I am sorry if my comments will add a note of discord to what would otherwise be a fairly quiet and harmonious discussion. I am very disappointed that the Minister saw fit to reintroduce through his Department for the second or third time an extension of what is a piece of temporary legislation. In the area of non-political, non-controversial legislation, this is probably one of the lousiest pieces of legislation we have had for a long time. If the language is unparliamentary, the phrase came from the city manager. Why should such a piece of legislation which in its opening sections appears to be designed to do the right thing earn such an adjective? I fully agree with the description, and I say that as a politician, as a professional architect and as a former member of a local authority intimately concerned with housing policy.
This legislation was designed to protect the interests of people who for economic reasons were subject to the mercies of a market economy, who could not afford to house themselves properly and who were living in what could otherwise be described as cheap accommodation. It manifestly has failed to protect the interests of those people. The Act effectively concerns the Cork city and Dublin city areas. It simply points out that the authority in both cases must have regard for housing within their functional areas, when in both cases we are talking about inner city and outer city housing needs. The replacement of housing stock within the functional areas of the two housing authorities for whom this Act is a reality, has resulted in housing in essential parts of the cities being totally destroyed for the people who wish to live there. The absurdity of this legislation is demonstrated in Baggot Street, where a semi-State body is occupying a building there, in which three flats were built on the roof as a result of this legislation, and they are not let.
The reality is that, even with the best intentions, this legislation is really a cod. We would be better off scrapping it, asking the major local authorities concerned to draw up a proper housing policy for their functional areas which has regard to the nature of their functional areas, and providing ourselves with an amendment of the Planning Act incorporating the only worth-while safeguard in this legislation which is the protection of the housing stock in both towns. The Act has failed to protect the interests of people who wish to remain housed despite what the figures might say. The replacement of three luxury flats on the top of the AnCO building in Baggot Street was little comfort of the people who had to be moved in the first place. They are not living in them; they are living where perhaps they did not wish to live. They have been housed by the local authority as people who were already housed, and perhaps they did not want to move. The cost to the local authority is something in the region of at least £13,000 each.
The flats which were provided by the developers, and were subsequently paid for with the taxpayers' money, are lying vacant. Flats are lying vacant in many areas where the requirement to provide flats with office block developments has been implemented. The housing stock is protected, if it is just thought of in terms of stock, but not when related to human need. I do not decry the intentions of anybody involved in trying to get this Act on to the Statute Book. I remember the situation very well. I was one of the people who walked the streets during the Dublin Housing Action Committee campaign but in this legislation the major loophole, to which the Minister has not seen fit to draw attention in his speech, is that there is no obligation on people who provide alternative accommodation, and so meet the conditions in this Act, to let the accommodation. The absurdity is that in some cases it works well, if you have a large enough site and you can put a commercial unit on one side and a residential unit on the other and you have two different kinds of entrances. We will even get to the stage where there will be two different types of finance companies who will provide finance for the two sorts of activities. In a confined site where a lot of our redevelopment occurs you are talking about putting one kind of accommodation physically on top of the other. That has all kinds of implications of a building costs nature. There is separate access for lifts and stairs, double entrances and so on. You are in effect putting a cost charge on the development which does not help the economy and which fails from a professional design standpoint to provide adequate accommodation. It is easy for people who possess a building like this simply not to let the flats and to accept this as another charge.
On a point which perhaps should be raised in the city council chamber rather than in this House, it is my regret that the local authorities have not seen fit to extract a realistic contribution towards the housing fund rather than simply seek a rebate.
The Minister talked about the number of appeals that were decided by his Department. This is in no way intended to be a personal criticism of him or of anybody because personal criticism will not get us very far. But we have a two months' time slot on planning applications and many planning appeals are conditional on housing appeals being processed. Recently, in the last two years anyway, we have had very efficient processing of planning appeals. We have an inordinate delay by comparison with housing application appeals, and that is unjustified. What are the implications of that? It is not simply a question of, "Ah, well, you just have to wait a couple of months and that is the gestation period and you cannot do anything about it." There is a cost for every day that is lost in terms of interest, overcharges, lack of activity in the industrial sector and in the construction industry. Ultimately it ends up with the likes of AnCO, in other words ourselves, paying the bill because that cost is transferred into the rent that has to be derived back from the person who rents the office development.
