(Cavan): I suppose it might be considered unreasonable of me to ask the Minister for Local Government to come in at this late hour on the adjournment, especially as he had had a rather busy time lately——
Adjournment Debate. - Sanctioning of Housing Schemes.
: Do not worry about that.
(Cavan): ——in this House with his proposal to change the electoral law and in view of the fact that he is likely to have a busy time in the Seanad in the weeks ahead, and also in view of the fact that he is likely to have a rough time in the country during the weeks or months following that.
: That does not arise on the matter the Deputy is raising.
(Cavan): However, I asked the Minister for Local Government a straight question today at Question Time and I did not get a straight answer. Therefore, I deemed it necessary to ask the Minister to come in here tonight to clarify the position for me. Question No. 22. standing in my name on today's Order Paper, reads:
To ask the Minister for Local Government the total estimated cost of housing schemes in his Department awaiting sanction; and when he anticipates the list will be cleared.
In reply to that Question, the Minister stated.
A large number of proposals for housing schemes are normally before my Department at any one time. These proposals extend from outline plans to loan proposals, and in many cases no estimate of cost is available. It is not practicable therefore to give the total estimated cost of housing schemes which are before my Department, or to say when a decision will be given on individual schemes.
I am afraid I must regard that reply as unsatisfactory and as an attempt to evade the question I put to the Minister.
I think that, on this question of Parliamentary Question, we expect bona fides on both sides. We expect the various Ministers and their advisers to grasp the meaning of the question put and to deal with it in a practicable way. Indeed, by and large, that is the experience of Members of this House. We invariably hear Ministers tell Deputies that the information sought is not available as at the date mentioned in the question but that the information on the last available date is such and such. I think that is as it should be.
We who serve on local authorities know that, at a certain stage in proposals for new local government housing, it is necessary for the local authority to submit an estimate of the proposed cost of the scheme. The Minister does not deny that. But he wriggled about today when I put some supplementary questions to him. He stated he was not asked that question and therefore he did not propose to give the information. I want to make it perfectly clear to the House that I do not want or expect the Minister to give me any information which he has not got. That would be an unreasonable request and a request which I would not make. However, I do expect the Minister to give me, in reply to a civil Parliamentary Question, such information as is, to my knowledge and on his admission, available to him in his Department—and that he has not done.
We all know there are a great number of schemes from all over the country in cold storage in the Minister's Department awaiting his sanction, notwithstanding the national housing crisis which exists in city and country. I feel the Minister has a guilty conscience about this matter and that that is the reason he has sought to evade answering the question I put to him. We know that, when the Minister thinks he can score a point, he not infrequently makes a long speech at Question Time in reply to a question. The fact of the matter is that there is a long list of schemes awaiting sanction in the Minister's Department. What I want to know from the Minister is the cost of the schemes in his Department awaiting sanction, the estimated cost, as per estimates, submitted by local authorities to him. I want to make clear that what I want is the estimated cost of housing schemes in his Department as per estimates submitted to him by local authorities all over this country.
One thing certain is that the percentage of public capital expenditure being allocated to housing is dropping, is on the decline. That is the reason for this backlog of housing and the reason why the Minister has refused to answer the question.
For example, in 1956-57, 25.5 per cent of the public capital programme expenditure was devoted to housing; in 1957-58, 26.1 per cent; in 1958-59, the first year in which the Minister's Party took office, it dropped to 17.2 per cent; in 1959-60, it was 17.7 per cent; in 1960-61, it was 17.6 per cent; and in 1961-62, it was down to 16.5 per cent. In 1962-63, it rose to 17 per cent; in 1963-64, it was 15.4 per cent; in 1964-65, it was 15.7 per cent; in 1965-66, it rose to 20.2 per cent; and in 1966-67 to 23.2 per cent. In 1967-68 the provisional figure was given as 23 per cent but the Budget estimate was down to 20.4 per cent for 1968-69. Those are telling figures because our percentage of public capital programme expenditure is down from 25.5 per cent in 1956-7 and 26.1 per cent in 1957-58 to 20.4 per cent in the current year.
