I want to deal in particular with the White Paper that was issued and the suggestions for the reorganisation of local government, and to express what I believe is the general criticism that, while the White Paper sets out the existing framework of local government and gives a reasonably detailed account of the services, it is entirely the wrong approach to proceed in a matter of this sort by issuing a White Paper from the Department of Local Government which was compiled entirely within the Department. That is bureaucracy with a vengeance.
This whole problem of local government, as many Deputies said including Deputy O'Donovan, has become complex. Different aspects affect different areas. No changes such as those envisaged in this White Paper should even be proposed without a full public inquiry. The whole question of local government was considered twice in the past 50 years by commissions or bodies of inquiry. The first reported as far back as 1926. The last one was established in 1935 and reported in 1938. On foot of the first one the Greater Dublin legislation was introduced in 1930 and, with the possible exception of the Local Government Act, 1940, no legislation followed the recommendations of the 1935 tribunal. I think that was the Gavan Duffy tribunal of which the present commissioner who is administering the affairs of the Dublin Corporation was then secretary.
They were the only two inquiries of scope or character that have been conducted into this matter since the State was set up. It has been the subject of the strongest possible comment by members of local authorities that the proposals enshrined in this White Paper have been brought forward without an investigation by an independent body having on it, if necessary, a representative of the Department of Local Government, or receiving assistance from the Department, but which would take account of and hear evidence from not only the public who, in the final analysis are most entitled to be consulted, but from elected public representatives.
If we compare the approach here with the approach adopted in England and Scotland where in many respects the basis of local administration is similar to ours although, of course, their areas, towns and cities are very different from ours, we will see that there have been established committees of inquiry, or Royal Commissions as they are known, whereby a group of people are appointed to conduct an investigation. These consult with the interests concerned and, subsequently, make recommendations which if adopted by the government of the day are implemented in the form of a White Paper and, ultimately, in the form of legislation.
Recently I have been reading some of these reports. One example is the most recent one—the Maud Ratcliffe Report—which, first, was published in short-version form of 19 or 20 pages but in addition to which there are four or five volumes of the detailed aspects of the particular inquiry that they conducted.
In Scotland which might be a good area for us to use for purposes of comparison, there was the Wheatley Commission on local government. This body made certain specific recommendations one of which was that all local authorities should be elected directly and that there should be no nomination or co-option of non-elected persons to local authorities. They said that every local authority should have their own taxing powers by means of which they would raise a substantial portion of their revenue. They said that each local authority should exercise statutory functions in their own rights and not by delegation on an agency basis.
The first recommendation of the Maud Ratcliffe Report was that local authority areas must be so defined as to enable citizens and their elected representatives to have a common sense of purpose.
As anticipated by Deputy O'Donovan, I wish to speak with particular reference to Dún Laoghaire. Dublin Corporation up to the time of its abolition consisted of 45 members and covered the entire Dublin city area. It was very unlikely that any member, because of the extent of the ward or electoral area that he would represent, would be familiar with what was happening in another area. It is proposed to add to that area Dublin County Council, a large part of which is still an urban area. In any event, the Dublin County Council area comprises the north of Dublin, the south-west and, at present, the south county. A large part of the area is rural and also there are large towns in it of growing population such as Balbriggan, Swords and Skerries on the north side, Blanchardstown in the middle and the very populous south county area which includes Tallaght and Clondalkin in respect of which the projected population is 100,000.
According to the census of 1966, the population of Dún Laoghaire was more than 51,000. I suppose that that figure is now about 60,000. The hinterland of the area had a population then of 33,000 and it is possible that this area now has a population as great as Dún Laoghaire itself. A great deal of the traffic from the hinterland converges for a variety of reasons, on Dún Laoghaire itself while some of it, as Deputy O'Donovan rightly said, converges on Dublin by way of the Bray road and across Leeson Street or Mount Street Bridge.
Recently, a meeting was organised by the Dún Laoghaire Chamber of Commerce to which all public representatives of the area, Deputies and councillors, were invited. Also invited and present at the meeting were representatives of residents' associations and in all more than 200 people were present. Considering that at that stage it was not easy to obtain copies of the White Paper, this was a large attendance. The discussion that took place was lengthy and informal and when a resolution was passed unanimously there was only one councillor—a Fianna Fáil councillor—who raised a hand in opposition to it. The resolution objected to this proposal. It was an objection based on well-known and sustainable grounds. One of the reasons was that while existing services in Dún Laoghaire are regarded in many respects as being inadequate, they are much superior to those provided in Dublin city while, at the same time, the rate in Dún Laoghaire is less than the rate in Dublin city. The proposal would entail substantially higher rates for Dún Laoghaire and would result in the provision of poorer services than we have. It has been recognised already that in most cases the new regional health authorities are unmanageable. The Eastern Regional Health Board, for instance, is a colossus; as Deputy O'Donovan rightly pointed out, health charges are responsible for the phenomenal increase each year in rates. While the provisions under the Health Contributions Bill will bring in £5 million a year—a figure that is much higher than the £2 million estimated in the Budget—it will not alleviate in any way the burden on the rates.