This Act in essence serves no useful function in the extent to which it has effectively protected the housing stock. In terms of the political climate generated in the 1968-69 period which provoked the Minister of the day, then Deputy Boland, to come into this House and produce the legislation, the protests and marches were not about protecting housing. They were about enabling people to live in a part of the city where they wanted to live, people who found they were moved out to areas where they did not want to go or where they could not afford to go because the transport implications and so on were enormous, and these have got worse rather than better. Therefore what is the purpose of extending this Act, which is temporary legislation, for yet another period on the promise that the Minister will bring legislation of a more permanent kind by 1979? I do not think he is going to protect the housing stock all that much more.
The Sandymount branch of the Labour party two years ago did a survey of, effectively, the Dublin 4 area, and the loss in real terms to that community, which has a large number of people coming in and out in terms of transport, was enormously high because houses were standing vacant which were not capable of being taken in under the direction or control of the local authority of the day because of the inadequacies of the legislation that existed then, and still do exist. If we did not pass this motion—and I am not inclined to think that we should—the legal powers that the local authority would lose would have damn little effect in real terms on the people who are in need of housing. That may seem a harsh thing to say and it may be an apparent contradiction of a lot that has been said and of action that has been taken in the past, but I am speaking from very direct experience of what has happened in the Dublin area. The Minister should not waste the time of his Department, his own time or that of this House in extending this legislation.
We are talking about only two local authorities for whom this legislation has reality, and I say that they should come up with a proper housing programme for their areas that would take account not merely of their functional areas—a legalistic phrase which does not address itself to the problem —but of the nature of housing within their functional legal areas. We would ask them to come up with a housing redevelopment programme which would be aimed at conserving the residential content and social structure of an area if it is agreed by the local politicians that that social structure should be preserved. A lot of legitimate construction and development has been unnecessarily delayed, a lot of civil service time has been occupied in processing this legislation and the cost of that loss of time has been transferred ultimately to the consumer. Regrettably in this instance, and of direct concern to this House, the consumer of the majority of office accommodation has been the state sector, either Government Department or semi-State bodies.
The history of this legislation in legal terms has already been gone into by my colleague, Deputy Fitzpatrick. He rightly points to what can only be described as a mistake by the Minister of the time. I said in an interjection earlier that it was not the first mistake he had made. On this occasion I was very much out of turn because I have a high regard for the actions of the Minister of that time. Deputy Blaney, with regard to his role in introducing planning legislation to this country. He should take full credit for the political decision to introduce the legislation and for his ability to get it through. It was a major erosion of property rights in a highly conservative country. If he made a mistake in drafting the regulations I would be prepared to allow him that. We all make mistakes.
There have been a number of criticisms about the split between the function of the housing authority and that of the planning authority in this respect. The 1969 Act did not resolve that dichotomy. I may appear to be wandering into a technical area, but let me explain what I am concerned with. the political pressure that resulted from that loophole which emerged from the drafting of the regulations was as much concerned with preserving residential content in an area or locality of the city as it was with individual housing units. I was actively involved in that political pressure which in my view had a planning dimension. It was concerned with a planning approach to an area of a city or cities. I am speaking only from my Dublin experence. This Act is concerned with the housing authority and addresses itself to the housing authority. The administration in effect ties the two authorities together and if you make an application to interfere with a habitable dwelling in any shape or form first of all it has to be processed by the housing section and then it is released to the planning department. The criteria that the local authority, wearing their hat as the housing authority, will apply to any application will be totally different from those which would be applied by the planning officer for the area.
This is where my argument rests in the main. I would commend to the Minister and his advisers what is perhaps the definitive document on the Act. It was a thesis done by Mr. Micheal Swanton and the reference number is 57 in the UCD library. I believe Mr. Swanton is now an employee of Dublin County Council. He did the paper as his town planning thesis on the functioning of the 1969 Housing Act. It is a very useful document in that it has collated a number of facts and figures and he makes some assessments. However, let me exempt Mr. Swanton of any responsibility for my remarks now.