Indeed, that is not the end of the story because hand in hand with the actual money allocated by the Exchequer to what I might describe as public housing there is the amount allocated and paid out for sanitary and miscellaneous services. These sanitary and miscellaneous services are necessary in order to service land and make it available for houses but we find the same sorry plight here. I do not want to go down through the years again but in 1956-57 the percentage of the public capital programme under these headings was 5.1; in 1957-58, it was 5.8; and according to the official statistics it has dropped in the current year to 2.9. That may explain the reluctance of the Minister to answer the simple question I put to him today, asking for information which undoubtedly is in his Department because it is supplied to his Department by the various local authorities. If the Minister had given me the information instead of juggling around with questions which he knew I had not asked, if he had made any effort to reply to supplementary questions or to be co-operative, I would have been satisfied.
The mere fact that a question put by a Deputy is an embarrassment is no reason for failing to answer it. From my not too long experience in this House, I have found that Ministers do endeavour to grasp the intention of a question which of course their experts in the Department can see at a glance and they do attempt to ensure that Question Time is what it is intended to be, an opportunity for Private Members to get from Minister information which is not otherwise available to them. If the Minister's attitude today were to be accepted as normal procedure, it would appear that when a Minister received a question, his attitude would not be: "How much information can I give the Deputy?" but "How can I avoid answering the question? How much information can I withhold?" In principle that is wrong.
The Minister is well able to put a gloss on things, well able to fight his own corner but if we have reached the stage that at Question Time Deputies are to be told that information which they know is available—such as I believe the Minister had on his file today— will not be given, we are heading in a direction which is not in the interests of the system of government we enjoy, a direction which will lead to a state of affairs which will not be good for the parliamentary democracy we have here.
: Deputy Fitzpatrick today tabled a question:
To ask the Minister for Local Government the total estimated cost of housing schemes in his Department awaiting sanction; and when he anticipates the list will be cleared.
That question was answered, that the information is not available. The Deputy did not ask what was the estimated cost of schemes for which estimates of costs were available. If he had, he would, as he knows, have been told that the compilation of this information would involve unjustifiable demands on staff resources in the light of the urgency of other work the staff have to perform. Housing authorities have schemes for 16,014 dwellings mostly in small schemes at tender or planning stages. To find out the estimated cost of schemes at various stages would involve the examination of all the files before us in the section and would probably take a week to ten days and would yield useless information because all it would give at that stage would merely be the cost of these schemes for which estimates of costs happen to be available.
This is not by any means all the schemes that are before the Department. The only possible purpose in seeking incomplete, inaccurate and meaningless figures such as these must be a desire to mislead. There is too, of course, the point that this would hold up essential work in the Department. This may be one of the motives prompting this request. To supply this information would involve the examination of every single rural cottage scheme at planning stage, schemes at tender stage and even schemes for which loans have been applied for. Even then the information finally compiled would be both valueless and meaningless.
The fact is that, although housing authorities are supposed to submit estimates of cost at a certain stage, many do not do so. In practice, even estimates which are received quickly become out-of-date. Ministers for Local Government have been asked similar questions in the past and all have told the Deputies concerned that such information could not be given without an undue call on the time of the staff of the Department. It would be quite unjustifiable to waste the time of the officials of my Department on the compilation of meaningless statistics, even if they were asked for, but the fact is they were not asked for.
(Cavan): Would the Minister not think he would be better employed engaged on such figures than he was in compiling all the nonsense he has been trotting out here for the past two months?
: That does not arise.
(Cavan): The officials of his Department must have spent hours compiling that nonsense.
: Order.
: Deputy Fitzpatrick is of the opinion, apparently, that he should be allowed to talk but nobody else has the right to open his mouth; even though he had 20 minutes and I have only ten minutes, he is determined to try to prevent me dealing with the ridiculous——
(Cavan): Go on: deal with it. I will not open my mouth any more.
: ——and dishonest allegations he made. The fact is the Deputy got the answer to his question. He did not ask for this meaningless information, the compilation of which would waste the time of the officials of the Department. However, if the Deputy is interested in housing progress generally, I can give him information on the position briefly. In two years in succession we have exceeded 4,000 completions and we expect to see completions of about 4,000 this year.
(Cavan): I want to know what is awaiting completion.
: Order.
: The number of dwellings in progress has risen to 6,780. The rise in ordinary local authority housing in the past 12 months——
(Cavan): What is in cold storage?
: ——and there are nearly 4,000 dwellings at tender stage at present, 12,000 at earlier planning stage and additional sites are available for a further 12,500 odd dwellings, and thousands more are being acquired. The position with regard to the financing of this huge programme is that I have available to me in the current financial year capital to the tune of £28.81 million which is, as Deputy Fitzpatrick knows, an all-time record.
