I was dealing last week with our record in respect of the house building and particularly with the failure of the Government over a number of years to emulate the record set 20 years ago. I particularly emphasised the fall off in the percentage of houses built by local authorities and the social impact this was having and will have among the less well off members of our society. This fall off has occurred although we are now supposed to be 50 per cent better off than we were 20 years ago. It is all very well for a Minister to come in here and quote statistics, but the ultimate test is the number of houses built, and if we have a social conscience our main concern must be the number of these houses available for letting or renting to people who out of their own resources cannot be expected to provide houses for themselves.
I appreciate that to Fianna Fáil Governments house building has been a very sensitive area. I suppose it would be to any Government. It is a field which involves considerable labour mobility and that fact gives industrial workers a stronger bargaining position. Whatever they may secure as a result of their bargaining tends to become the norm for other groups. As well, building expenses are by their nature non-competitive whereas in the matter of other commodities there is open competition. You cannot import buildings to compete with buildings put up here. There is also no export content in building. Neither can you export roads, but roads are regarded as the infrastructure for economic development.
The general question of rents, rates and the Government contribution to them has been dealt with by the Minister in his White Paper but if we take the sources of local authority expenditure and analyse them in respect of county councils and urban bodies, it throws up some interesting figures.
Years ago when we were all younger the great outcry of the rural community and the farmers in particular was about the rates. There is still an element of that but when the figures are examined they present an interesting pattern. In respect of county council expenditure, in 1960-61, 44 per cent came from rent and rates and 55 per cent came from Government contributions. I have not the figures for 1970-71 but, in 1969-70, 36 per cent came from rent and rates and 61 per cent from Government contributions. In respect of urban communities, in 1960-61, rent and rates amounted to 76 per cent whereas Government grants amounted to 24 per cent. In 1969-70, the rent and rates grant had increased slightly to 83 per cent and the Government grant was 16 per cent. This shows that the urban community are now contributing a very high ratio to local authority expenditure vis-à-vis the rural community. I imagine the pattern many years ago must have been rather different.
In respect of housing, and this presents the figures in a somewhat different fashion, for the year ended 31st March, 1969, £.84 million was collected in respect of 19,000 county council houses whereas in respect of 103,000 urban houses £4.3 million was collected. These figures show that the urban community is harder pressed, and the tendency is for that pressure to increase vis-à-vis the rural community.
In the past decade expenditure at local level has increased considerably. Rates have doubled and are now around £50 million per year. Out of total expenditure of £150 million, one-third, or £50 million, comes from the rates; one-sixth from rents and other services and one-half from Government sources. Capital expenditure advanced from £9 million in 1960-61 to £36 million in 1970-71 and is now 18 or 19 per cent of our total capital programme. In other words, our rates have doubled, our revenue expenditure has trebled, our capital expenditure has quadrupled and our total indebtedness to local authorities has increased from £143 million in 1959-60 to £283 million in 1969-70. It is particularly disappointing in the face of all that increased expenditure, although I realise it does not all go on housing, that the housing record of the last few years has been so poor.
We were building at a higher rate 20 years ago, and at that time even though we were relatively less well off, we were providing substantially better social services. We were providing £8 million for food subsidies which were abolished by the Fianna Fáil Government within six weeks of getting into power after promising on every platform in the country that if returned to power they would not touch the food subsidies. This is in my view a highly unsatisfactory picture.
The Minister said:
All that could be done to reduce costs without jettisoning acceptable standards has largely been done.
Does a reduction in the size of grant houses not constitute a jettisoning of standards? Does the intensification of the density of housing schemes not constitute a jettisoning of housing standards? Bad though the figures may have been over the years one thing we could say up till recently, when a programme of ghetto pillboxes arrived under the Minister and his predecessor, was that our houses had a larger cubic capacity than houses built in many other places. We have sacrificed that larger cubic capacity in the interests of producing more housing units and consequently better statistical records.
The Minister mentioned low cost housing projects. It appears the project has two facets: the first is large-scale long-term contracts—one cannot object to that—and the second is short-life houses. The ambition seems to be to get good production figures on the cheap. I do not accept this is an adequate excuse or reason for returning to the jerry-building of the thirties. In the absence of any radically new ideas or departures in the construction industry this approach of the Minister is of dubious value. However, I can only wish him luck with his short life pillboxes.