Among other things the figures that emerged from that thesis show there was a significant drop in the number of permissions granted from 1970 to 1973. From what I have ascertained, 90 per cent of the applications for demolition or change of use were granted in 1970 and that figure dropped to 70 per cent in 1973. I know the background. There was an absolute blanket decision taken by the housing co-ordinator of the day which said that every application to the local authority in Dublin city was automatically refused because of the Minister of the day, and there was the question of a housing emergency and the drive towards inner city housing. The decision was taken and it was announced to the Housing Committee that if the Minister wanted them to boost housing ley him make his own decisions about housing applications and appeals. Subsequently many of the appeals were determined.
To return to my point about the dichotomy between the housing authority and the planning authority having a role in this Act, the housing authority, having regard to the needs for housing in their functional area, are locked into a numbers' game where a developer will say he is knocking down three houses with ten residential units in them and he is proposing to build on the site an office block and 15 residential units. On paper that is a net gain of five units to the housing stock and there is no way the housing authority can refuse permission on those grounds because the application meets every aspect of the Act and is increasing the housing stock rather than diminishing it.
What is the reality on the ground? The planners could argue that if you alter the type of housing accommodation provided in those units—in the main it is usually low-cost housing accommodation, albeit low standard as well—you will reduce the real residential content of the area and that will have a damaging effect on the overall functioning of the area. I am not talking about something academic or something that comes lightly out of the mouth of an architect who is concerned with Dublin. I am talking as a practising politician who is responding, as everyone in this House who has any connection with Dublin is responding, to the real, legitimate out-cry about the increase of vandalism and deprivation of one kind or another in the city centre. Study after study, whether of a formal academic nature or simple pub wisdom, comes up with the same correlation that the more people you take out of the city the more you turn it into some kind of desert where all kinds of things can happen after the office workers have gone home.
I regard that as a major defect in this legislation. It is concerned with notional numbers, not about the nature of the housing stock, not about its specific location and not about the kind of people who qualify for housing. Frequently the people who lose out are those who in the past had no hope of getting housed by Dublin Corporation or by Cork Corporation. They were small families, single people or perhaps a household consisting of a mother and adult daughter. The latter could not get accommodation unless the mother was old enough to be housed as an aged person. The new points system introduced by the city council attempted to redress that situation in some small measure but only in a small measure.
If there is any category who are discriminated against with regard to housing it is single women between the ages of 25 and 65 years who have no hope of getting housed as compared with other categories. For historical reasons they are badly paid, they find it impossible to get credit and they are very vulnerable. They alone, with other single people have to provide private rented accommodation for themselves, have to house themselves without any form of economic subsidy. They are the only category who receive no housing subsidy, whether it is local authority subsidy in the form of differential rents or mortgage subsidy in the form of income tax relief on interest. This category have suffered more than anybody else. Every time it is pointed out that the redevelopment of aspects of the Dublin area are biting into the flat dwelling part of the housing stock, figures are produced by the Minister. We are told that the bulk of the applications have been refused, that the applications let through have in most cases proposed to increase the housing stock rather than reduce it.
On paper a housing authority playing dominoes can make those figures real and make sense and nobody can criticise them but I would gladly take the Minister on a tour of Dublin—I am sure the same could be done in respect of Cork—and show him that although the dominoes stand up on the file, where it is shown that there will be 24 units on the site, the reality is that the vacant sites are partially demolished and are vandalised.
Let me give the Minister one example. If one drives from this building, past Aras de Valera, around by the "Pepperpot" church and over the bridge, one comes out at Haddington Road church. Speaking from memory, there was a substantial number of residential units in the half-dozen houses that existed on the Haddington Road side of that site. They were all granted permission for demolition, subject to appeal. There was no way the Minister could legitimately grant the appeal because the developer was proposing to increase the total housing stock. They were demolished in approximately May, 1974. It is a vacant site today. Many single people lived in those flats, nurses and the like, and I was at more than one party in some of the flats. Where are they living now? We know from the only piece of census information and subsequent research of the Register of Births and so on that the migration into the Dublin city area is enormously high. We have a figure for that migration of 10,000 people per annum and of that figure 75 per cent of the people were between 15 years and 29 years and they were single.