(Cavan): Percentage-wise, it is mostly down.
: Order.
: In addition, because of the improvement in revenue, subsidies are now running at the rate of £12 million a year as compared with £5 million in 1956-57.
(Cavan): Lots of things have gone up since then, you know.
: Order.
: It is quite true that every scheme is not ready to go forward immediately it is received in my Department. The fact that proposals are examined in my Department is part of the reason why we have been able to maintain housing activity at a high level for a longer period than heretofore. Not only are we able to build a large number of houses this year but we were able to build a large number last year, and the year before, and we will be able to build a large number next year and right into the Seventies, when we will still be responsible for this activity.
I appreciate that it is a perpetual source of wonder and envy to people like Deputy Fitzpatrick that this Government have been able to keep the State capital programme proceeding at such a high level for such a long, continuous period, particularly when one remembers that we started at a time when the whole capital programme, and the housing programme in particular, had completely collapsed, due to the mishandling of the country's finances by the Coalition Government. As Deputy Fitzpatrick knows, each year we have been able to devote an increasing amount of money to the provision of houses. In addition, we have been able to initiate, with considerable success and with great benefit to the rural community, group and regional water supply schemes.
(Cavan): Do not be funny. You are scrapping them.
: Deputies opposite never even conceived of them.
(Cavan): The Minister told me today that one plan had been scrapped. He should be ashamed of himself.
: Order.
: Deputy Dillon, speaking on behalf of the Fine Gael Party, said this was a scheme conceived out of Bedlam, but it was actually conceived of Fianna Fáil and put into operation by Fianna Fáil and Deputy Fitzpatrick cannot get over his annoyance——
(Cavan): Let the Minister read his reply to Question No. 27 today.
: ——because it was Fianna Fáil who conceived of the scheme and made a success of it. Water is now being brought to rural communities despite the determined opposition of Deputy Fitzpatrick and his Party——
(Cavan): Nonsense. The Minister knows he is talking nonsense.
: There are schemes in the Minister's Department for three years now. Why does he not sanction them?
: Order.
: This is because our policy of looking after——
(Cavan): Yourselves.
: ——the country's finances has resulted in an expanding economy, which is able to support at this level all these schemes and it is also because the money——
(Cavan): Tell us about the regional water supply schemes.
: ——and it is also because the money is allocated in a responsible way. Deputy Fitzpatrick knows——
(Cavan): I got it in reply to Question No. 27 today.
: ——that there are £28.1 million allocated for housing this year and because he, as a member of a Coalition Party, cannot see the need for any judicious handling of this huge amount of money so as to ensure continuity——
(Cavan): Stop codding the people.
: ——because he does not understand the meaning of the word, because he and his Party never had any experience of it when they were in Government, he cannot understand why there should be any overall view taken of the matter. I appreciate that in a Coalition Government there would be no overall control over expenditure. That is what happened before. That is what would happen again. It is quite clear that a repetition of the economic collapse of 1956-57 could be expected again if, by any mischance, another Coalition Government were to be formed.
(Cavan): Tell us about the regional water. What did the Minister tell Deputy Gallagher yesterday?
: Order.
: I have no doubt that, if it ever should happen—I know it will not—and if Deputy Fitzpatrick were in control of Local Government, he would go merrily and cheerfully along and spend whatever small amount of money it was possible for a Coalition Government to allocate for this purpose without any regard as to the future or the desirability of having continuity in this regard and the results——
(Cavan): Tell us about the regional water supply schemes. That was a good job. The Minister should be ashamed of himself.
: He knows I cannot accede to his request, though I would be delighted to do so if Deputy Fitzpatrick would raise the matter on the Adjournment. He knows I have not the time now.
(Cavan): I raised it in Question No. 27 today.
: When I did deal with water supply schemes here Deputy Fitzpatrick ran out of the House because he just could not bear to listen to the litany of water supply schemes being provided by this Government all over the country over the dead bodies practically of the Opposition Parties. Deputy Dillon said this was conceived out of Bedlam and that it could not be implemented. What is worrying the Opposition now is the fact that water is being brought into the homes in rural Ireland at an ever-increasing rate, and by this Fianna Fáil Government. They said it could not be done. In their conditions, of course, it could not be done because——
(Cavan): Let the Minister read his reply to Question 27.
: ——it takes a Coalition Government only three years to wreck the country and reduce it to a state in which it can provide no money for capital works of this kind.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 11th July, 1968.