In respect of assessment of housing needs there is of course a subjective as well as an objective aspect to this. It depends very much on what standards you are aiming at and it does not lend itself to an absolute mathematical calculation. I am satisfied that the needs set out in the Government White Paper, Housing in the Seventies, are a true index of total needs. The needs should be honestly set out. There should be no attempt made to minimise the extent of the problem merely because we are unable or do not want to reach our target. I have not analysed in detail the basis on which the figures in the White Paper were brought out. Deputy Dr. FitzGerald has done so here before this House on at least one occasion. In general, these calculations are based on four basic criteria: overcrowding, unfitness, obsolescence and new family formation. These taken in conjunction with the latest census data, are used as a basis on which to make the calculations and projections as regards future needs.
I have, however, examined the calculations and projections as regards my own constituency, Tipperary South Riding, and I am satisfied that there the county development plan was a gross understatement of our requirements. It was indeed grossly inaccurate in its calculation and assumption and it was ridiculous to regard it as a serious exercise in planning our programme. I am sure that, if I carried out a similar exercise in most other counties, I would have similar results. It may be that we had lack of expertise. In most counties we had the position at that time of a staff relatively inexperienced in this type of work. Most counties took a local engineer and sent him up to the Custom House for a crash course. After the crash course he came back as a planner. It was those people, with some help from other sources, who drew up the county development plan.
It is quite understandable that the target of the requirements which was calculated in such circumstances could be open to question. The attempt to make the assessment in my own constituency was extremely amateurish and was in effect an understatement; not alone were certain understated requirements laid down but targets lower than that were then suggested. As year after year passed we got further and further below those targets, so that in my constituency, as well as in other places, our record is extremely poor. It is slightly better than it was in the past. In one year we built no houses and in another year we only built one house, but by and large it is a poor record.
I may say that this is not in any way attributable to the local representatives, all of whom are more than anxious, irrespective of the outcry about rates, to improve their house production programme. The difficulty arises, as it has always arisen, at departmental and ministerial level. I have already explained how, under the particular machinery local authorities have to operate, it is quite a simple matter to slow down housebuilding at any stage. The various controls that are exercisable from the Custom House can, behind the scenes, be put into operation to secure this.
The Minister mentions that a subsidy from his Department is available under the Housing Act, 1970, for the provision of housing for key workers coming into an area for new or expanding industry and has provided the basis for arrangements which he hopes will become an effective service to industry. One must welcome that. This is not new. It has been in operation for some time but one needs to emphasise here that every effort should be made to see that the credentials of all such firms are carefully screened. In certain areas there is always a risk in building houses if the particular industry is likely to fail at a later stage.
We had that experience in South Tipperary in respect of the Ballingarry Colliery. A number of houses were built in Killenaule. Fortunately, the Department resisted the more rosy prognostications of the proprietors and built less houses than were demanded; but even at that we are faced, and have been faced for some considerable time, with a number of unused houses in a place where it will not be too easy to get them occupied. We resisted for years demands in South Tipperary County Council to have these houses built in the Ballingarry region. It was only when the National Building Agency arrived that facilities were made available to have these houses built.
I welcome the Minister's statement that where houses must be provided for rent they will be taken over, maintained and administered by the housing authority and that the Industrial Development Authority will recoup the local authority for the letting of houses to industrial employees. One of the difficulties at Killenaule probably arose from the fact that these precautions were not taken at that time. If the county council had had some direct administrative role I believe that the houses would have been maintained. As it was, this housing estate seemed to be in the hands of an industrialist and our position as a county council was merely to buy some of the houses from time to time. We have taken over some of these houses but had the county council been involved from the beginning I believe the position would be better.
The Minister dealt with the reduction in the floor area of the grant houses and said that the new system should help counteract the effect of high land prices which often force builders to build to a luxury standard simply to cover their costs. High land prices have developed as a result of inflation. There has been land speculation also. No serious drive has been made at Departmental level to encourage local authorities to acquire a pool of serviced land over the country as a whole. Some effort has been made in Dublin to do so, but there has not been sufficient drive at county council level to secure a quantum of serviced land in rural Ireland for private individuals and private builders. Consequently, at the present time the smallest plot of land can be sold for £1,000, £1,200 or £1,500. The Government and the Minister have been less than satisfactory in dealing with this matter. There has been talk about the nationalisation of building land but the Minister has said that this would give rise to legal, administrative and constitutional difficulties. I cannot comment on the constitutional aspect of the problem. This is probably a matter for a constitutional lawyer or for the courts. There is machinery by which local authorities could have built up a pool of serviced land under each local authority and this worthwhile exercise has not been undertaken. Yet we speak with tongue in cheek about land speculation. This course might not have prevented land speculation completely but at least it would have modified it.