They were exactly the kind of people who would be looking for accommodation of this kind. If one thinks in terms of location of flats in the city of Dublin, it can be confined to a number of specific areas, very tight and compact —Dublin 6, Dublin 4; I am talking about the Ranelagh, Rathmines, Balls-bridge areas on the south side and the Phibsboro', Drumcondra Road areas on the north side. If one overlays on such a map colour showing the incidence of flats and high occupation by single people migrating into the city at this time and the location of office or commercial development, there is a virtual 1:1 correlation in certain areas.
I am saying, perhaps in a long way —and it is not my intention to delay the House because I fully appreciate that legislative time is all too bloody precious and scarce in this country— this Bill really is not worth a damn and that, by leaving it on the Statute Book, we are codding ourselves that we have some protection for the housing stocks. It protects nothing; in real terms it does not protect housing need. Its implementation and administration may appear to do so and the officials and local authorities who wave it at one may feel they are doing a useful job. I can say without contradiction that the number of people who have been seriously protected by this legislation is very small. I can say also without contradiction that areas of the city, which have a very serious housing need for a category of the population who depend totally on market resources for their housing and who depend also totally on their own private means for their housing—because they receive absolutely no subsidy— must depend absolutely on the kind of accommodation this Bill purports to protect. They have not been protected by this Bill, not one bit.
I have talked all the time about demolition and redevelopment of sites. Let me turn now to the question of change of use. I am subject to correction on this—I am sure the Department and the Minister's officials have more up-to-date figures than mine— but the figure I collected from a thesis was that 45 per cent of the housing authority applications in the Dublin area in the period 1970 to 1975 were for change of use. An argument can be made somewhat for change of use applications, for retaining the legislative powers contained in this Bill, for monitoring the change of use. Again, let us look at what happens on the ground as distinct from what is in the files or what happens in the legal world in which we sometimes pretend to live. The incidence of unofficial or unauthorised change of use is exceptionally high.
I would refer the Minister, if he does not already have it on file to the number of very active residents' associations who write to me in the Dublin 4 area, the Dublin South-East constituency, area number 9 of the electoral areas, where there was on the last count, something in the region of 40 residents' associations, at least five or six of whom would be extremely active, well briefed and who would provide the eyes and ears of an army of people. They write to me frequently that such-and-such a place has gone into offices, has been converted or that such-and-such a place has been changed. I check with the local authority and find there is no question of this change having been applied for. There was a famous case in Leeson Park of a change of use that went on for a long time. I am not here referring to a former Member of this House. I refer to a legal company, a member of Deputy Fitzpatrick's renowned and noble profession, who used every legal trick in the trade to maintain their illegal occupation of an area, in planning our housing authority terms, for a very long time, by using all the subterfuges of delay this Act left itself open to, in conjunction with the planning legislation that then existed. People who change the use of houses for conversion from residential to office frequently do so without reference to anybody. The capacity of local authorities to monitor these changes let alone respond to them is difficult, exceptionally limited and quite ineffective.
The other side of the coin to which this Bill refers is the monitoring of the registration by landlords of more than two units of accommodation other than their own home, as required under the bye-laws introduced by Dublin Corporation some two or three years ago for private rented accommodation. The actual ground staff available to local authorities in this instance is very small; they cannot do that job, which has a far more pressing political priority among councillors than the kind of monitoring of unauthorised change of use.
Legislation alone—assuming that it was good legislation, which this is not —does not protect that kind of activity. Policing or monitoring of a different kind—I do not like the over-tones of the word "policing" in that context— is what is required. With the best legislation in the world, unless one specifically changes the staffing levels of Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council and their capacity in the city or county to review the situation it will not have an appreciable effect on the people for whom this legislation was hurried into this House in 1968-69. Where does all that leave us? It leaves us with a lousy Bill. Is that unparliamentary language?
