the Department's letter and there is still further delay. In fact, delays can last from a matter of months to as long as two years.

I have often suggested to the Minister by way of Parliamentary Question and otherwise that it should be very simple to deal with a situation where a query in this connection arises. If necessary, two or three people— experts on different sections—could be sent down to meet the local authorities. They could sit around a table and hammer out the matter which, in fact, they could surely do in a matter of a couple of days. It would be national economy to do so. It would ensure that, instead of these frustrating procrastinating delays which are paramount in every county here, we would get some houses built. The position at the moment is that if a site is available to a local authority and a scheme to build houses is in the offing there is no knowing how long it will be before the scheme will come to fruition.

I understand there are village schemes in my constituency, as there are in all other constituencies, as against existing rural areas, to build houses in and around villages where a water supply is available. That is a good idea provided it will not take ten years to put in the water supply. I understand that these schemes are in the offing and have been in the offing for quite a considerable period.

The Minister did not give us very much information in his opening statement—I nearly said bag of tricks —which he read this morning. It would take a fortnight to read the Bill and the explanatory memorandum properly. He might indicate to the House what he thinks is a reasonable period from the time a local authority proposes a scheme to the central Government until sanction is given for the scheme to go through. Apart from the matter of finance—which, of course, has not been made available or, if it has been made available, has not been spent—that is one of the major difficulties experienced by local authorities.

It is easy to vote money. We often vote money in this House for different purposes but that money is on paper and it is not spent. That appears to be what has happened in this case. Money has been voted by this House under the Estimate for the Department of Local Government for the purpose of introducing housing schemes. It is only natural that we who are not in Government and who can see only what is going on should feel that there is a hold-up or a slowing-down on every building scheme in every part of Ireland. Our housing difficulties represent an eternal disgrace to this country. We have neglected to provide houses for our people, which is one of our outstanding social needs.

I defy any Deputy on the Government side of the House to stand up and to say that the needs of the people have been met or, in fact, that the needs of the people are likely to be met within the foreseeable future. There is a continuous and growing backlog of housing needs. It is estimated that some houses last in good repair for 50 or 60 years. In the course of time, houses deteriorate and go into decay. That is happening in every town and village. Far from keeping level with the deteriorating houses and building the requirements immediately, that backlog is growing all the time. That is the miserable housing record of a Government that have been in office with a pretty safe majority since 1957—they have managed to survive Divisions in this House, anyway, even though they have done it once or twice by a margin of only two votes.

Only two speeches were made this morning from the Government side of the House. Deputy P.J. Burke gave us the litany about 1956 and 1957 which we have heard half a dozen times before.

Debate adjourned.