The Minister spoke about houses for the aged. Everybody in this House will be in favour of the Minister's plans to provide houses for the aged. Such houses should be built at ground level only with built-in safeguards and should be specially adapted to the needs of the elderly. I would not like to see a large number of such houses grouped together in the bigger centres of population. We do not want to create geriatric ghettoes. The houses should be carefully planned and suitably located. The Minister said:
Since the scheme of grants to encourage this work was introduced in 1962, grants have been allocated for 962 units, of which 530 have so far been completed.
Everybody accepts that we should try to keep people out of institutions and county homes and that their own surroundings, no matter how humble, are more suitable than the most sophisticated type of institution. I am disappointed with the figures if I have interpreted them correctly as meaning that only 530 houses have been completed for the aged since 1962, when I compare that figure with the high population in county homes. I have never liked the idea of large county homes. I feel depressed every time I visit such a home and see such a high proportion of our population living there. I do not deny that everything is being done in a most humane manner for the old people, but these people miss their home environment. I am disappointed at the figure of 530 houses completed since 1962. Relative to the county home population, this figure is not very impressive.
On page 16 of the Minister's brief are the figures for the subsidisation of local authority housing—the one-third and two-thirds subsidy houses. The figure for a non-serviced house is now £1,300. In 1948, it was £1,100. For a serviced house the figure is £2,200 and in 1948 it was £1,650. For flats up to five storeys, the figure is £3,000 and in 1948 it was £2,200. For flats of more than five storeys the figure is £3,200 and in 1948 it was £2,200. Of course, the purchasing power of money has decreased considerably since 1948. It is now less than half what it was then. Therefore, from the point of view of building costs, coupled with this decrease in the value of money, the subsidisation of these dwellings has by no means kept pace with rising costs.
On the question of differential rents the Minister said, and I quote from page 17 of his brief:
On an annual programme of nearly 5,000 dwellings, subsidies will increase every year by over £1.1 million. Thus, in five more years, on the basis of the programme proposed in the 1969 White Paper, State and local authority subsidies at their current level could have increased from £10.6 million to over £16 million a year—or nearly as much as we spent on building local authority houses last year.
It is no argument to say that the amount would be as much as we spent on building local authority houses last year because, as I have already emphasised, that figure is too low. In principle the differential rent system is sound. Most people in the House, irrespective of which side they are on, agree on this. One could not disagree with the principle provided one is satisfied that the little extra paid by those who are in a strong position to pay is reflected in improved conditions for those who happen to be in a weak position. I have not any figures on this but I would like to know if the increase in income from local authority housing has been reflected in a corresponding increase in the number of local authority houses built. We know that the income from local authority housing has increased and we know also that there has been a decrease in the number of local authority houses being built. When he is replying perhaps the Minister would give us some observations on this.
Differential rents are on a gross family income and not on basic parental income. Gross income includes overtime and some other emoluments that may be temporary or haphazard and on a proportion of the income of the family members. I do not think anybody could object to the principle of calculating a rent on a static basic income—an income to which parents can look forward year after year. However, the question of overtime raises certain difficulties. My own view is that the inclusion of overtime is questionable. Apart from the fact that such extra earnings often entail extra and perhaps not too readily vouchable expenses and simultaneous increases in taxation, the adding on of another increase in rent is very likely to prove a disincentive to productivity in the peak of seasonal employment and also in the labour-scarce field of domiciliary help.