When one reads the White Paper carefully he realises that there are two or three extraordinary aspects of it. There is no reference in it to the cost of implementing the proposals. We are told that there is to be a special White Paper on rates. That is what people are interested in. They are interested in two or three aspects of this. They are interested in the cost. They are interested in the kind of service. They are interested in the extent to which they can get in touch with a local official or a representative of the authority who will deal with their problems and they are, of course, interested in getting in touch with their own local representative. Page 33 of the White Paper says:
A merger of the existing authorities need not mean that a uniform rate would be levied throughout the entire area; apart from any transitional arrangements (which are a normal feature in the case of boundary extensions) special provision should be made for meeting the cost of purely urban and purely rural services and separate rates could be levied for common services and for local services.
Does anyone believe that will happen? Of course it will not happen. It certainly will not happen in the Dublin area and that is the precise reason why the people of Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown, irrespective of political affiliations, are rigidly opposed to this; it will mean higher rates for poorer services. In addition, the very criticism expressed by the members of Dublin Corporation can be applied even more strongly to this particular proposal; it will mean that the local authority representative will be remote from the people he represents and out of touch with their needs.
One of the proposals in this White Paper is to wipe out town commissioners and small bodies like them. I think nearly everybody knows there is no financial, economic or administrative area which would support the idea that town commissioners have something to commend them. The town commissioners themselves, realising that they are ineffective and, if you like, impotent appreciate that they have not the financial strength, the powers, the capacity or the administrative machinery to provide the kind of services required. But what does this White Paper propose? It proposes that, because of the large scale on which the new authority, this is the Dublin municipal authority, would operate—it would be responsible for an area with almost 800,000 people; 800,000 people out of a total population of less than three million—certain special steps would have to be taken. What does the White Paper suggest? It suggests that:
.... special steps might well be necessary to secure adequate machinery for consultation with all sections of the population. If, as suggested above, local functions were delegated to committees, each committee could have its own offices and staff——
More bureaucracy!
——and these could be made the focus of as many public services as possible.
Who would constitute these committees? In the case of some town commissioners sufficient candidates could not be found to stand for election and some elections went by default because of that. I am, I think, correct in saying four candidates went up for an election in one case—fewer than the number of seats to be filled. It is now proposed that in this new area committees will be formed. Already the criticism is that local elected representatives have had power stripped from them. They cannot take any major decisions. They can strike the rate and, if they do not, they will be abolished. They will be abolished if the rate struck does not meet the level of charges imposed on them by statute in respect of health and other services. The one service in respect of which the people feel they have got the least value, in which there has been a colossal rise in expenditure, is that of health and the one criticism every local authority make, and this goes for councillors of every political shade, is that their powers have been whittled away from them, that their capacity to represent the people has been limited by legislation and restricted by financial control exercised from the Custom House, or from wherever the appropriate Minister may be.
This proposal proposes to do two things—to wipe out some of these town commissioners and other smaller bodies and to increase the area of jurisdiction of other authorities, particularly the Dublin authority, and to replace the existing authorities in Dublin by a form of committee with fewer powers than even the existing impotent town commissioners have. This is surely a contradiction in thinking. It shows that the proposal has not been properly and carefully worked out. There is an unanswerable case and the Government should take heed from what happened recently in another matter. Without going into the merits or demerits of the proposal in relation to community schools, the one thing that was not done in that particular instance was that the interests concerned were not consulted. That is another example of a scheme being imposed from the top down. I yield to no one in my admiration for the capacity, the energy, the skill and the dedication of civil servants, but civil servants are not responsible directly to the people; they are appointed to fulfil administrative functions and to carry out the policy laid down.
