There are a number of different aspects of the contributions on housing that I have not dealt with and unless there is a specific request I do not propose to deal with them at all. Before I move on from housing I should like to refer to a case that was raised by Deputy FitzGerald which shows the type of duplicity on which he based his attack. He referred to the housing conditions of a constituent of his and said that the person in question had a wife and five children, that they were living in a two-roomed, two-storey terrace house, that the ceiling of the upstairs room had collapsed some time ago and that the family have since been living in the ground floor room. He stated that he approached the corporation 14 months ago seeking alternative accommodation for the family but that his efforts were not successful and he obviously implied that the corporation would not house a family such as this.
I am reasonably satisfied that I have traced this case and I feel that some of the facts that have been deliberately concealed by Deputy FitzGerald should be given so as to give a more complete picture. The fact that this man has refused offers of accommodation from the corporation in the following schemes: Cuffe Street flats, Ballymun, Coolock-Kilbarrack and the latest offer of a flat in St. Michael's estate, Inchicore, which was previously known as Keogh Square. He is employed with the Irish Glass Bottle Company and while one can concede the disadvantage of working with the Irish Glass Bottle Company and living in Ballymun or Coolock-Kilbarrack, I do not think that Cuffe Street flats is an unreasonable distance from Ringsend. Many people travel further to their work. In fact, there are many people who travel from Ballymun and from Coolock-Kilbarrack much further distances than to Ringsend but because of their consideration for the health of their family they have accepted accommodation in places not suitable for their places of employment in the hope of eventually getting transfers or a change of work. I feel that it is a man's duty to his family to accept this amount of inconvenience if the accommodation offered is the only accommodation available. If we are to accept that nobody should be expected to travel from Cuffe Street to Ringsend in order to work, as Deputy FitzGerald alleges, then we are placing an impossible burden on the corporation.
This man has indicated that he requires accommodation either in Ringssend or in Donnybrook. These happen to be places where there are not any sites available for new houses with the possible exception of one that is becoming available now and where casual vacancies arise only very rarely. It must be obvious that his chance of being housed in the particular locations that he has selected are quite remote but it is a fact—and Deputy FitzGerald concealed this in order to present a completely false picture—that at any time in the past ten years this man could have been housed if he was prepared to accept the accommodation offered. In fact, I feel that even to travel from Inchicore to Ringsend is not a very great hardship. There are many people travelling much longer distances. However, I feel it is in the corporation's own best interests and in everybody's best interests to try to arrange, as far as possible, that their tenants will be housed in areas that are suitable for them. I feel they should make every effort to facilitate people in this way by arranging for tenants who are unsuitably housed from the point of view of their work or even from the point of being near their relatives to transfer with other people who would be more suitably housed where they happen to be.
Another question that was raised was the practice of certain Deputies indulging in the pretence that they have been able to get houses for people. I am glad that a number of Deputies made it quite clear that, in fact, no Deputy is in a position to obtain a house for a person and that houses are allocated in an objective way in accordance with need as determined by one or other of different methods. Deputy Foley and Deputy Burke made the Fianna Fáil attitude clear in this regard. We have always made it clear that the allocation of houses is completely unaffected by any representations on behalf of individuals made by public representatives. It is true, as Deputy Clinton mentioned, that certain action was taken by some Fianna Fáil public representatives in regard to the allocation of houses in one particular area of County Dublin — Malahide. That action produced the result of having the proposed allocation reviewed so as to ensure that people who were entitled to houses and did not get them in the first provisional allocation were, in fact, given the consideration to which they were entitled.
At that time I felt it was a great pity that the late Deputy Seán Dunne was not still in this House because there is nobody who would have been able to deal as adequately as he would with the arrangement that disqualified the people residing in the Baskin cottages from housing in the Malahide area and required them, instead, to be considered for housing in Santry, Ballymun and such areas. The subterfuge that was adopted of saying that, because the Baskin townland was not the townland in which the majority of the Baskin cottages were situated but the townland of Ballymacartle rather than the townland of Baskin was something that would not have got by the late Deputy Dunne.
I am glad that the councillors who tried to trick these people out of houses to which they were entitled because of this naming of the Baskin cottages eventually saw that the game was up and amended the scheme so that justice was done. As I say, I agree with Deputies who said that this practice of people pretending to get houses for people when, in fact, they have nothing to do with it, is something that should be condemned. I hope that Deputy L'Estrange will now cease to send out letters such as this:
Dear John,
Glad to inform you that you have been awarded a house at the meeting on Monday night. Wishing you many years of health and happiness in your new home....
I hope, in particular, that if he should continue to send out such letters he will only send them to people who have been awarded houses and not as in this particular case when the letter is sent to a man who did not get a house and who never approached Deputy L'Estrange or anybody else to try to get one for him.
Deputies Cluskey and Timmons brought up the question of the rents charged for flats and bedsitters in Dublin city. They spoke of the accommodation and furniture that was provided in these flats and bedsitters and, in particular, they referred to the scandalous exploitation of so-called furnished flats. I may say that I am well aware of the anti-social activities of these racketeers who provide less than the minimum furniture necessary for normal life but who charge exhorbitant rents. Obviously, this is a difficult problem and it is not one for my Department. As far as I can remember, it was brought within the ambit of this debate by Deputy Cluskey who pointed out that if there was available a sufficiency of housing, the scope for the malevolent activities of the bedsitter and furnished flats parasites will be greatly reduced. This, I admit and I would very much like to be able to deprive these people of their ill-gotten gains in this way. However, it must be obvious that we are not within sight of remedying this evil in this way and that other methods which are not within the scope of my Department must be sought.