In putting these arguments forward, I am urging the Minister to have another look at this question of including overtime, money that the head of the household may earn, perhaps, by working during a week-end or money that a wife might earn by carrying out some domestic chore in a house in the vicinity. Regarding the inclusion for rent assessment of so many new pennies per week in respect of each member of the household who is working, again there is some injustice here. It is unjust to ask non-householders who are already consumer tax-payers by reason of turnover tax and who are already paying income tax under PAYE to pay a household rent or a proportion of it. No other citizen in the State is asked to do this. Members of a family who happen to be raised in a local authority house are asked to pay a household tax for no other reason than that their parents were poor. Under the new health regulations there is a clear differentiation in relation to a means test for health cards between parental and family member income. The family member income is now to be excluded completely when calculating means for the issue of health cards. If that is a correct procedure for subsidised health, I submit it should be a correct procedure for subsidised housing.
I understand there is considerable dissatisfaction up and down the country about differential rents, not in respect of differential rents being assessed upon a basic parental income but in respect of differential rents being increased by dragging in all these bits and pieces that a means test officer can lay his hands on when he is asked to reassess the rent of a household. I note the Minister's observation about building societies at column 442, Volume 254, of the Official Report:
The number of new house loans which the societies were able to approve in the year ended 31st March, 1971, was about double the number of loans approved in the previous year.
I do not know whether I am right in my suggestion that this advance may have been the result of the bank strike. The availability of housing loans from building societies depends upon how much money is being put into the societies by the public. Perhaps the Minister could give his views on how this upsurge was related, if it is related at all, to the recent bank strike, or if it is a trend that is likely to continue. The Minister also mentions that foreign insurance companies operating in this country have agreed to advance the level of investments in Ireland of the funds appropriate to their Irish business from the present level of 66? per cent to 80 per cent by 1977. Could the Minister tell us how much of that has been earmarked or is it just a general advance?
In regard to house purchase loans by local authorities, it has been our practice in South Tipperary to limit these loans practically entirely to the provision of new houses, and I see that this is in conformity with the practice all over the country. In so far as money is scarce I would be in agreement that this money should be limited to the provision of new houses. There would be a temptation to borrow money for small repairs that people could well do themselves, and therefore I believe it is quite right that the available money should be reserved for new houses.
The income level and the valuation in respect of local authority houses should have been raised even higher than the Minister has allowed. Local authorities assess the income of applicants, but the allocations made are determined by regulations. I put down a Parliamentary Question asking the Minister to raise these figures to a more realistic level, and now we have this small advance to £1,500. If we are to balance income with valuation on the basis of £1 valuation being equal to £20 income, the valuation should be advanced to £75, that is, if we are to accept the ratio which has been in operation in Civil Service thinking for many years. I cannot understand why in this field there is this imbalance between income level and valuation. It does not obtain in most other fields. However, that is a small point. In general the income limits are still too low because of the fall in the value of money, and people who could not be considered well off and are in need of a loan are precluded by this limit from availing of it. I think local authorities may, if they wish, go above that, but I am not quite sure of that.
On the question of supplementary grants, I recognise there was an injustice done to people trying to build houses and finding they could not get a supplementary grant from small urban bodies, because such bodies were unable to meet these grants. I welcome the fact that this has now been corrected and that the larger body, the county council, may now pay the supplementary grant for smaller urban bodies. This was an injustice which affected a not inconsiderable number of people all over the country.
In respect of supplementary grants, again the Minister will tell me we are paying out ever-increasing grants but it is only proper that I should point out the failure of these supplementary grants to keep pace with the fall in the value of money and the increased cost of house building. To qualify for a supplementary grant in 1960 the income was £832, valuation £50, with concessions for dependants. In the 1966 Act the figures were advanced to £1,045, the valuation to £60, with dependant concessions up to £400. I put down an amendment that the figure should be raised to £1,500 on one occasion and the Minister has agreed to £1,250. If building costs have increased by one-third over the past three years the Minister's advance on applicant income levels for supplementary grants has not kept pace with rising costs.
Of course when I welcome the fact that county councils may pay supplementary grants to people building houses in small urban areas where these grants are not being paid by the urban body, I do not thank the Minister for it. It is no skin off his nose. These are being paid entirely by the local authorities and one's thanks must go to the local authorities who have been good enough to take on this extra financial burden.
The Minister said at page 23 of his speech:
...a special extra capital allocation of £3 million, spread over a three-year period, was made available from the Local Loans Fund to Dublin Corporation to acquire land for housing. Under this programme the corporation were able to buy over 2,000 acres of serviced and unserviced land at an average price of about £1,500 per acre.
