It is the contractor who will be punished. It is not just as simple as some people think. It was generally thought up to now that one of the governing factors was the floor area, the cost per square foot. Because a man pays £3,250 or £4,000 for a house, it does not necessarily follow that he has got a good bargain. He may get a good house or he may get a substandard house. Irrespective of whether the house costs £3,000 or £6,000, the Minister would be anxious to do something about the latter. One can get good and bad houses, good and bad bargains, in both categories.
Reference was made also to the cost of local authority houses. As I said earlier, if the members of the local authorities co-operate with the Minister in his efforts to bring down prices, something can be achieved. I cited the case of the local authority with which the Minister had talks six weeks ago. As a result of the conference which was arranged between the engineers of the local authority, the Department and the contractor who was getting the job, a substantial reduction in the cost was brought about without adversely affecting the houses in any way. When that local authority first came to the Minister, they had a feeling that the scheme was being held up for lack of finance and that is not the case, although there are times when the Minister does try to have economies effected in order to get the price of the houses down to a realistic figure. Apart altogether from the fact that we have not as much money as we would like to have, we could get more houses built if efforts were made to have them constructed at a more reasonable cost.
Having dealt with the motion, I should like to take this opportunity of dealing with the Bill. It is a comprehensive Bill containing some 116 sections. There was a good deal of discussion on it and, on behalf of the Minister and myself, I should like to thank the Deputies from the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party for their co-operation and their contributions. Both Deputy Clinton and Deputy Tully spent hours here discussing each section and there is no doubt that, as a result of this, there is very little about Housing Acts or the Housing Bill these Deputies do not know. The fact that there were only three divisions on the whole of the Committee Stage of the Bill is an indication of the way in which the Bill was originally drafted and put before the House. The Minister was reasonable in his approach. He tried to meet the wishes of the Opposition Deputies when he was satisfied that doing so would bring about an improvement in the Bill.
The suggestion in the motion put down by the Fine Gael Party that there has been a decline in the number of houses erected in recent years cannot be substantiated. The facts show that there has been a substantial increase in the number of houses built, particularly in the present decade. The amount of money provided this year is over £20 million and the amount of money provided in 1960-61 was less than half. Next year we hope to spend at least £1 million more than is spent in the present year. Therefore, I do not know how the people in the Fine Gael Party can say there has been a decline in housebuilding operations. We hope to erect houses on the same scale as was done during this year and to build something like 11,000 new houses which is in keeping with the Second Programme for Economic Expansion which envisages the erection of 12,000 to 14,000 by 1970. We can only do this if the money is available. Unfortunately we have more proposals than we have money to cover them, but what is important is that whatever schemes are approved the money will be there to pay for them. We are making strides towards relieving the problem in relation to many thousands of our people, not alone in the city of Dublin but all over the country who are badly in need of houses.
There is no real basis for the argument put forward by the Fine Gael Party and I am satisfied they were merely availing of an opportunity to try to score political points. The amount of money we are providing this year is a record and next year we intend to provide £1 million more, which will be another record, and I feel confident we shall reach our target by 1970. If that is achieved, the Minister will have gone a long way towards solving the housing problem.
