asked the Minister for Local Government (a) the total amount issued from the Local Loans Fund for housing for the two years 1956-57 and 1957-58 and (b) the total amount issued for the three years 1958-59, 1959-60 and 1960-61; and the reasons for the reduction.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Housing Loans.
17.
Issues from the Local Loans Fund for housing totalled approximately £8.4 million in 1956-57, £8.8 million in 1957-58, £4.8 million in 1958-59, £5.1 million in 1959-60 and £5.6 million in 1960-61.
As regards the final part of the question, I would refer the Deputy to my reply to Question No. 12 of 16th May in which I dealt at length with the development of the housing situation in this country since the mid-fifties.
Briefly, the reduction in issues from the fund as between 1957-58 and 1958-59 was due to the reduction in the requirements of local authorities who found that in the depressed state of the country then—with a falling population and a drop in real terms in national income in the five years to 31st March, 1958—there was little demand for new housing.
We had built too many houses.
This lack of demand for new housing was due in part to the frustrations——
Frustrations—too many houses.
——suffered by local authorities in the winter of 1956-57 when it became almost impossible to obtain money to finance works actually in progress——
Those words ring very clear.
——and when in the prevailing atmosphere of despondency all sense of initiative died.
Frustration, my foot.
A clear and necessarily depressing account of the situation as it then existed was given by the Coalition Minister for Local Government in a debate on housing on 6th December, 1956, Dáil Debates, volume 160, column 2026.
We gave £8 million and you gave £5 million. You ought to hang your heads in shame.
A factor which contributed to the difficulties then existing was the collapse of the building industry and the dispersal of its work force.
They are like a rhinoceros wallowing in a marsh.
So bad were conditions that even houses being purchased by persons under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts were being handed back to the local authorities in comparatively large numbers.
Is this in order— reading a long debate? We have to listen enough to the Minister.
I am not reading a debate.
We love to hear it.
This was not an inspired question. I did not get Deputy L'Estrange to put down the question. Deputy L'Estrange asked for the reasons. I want to draw Deputy Tully's attention to the part of the question which asks for the reasons for the reduction. Deputy L'Estrange asked the question.
The reasons for the reduction.
I am giving the reasons.
Go on.
Will I start again, a Cheann Comhairle?
In what year was there a reduction in the demand for houses? That is too Irish.
I will have to start again. Dublin Corporation found that in these conditions the number of their rented houses being handed back to them by tenants going away had grown spectacularly——
Small wonder when you had cut the fund.
——and did not begin to decline until after 1959-60 when the measures taken by the Government to restore the country's economy began to take effect. Authorities like the corporation presumably concluded that because of the effects of emigration and the——
Give the statistics.
——frustrations they had experienced in the 1956-57 period, there was little point in building new houses when they had difficulty in letting even those they already had on hands. Certainly no authority was refused capital from the Local Loans Fund for new housing from 1957-58 onwards.
In the conditions which I have outlined the greatest difficulty facing the Government was that of overcoming the inertia and sense of despondency in the country. However, following the publication of the Government's first Programme for Economic Expansion confidence was gradually restored to the building industry and to local authorities. This restoration has enabled the Government to increase its provision for housing from State capital budgets from a total of £7.3 million in 1958-59 to an estimated £28.81 million in the current financial year, and to pay a further £12 million approximately in subsidies this year mostly for those unable to afford the full cost of their housing—as against just over £5 million in 1958-59.
Good man yourself.
Arising out of this cloud of political propaganda, deceit and whitewashing, is it not true to say, and has not the Minister admitted, that during the two years of the inter-Party Government £17,298,000 was paid out of the Local Loans Fund, and when the dead hand of Fianna Fáil descended on this country after 1957, when we had the despondency and when all sense of initiative died in the people, during the following three years, only £15 million was paid out of the Local Loans Fund? Is it not true that in the two disastrous years of the inter-Party Government——
Deputies
Hear, hear.
Hear, hear. Now we have it out of the horse's mouth.
Is it not true that in those two years you speak about, there was £70 million paid out of the Local Loans Fund but in the next three years there was only £15 million? Is that not true? Are those not the facts which cannot be denied?
It is true that during the time of the last Coalition Government, the Government found it impossible to honour their commitments.
Too many houses and too few tenants to go into them.
At no time since then has that situation obtained. At all times under this Government local authorities had all their demands for money met.
Is it not true that the answer the Minister has given is about money paid out of the Local Loans Fund and therefore is it not true that £17 million was paid out in 1956 and 1957, and when the dead hand of Fianna Fáil descended on the country there was only £15 million paid during the next three years? Is it not true that county councils were refused money— the banks refused them money—and the Government could not get loans in America, England and other countries in which they tried? Is it not a fact that for the first time in its history, Ireland was humiliated——
The Lord Mayor of Dublin nearly spent Christmas, 1956, in jail.