I must express my appreciation of that. It is a pity that some similar effort was not made in respect of many other areas all over the country.
The Minister said also:
...one of the factors that has pushed up land prices in the Dublin area in recent years has been competition among builders for the building land available.
Competition may be a factor but is there not another reason? Is the real reason not land speculation, made possible under the Planning Act? Would anyone disagree with me when I say that that is the operative factor in pushing up the price of land in Dublin and in other parts of the country?
The Minister dealt with group water schemes. This is a difficult field. We in South Tipperary were perhaps among the pioneers in the field of regional schemes. We had considerably to modify our approach and indeed our attitude in respect of regional schemes. The money was not available. Since the recession of 1965 there has been considerable restraint placed on the development of these schemes. We have largely had to move away from regional schemes into the field of group schemes.
One of the defects of group schemes is that they have introduced a new form of administration. In group schemes the field officer is directly under the control of the Department. Why this change was made I am not too clear. In my own county council we have 20 or 21 engineers. We have nearly lost track of them. One of the reasons advanced during the years for increasing the engineering staff was all the work to be done on water schemes. Now what is the position? The planning of the water schemes is being done by consultants. Down through the years we have never been able to secure that our engineers would do any of that work. We had the case in my constituency of an engineer, our county engineer, who could not plan the carrying of water across this Dáil Chamber but within a fortnight of leaving the service he became a consultant engineer and does the work for the entire county.
Now we find that our basic regional schemes are still there but the attempt is being made to do the in-field work through local group schemes. That is quite reasonable. The county council provides the headwork and the main arterial supplies and group schemes do the in-field area. When we cannot do it ourselves as a regional scheme this is a method of approach which now seems to have evolved. Much of the planning has already been done. We have spent £80,000 on engineering fees. It is not all wasted. Some of that work is still available to us in respect of our group schemes. However, the difficulty about group schemes is that the local officer in charge of them does not report to and is not permitted to attend meetings of the local authorities. We have no control. We have merely a loose liaison, a contact with such officers. If group schemes are not being pushed we can only put down parliamentary questions asking why they are not being carried out. Admittedly these local field offices are inadequately staffed. In the beginning they did not even have clerical help. I also understand that it is not so easy to fill these posts.
I have yet to have it explained to me why these officers who are providing a local service, a service to help local people, are so divorced from the county council which is the local authority. Why are they kept completely under control of the Department and the Minister? What is the purpose behind that? From our point of view it is not a satisfactory arrangement. In the ordinary engineering services we can have our monthly meetings and question the engineers as to why this or that was not done, get explanations and have our arguments, but in the case of the group schemes where we are supplying the basic headworks and money grants we have no element of control. The contacts we have are extremely loose. To my mind this is administratively unsatisfactory. I do not know what solution the Minister may have or if he will offer any help in the matter.
Parliamentary questions have been asked, so far as I recall, suggesting that such district officers should be expected to report periodically to the local county council, but they are not allowed to appear before us. I see no valid reason why this should be so. A loose liaison between a field engineer directly under the control of the Minister and some other nominated engineer in the county council chamber is not satisfactory from the point of view of local representation.
Last year was Conservation Year. I am dissatisfied because of the lack of progress in regard to the very important matter of pollution. Some years ago we had an international engineering conference here and certain legislation was suggested to the Minister and certain action was proposed. Nothing on these lines has been carried out since. We were told last year, we were told this year, and I suppose next year we will be told again, about the amount of research work that is being carried out particularly by An Foras Forbartha in the Custom House. One would like to see some practical results. We have to consider the Dodder, the Tolka, the Liffey, Dublin Bay and the River Lee. We do not need any research work to know that they are grossly polluted. So far, what practical steps have been taken in regard to conservation of our environment? Over the past two, three, or four years it has been estimated that it will cost us £35 million and the corresponding figure produced in Britain was £500 million. Do we have to keep on spending £¼ million per year on An Foras Forbartha to be treated every year to a eulogy on this unit in the Custom House and yet see no practical results anywhere?