This particular White Paper is a classic example of bureaucracy and an indication of the octopus tendencies of the Department of Local Government, spreading out their tentacles and bringing in within their control every local authority and every aspect of local administration. This will mean the end of local government, as we understand it. The Minister's letter of 25th May, following the publication of the White Paper, was an obvious reaction to the views expressed on the proposals. He said that he would be prepared to consider any constructive and worthwhile suggestions. Who is to decide whether they are worthwhile? How will suggestions be put forward? So far as Dún Laoghaire Corporation are concerned they were not consulted about these proposals. Dublin County Council were not consulted about these proposals. Dublin Corporation did not exist so they could not be consulted. Is that not the very worst type of bureaucracy?
There is a tremendous amount of special pleading in this White Paper. On page 24 we find:
Smaller local electoral areas could be established to promote closer contact between citizens and councillors and more flexible rules governing the recognition of "approved local councils" could be introduced....
It is all "could be". Everybody recognises it will not be done. It is not the intention to do it. Already local authorities are frustrated by having to send proposals to the Custom House. You can get an extraordinary situation such as occurred in a housing scheme that I inspected recently in my own constituency, a modern scheme of very nice houses built on a site to which Deputy O'Donovan referred, acquired when the inter-Party Government were in office and work was then commenced. The scheme was completed and the toilet windows are fixed and cannot be opened. If a private applicant for a small dwelling loan was one inch out in his specifications there would be objection to the payment of the grant. In this case the windows are fixed contrary to every known principle of health. People have been living in these houses for years and have been endeavouring to get the local authority to change the windows. That scheme not merely went through the local authority but also went to the Custom House. Here is an example of a Department looking at small things and ignoring things that vitally concern people. I want to urge most strongly what I believe is the unanimous view of elected representatives irrespective of party that there should be a public inquiry comparable to the investigation conducted before the Greater Dublin legislation of 1930 and comparable now to the Gavan Duffy investigation before the war. That inquiry was largely dormant because of the onset of the war but at least it carried out a thorough investigation and made certain recommendations.
One of the obvious things is to develop areas in proximity to existing areas. One of the recommendations of Dún Laoghaire Corporation and one which is acceptable I believe to the people of the Rathdown part of my constituency is to extend—because the services are already there—the boundary so as to include within Dún Laoghaire the adjoining hinterland of Rathdown, or portion of it, but not to establish in the capital area a metropolis that will be providing services for 800,000 people, almost one-third of the population of the country. I want to support what was said by Deputy O'Donovan. In fact, what we did when in Government was to provide a separate manager for Dún Laoghaire who was available there to deal with Dún Laoghaire problems. In the present situation the Dublin city manager and assistant city and county managers are dealing at certain times with certain functions for the area, and the city manager for Dublin Corporation, an assistant city and county manager for the county council and another assistant city and county manager up to the advent of the new health boards, had become the chief executive officers of the old health body.
The people of Dún Laoghaire and of County Dublin want separate managers to look after their problems. It could well be that some form of joint meetting would take place between these managers on common problems, as they meet at present, but there is a clear feeling among the people that their needs are not adequately attended to because the manager and assistant managers are in the main occupied with Dublin and Dublin problems and are only disposed to deal with Dún Laoghaire or County Dublin as an afterthought or on a very limited basis. That in no way reflects on the officials concerned. In fact, their energies are distracted and their usefulness very much lessened by the fact that they are going from one place to another. One day a week they are in Dún Laoghaire and somewhere else for the remainder of it. It is impossible for them. The fact that they do manage so well is a tribute to their own skill and energy but the system is defective.
I want to advert to certain other aspects of this Estimate and, in particular, to housing which is still a very serious problem in the Dublin area. I want to confine myself mainly to Dún Laoghaire. There is a good deal of building in the Dublin area but the bulk of it is private building and in the Dublin Corporation area there are hundreds of applicants, hundreds of married people with families, some with one child, some with as many as five but many with three children, living in flats or rooms or with in-laws. There has been tremendous delay in getting sanction from the Department for schemes. In addition, there is the special problem of the fringe areas of Dublin and Dún Laoghaire that building land is valuable and that available land is bought up by those who are going to build for private sale. A fantastic amount of wealth has been accumulated by property speculators. There is an obligation on the State, in conjunction with local authorities, to ensure that, if necessary, compulsory powers are used to acquire sites so that adequate housing may be provided for people in need of it.
The same is true of the Rathdown area. I speak particularly of these two areas because they are in my own constituency and the problem in both is very acute, so acute that throughout the constituency there are quite sizeable areas in different localities where it is a common sight to see large numbers of mobile homes brought there without proper services or sanitation or any of the normal facilities they should have, and which are an obvious danger not only to the occupants of these mobile homes but also to the health of the people in the locality. If friction arises from time to time between occupants of mobile homes and the residents of the locality it is precisely because of this problem that the health of the people is endangered. There are other aspects of the matter also, the effect on the area and its appearance but the prime consideration is health.