In his statement the Minister has done a very good job with a very bad case. He has given us a prolonged dissertation on the problems, but this dissertation simply means that the people of Dublin will have to tolerate their filthy rivers as well as their housing and traffic problems for many years to come. Here we have page after page of words, verbiage, but when one reads through all those pages one fails to find anything of a practical nature being suggested by the Minister. One must ask when will we get results? When will a beginning be made to solving these problems? Every Department in the State is interested in pollution as is the Institute of Industrial Research and Standards. A harmless committee was set up by the Taoiseach on which he appointed 50 or 60 persons. They are all decent-minded but harmless people who would be quite happy to meet, have a cup of tea, discuss this terrible problem of pollution, and then go home.
On a previous occasion I urged that this problem should be centralised in one Department. I presume the Department of Local Government would be the suitable one. All the clap-trap of other interested bodies should be set aside because it only confuses the issue. We saw a caravan in Leinster House which was got together by the Minister for Lands. That was his contribution to Conservation Year. This caravan went up and down the country showing people how to conserve our resources and it became known as Flanagan's circus. That is merely play-acting. That is not getting down to the heart of the problem. Getting to the heart of the problem involves planning and the expenditure of money and that is what the Government are not prepared to face up to. It means work. It does not mean pages and pages of a dreary brief read out by the Minister once a year before the national Parliament.
The Minister dealt also with regional development and regional teams. In the nature of things I suppose we are a little bit nervous about regionalisation, regarding it as a stepping-stone towards centralisation. However, in this case we have to look at this matter in the context of our projected entry into the EEC. The Minister has not mentioned that but the help which we may get in the EEC in regard to regionalisation, and this particularly affects people on the western seaboard and in the north-west, is a matter of extreme importance to us. Therefore, county and regional development teams are developments which we will have to foster not from the point of view of local government but from the point of view of the importance of regional development in the event of our entering the Common Market. Regional development is of importance to Italy, to ourselves and to other countries who have this problem, which we have particularly in the west.
The White Paper which the Minister circulated would appear to be largely a Custom House production based mainly on the results and thinking of the Royal Commissions set up in respect of local government in Britain and in Scotland. We have had no such commission or investigative body set up here and, indeed, we have not had an examination of local government on these lines since 1935. They have had several of these examinations across the water. Before this White Paper appeared at all we had developments here which I understand may shortly be given legal backing, namely, the regionalisation of our health services and the centralisation of our arterial road system. I have mixed feelings about these local government reorganisation proposals. I do not agree with issuing proposals of this nature without simultaneously issuing some ideas in regard to the financing of the system. Are there to be any radical departures or is it going to be just a rehash of the old system? I recognise that when the report was prepared by the Royal Commission in respect of Scotland the same argument was advanced—it was not necessary to produce details of the financing of the system until the structural details were studied and decided upon. The same argument has been advanced here.
Here we have a document of 70 pages and the all-important matter of financing this reorganised system is dealt with in only half a page. This is not a new problem to local government because they have already issued three booklets on the question of the rating system and local financing, none of which got to the kernel of the matter. We have been promised a fourth booklet shortly on local financing.
The Minister dealt with planning and planning appeals. It is now a few years since the Planning Act was passed and now and only now can we look back and try to judge how satisfactory or otherwise that legislation was. Again, that legislation was largely based on similar legislation passed in the House of Commons. It is claimed to have defects both at central and local level. Being dissatisfied with the method of dealing with appeals at departmental level, this party submitted a Planning Appeals Bill in 1967. It was prepared by Deputy Denis Jones and others and it proposed to substitute for appeals to the Minister appeals to an appeals board to be established under the Bill. It was suggested that the board consist of a chairman who would be a judge of the Supreme Court, the High Court or the Circuit Court; he would be assigned as chairman by the Chief Justice after consultation with the President of the High Court or the President of the Circuit Court. In addition, two members of the board who would act as assessors would be drawn from a panel, one to be constituted by the Minister for Local Government and the other by the Local Appointments Commission. An assessor would be appointed for a period not exceeding three years and would be eligible for reappointment. It was suggested that the ordinary members of the board, whether from the Minister's panel or from the Local Appointments Commission panel, would be either qualified engineers, qualified architects or qualified town planners. It was also proposed that the decisions of the board should be in writing and their reasons for their decisions should be published in writing and would act as a guide for future appeals and thereby establish a kind of case law to help future appellants who would feel that they were disaffected and would wish to make an appeal.
That Bill was rejected and the system still goes and appeals, whether they are verbal or written, are adjudged by the political head of the Department behind closed doors. In our small society, in a suspicious kind of community as we tend to have here, I doubt if this is a satisfactory system. I have always believed in open conventions. The best way to eliminate suspicion and public dissatisfaction is to open the windows and let in the light of day. I am not satisfied that our planning system at central level meets the wishes of our people. It would be better if the business were conducted in a more open fashion than has been the case up to now. This would be in the interests of democracy and of better public relations.
There are difficulties in regard to appeals at local level. Registers of planning applications must be kept by all local authorities. They contain itemised proposals and in the majority of cases most of the proposals are accepted. In many cases the matters are quite trivial but this is not surprising when one considers that it is necessary to get planning permission for the smallest job. A certain number of applications are refused and it appears that once the county manager rejects an application the county council and the applicant are powerless. The aggrieved applicant may apply within 28 days to the Minister for Local Government. He does not know if his appeal will succeed. The only thing he knows is that he will probably have to wait for a year before he gets the result.
The alternative course open to the applicant is to revise and resubmit his application in the form of a new planning proposal, perhaps backed by a section 4 motion submitted simultaneously. The county manager, having once exercised his authority, may be disposed to exercise it again; he may send a second submission to the county solicitor for advice as to whether the second proposal is invalid on the basis that the matter is now res adjudicata. In many instances the county solicitor may feel himself under the control of the manager; he may have little knowledge of planning, engineering or architecture; he may not have access to the advice of an independent assessor and his knowledge of law may not be too reliable. This man will submit a report to a not too perceptive local authority that the second proposal is an invalid planning proposal and that the county council must reject it.
To strengthen the hand of the planning officer when he feels disposed to reject an application he has four approved boards at his disposal—An Comhairle Ealaíon, An Taisce, Bord Fáilte and the Office of Public Works. In very many cases these organisations do not investigate the case in question. Sometimes they are written to in regard to a private house although we know that Bord Fáilte, for example, are not interested in making any pronouncement in regard to single private houses. One suspects that these bodies are misused in order to give a pseudo objectivity to the case or to support the decision already taken by a local planning officer.
We have had considerable difficulty with regard to planning permission in my home town of Cashel. I have outlined the general difficulties which may arise when a person applies for planning permission. Perhaps the House will allow me to give a specific case which clearly demonstrates the difficulties we have to face in Cashel, difficulties other public representatives may have to face up and down the country at local level. On March 12th last a citizen of Cashel applied for permission to build a bungalow, one mile from Cashel, on the subsidiary Cashel/ Thurles road. On 17th April his wife approached me in a very agitated state about the pending application; she had heard rumours. Because another house had been built on that road nearer to Cashel, I assured her that there could not be any difficulty and, to put her mind at rest, I put down an ordinary notice of motion to intimate to the officials my interest in the matter.
The matter came before the county council on May 3rd and I was informed by the county manager that they were awaiting reports from the four approved bodies to which the matter had been referred. These are the approved bodies I mentioned. No intimation was given to me that a refusal was contemplated and it was agreed, at my request and with a view to showing my continuing interest in the matter, that the notice of motion be retained on the agenda. On the following Saturday morning, May 9th, I received a letter. The meeting of the county council had been on the previous Monday. The letter referred to my notice of motion and stated that the statutory period would expire on Monday, May 11th, and accordingly a decision would have to be given before that date and "unfortunately the decision in this case will have to be a refusal". I tried to contact the county manager, but failed, although I understand he was in Clonmel on that date and was, in fact, contacted by the solicitor. The manager was departing for Paris.
I succeeded in getting an emergency meeting of the majority of the county councillors on Monday. It then transpired that it had been agreed to reject this application from the beginning, irrespective of any opinion expressed by the four approved bodies. It also transpired that of the four approved bodies, An Taisce had some objection but, as far as I could gather locally, had never visited the area. The Arts Council and Public Works had no objection. Bord Fáilte did not reply. The excuse offered for not informing me at the county council meeting four days earlier that the application would be refused was that replies from the bodies were being awaited. Yet, at that time, it would appear that all had replied, except Bord Fáilte, and I understand this body never interferes in respect of local rural applications. In any case Bord Fáilte did not reply. Now that is the position that has arisen in respect of one particular local application.