I also want to direct attention to another fringe problem, the delay in completing estates. It is an intolerable situation in which people find themselves when they are paying heavy rates each year, with rates rising year after year, paying for all the services involved in the rates charge, having already paid a heavy deposit on houses in most cases and in some cases having purchased them but in the majority of cases they are paying off very expensive loans. It was said here that the cost of loans at present in this country is one of the highest in Europe, probably one of the highest in the world. At present the cost of loans is a tremendous burden. These people are paying rates and are good citizens but the only service they get from the local authority other than the water supply, which they are paying for, is to have their bins collected and have the roads swept.
Many of these estates are left unfinished and in some cases a racket has developed. When the work is completed by the builder if there is a piece of ground remaining in some cases they go so far as to transfer the property to people of straw so that they can not be proceeded against. In one part of my constituency at Kilmacud it was found that a company had transferred a piece of ground that was left in a deplorable condition to somebody in St. Kevin's Hospital, a man "on the way out". They had done this in order to avoid fulfilling their obligations. That is a most objectionable matter. Steps should be taken by the Department in consultation with the local authority, and there is power under the 1963 Planning Act, to see that the work is completed so that people will have proper services. In addition—and this is a vital matter— there should be an overriding standard set by the local authority in consultation with the Department that in all newly-developed estates adequate playing facilities will be provided and, whether the estate is developed by one or more builders, that it is part of the recognised plan and will be enforced by the local authority and the Department that facilities will be provided. In a whole range of fringe areas in County Dublin, and particularly in the area with which I am familiar, Rathdown, there are inadequate facilities or there is excessive delay in providing the facilities and in many cases the facilities are provided only after a group of people come together in a sports club or bring together in one organisation a whole lot of organisations, such as the GAA and other groups, and form themselves into a social centre and provide facilities which they all avail of.
There ought to be in every scheme adopted by the local authority and sanctioned by the Department a standard set that schemes will not be approved and sanction will not issue unless the scheme provides for adequate playing facilities and recreational facilities. In a great many of these areas the facilities that have been provided up to the present leave much to be desired and are a standing reproach, being far removed from the type of services that should be included in these schemes.
Most of these schemes are left in an unfinished condition and delay in getting work carried out has meant that some of the children whose parents went into these schemes have grown to adulthood before the facilities are provided. The provision of facilities is particularly important at a time when we are talking about conservation and there is so much literature published on that subject. In many areas the surroundings are pleasant in the sense that they are adjacent to mountains and the countryside and they have adequate ground space provided it is preserved and not encroached on, for financial reasons, by being built on, regardless of the needs of people.
The problem of rates is a very pressing one in the Dublin area. The waiver of rates scheme that was introduced is only partially successful. There is an extraordinary delay in many cases in getting sanction in respect of applications. A great many of the persons concerned are not aware of their rights and it is only when they consult someone like an elected representative or learn it from members of their families that they realise that waiver can apply in the case of pensioners. Most of these people are at an age when they are not always familiar with the services to which they are entitled. This is a matter that should be the subject of special attention by the local authority and the Department so that pensioners and other retired persons can be informed as to their rights.
I want again to emphasise that so far as the constituency that I represent is concerned the paramount need is for housing and after that to have the problems of the area dealt with such as the delay in providing the essential basic services and amenities which the people need and the delay in dealing with matters such as the erection of traffic lights in an area in which there is a large moving population, a dormitory area in which a great many people travel morning and evening to and from work and in a great many cases have to travel through crossroads or junctions where there is no control of any kind. The provisions may have been adequate when the population was smaller and when the number of vehicles using the road was much less but with the phenomenal increase in cars and the speed of driving the local authority in conjunction with the Minister and the Department should see what steps can be taken to control the flow of traffic and to ensure that where traffic is heaviest there are adequate traffic lights and adequate control and direction of traffic.
Finally, I want to repeat what I said initially, that I believe the proposals in this White Paper should not be proceeded with until there is a full public inquiry at which evidence will be taken from the people in the first instance, the elected representatives and all interested, before legislative proposals are brought forth. The proposals in the White Paper are further evidence of the bureaucratic tendencies that have characterised the Government's attitude, as I have said, in the Department of Education in regard to community schools. These are manifestly enshrined in the White Paper that has been presented, that has been prepared within the Department, without consultation, without discussion, and without any real appreciation of the problems of local representatives and, in particular, the problems and needs of people in both city and rural areas.