(Cavan-Monaghan): I move:
That Dáil Éireann deplores the hopelessly inadequate allocation of finance by the Government to housing authorities in respect of new house starts for the current year.
The Minister for the Environment has been brave enough—I will not put it any stronger that that—to put down an amendment to that motion deleting all words after "Dail Éireann" and inviting the House to welcome the generous provision made in the public capital programme for the current year for the maintenance of a high level of activity on local authority housing construction and notes an anticipated increase in the total number of new house completions this year arising from the Government's national housing programme. The Minister for the Environment is nothing if he is not brave in putting his name to that amendment.
Every family is entitled to a house. Every family needs a house in order that it may live as a family and enjoy reasonable happiness and a reasonable standard of living. Indeed, I will go further than that and I will say that society owes it to families who cannot provide a house for themselves to provide houses for them at public expense. It is particularly essential that young married couples starting off in life get an opportunity of starting off with a proper house so that they will be in a position to live in reasonable happiness, to bring up their families properly without unnecessary obstacles put in their way which would endanger their marriage.
People who have no houses and who see no prospect of getting houses—and there are tens of thousands of them—are much more conscious now of their right to a house that they were some time ago. This right has been brought home to them by the fact that what I will call the well-heeled sector of our society appear to be moving into what it would be no exaggeration to call palatial dwellings all over the country. That is bringing home to unfortunate people who have no house their plight. It is making them more unhappy. I would like to warn the Minister and indeed this Government that in running down the local authority housing programme they are embarking on a very dangerous policy which can bring nothing but unhappiness to this country and can only add to the industrial unrest and strife that we are experiencing at present.
As far as I can ascertain there are about 35,000 families seeking houses from local housing authorities. I cannot be deadly accurate about that figure but from such research as I have been able to do I think that local authorities would asknowledge that there are on their lists 35,000 families seeking houses. If we take an average of four in a family, that means that 140,000 people are improperly and badly housed, living in wretched housing conditions and that these people cannot house themselves and see no hope of being able to house themselves. Because the housing authorities have pushed off their lists people who have an income of £70 a week or more we may take it that the people the local authorities acknowledge as seeking houses from them are very deserving indeed. I believe that if all the people and all the families who are genuinely unable to house themselves and who never will be able to house themselves because of facts which I will deal with later, including the cost of housing, were counted, the figure would not stop at 35,000 families; it would instead probably be double or more than double that figure. That is the appalling situation that we find the local authority housing programme in at the moment. That is why I and other members of the Fine Gael Party have put down this resolution deploring the hopelessly inadequate allocation of funds to housing authorities this year in respect of new house starts.
There are an acknowledged 140,000 people or thereabouts all over this country seeking houses—about 35,000 families. I want to put on the record of this House where I believe those people are living at the moment. They are living in grossly overcrowded dwellings shared by other families; they are living in flats which are quite unsuitable for the number of people living in them; or they are isolated small holders throughout the country living in hovels which were erected in the last century and which are certainly not suitable for human habitation. Recently I came across a young married couple who have been married for seven years and who are now expecting their first baby. They are living in a three-bedroomed house with 11 other people, most of them adults. That is hard to believe but it is a fact that 13 people, most of them grown up adults, are sharing a three-bedroomed house. Two of those people are a young married couple expecting their first baby. They have been married for seven years.
I know of four other young couples who have been married for seven years, and who will not be able to house themselves but will not be supplied with a local authority house because they do not have any children. There is something very heartless about writing young married couples off the housing list simply because they do not have any children. It is possible that this does not happen in every local authority but I am aware that it is the situation in many. There are many reasons why a young couple may not have any children. It is possible that such a couple are not prepared to start a family until they have a house or there may be medical reasons for a couple not having any children, It is inhuman to tell such couples annually that they do not qualify for a house simply because they do not have any children.
The young couples I am thinking of have many difficulties and domestic problems without adding a final blow to them by stating that until such time as they have children they will not qualify for a house. I know of a couple who have been married for up to ten years, have one child and live in a caravan on the family farm. They have explained to me that they cannot have any more family because the amount of accommodation available to them is limited and they do not have a house to move into. We must also consider the big percentage of couples who live in flats. I am aware of three families who live in accommodation over shops, accommodation which was reckoned as unsuitable for one family. Those families must live there because they cannot get a house. It is not hard to imagine the effects of such difficulties on young married couples; they are appalling and damaging. It is more difficult for women and children. Is it any wonder that many young women must make regular trips to local doctors to get tablets for their nerves. If they are not on such tablets they are on the pill or something else because they cannot afford to bring any more children into the world and expect them to grow up in the accommodation they live in.
When the Minister is replying I hope he will deal specifically with the category of people I am referring to, those who cannot afford to house themselves. He must forget about the £1,000 grant and the certificate of reasonable value. I do not want him to give details about such matters or about the number of houses that have been built by those on higher income. For the purposes of this debate I am not concerned about such people. I met a young couple in a lounge bar recently and they told me that after seven years of marriage they still had not got a house. The lady pointed out that if they had a house they would not be spending as much time in lounge bars, the only place they could go for some privacy.
What are the Government doing about this problem? I do not think they appreciate the position because if they did they would have acted more speedily. In 1966 or 1969 Fianna Fáil published a White Paper stating that it was necessary to ease off on local authority house-building because there were other more important matters to be attended to. Fianna Fáil lived up to that statement because they cut down on the number of local authority houses built. Fortunately, the National Coalition attacked this problem and the Minister for Local Government, under difficult circumstances, made a good job of improving that situation. That Minister was criticised by Fianna Fáil for concentrating on building local authority houses but the facts have proved that the action he took was correct. The Green Paper issued by Fianna Fáil this year repeats the prescription of the earlier Fianna Fáil White Paper, that the local authority housing lists would have to be investigated and people who could afford to build their own houses pushed off them. There is no urgency expressed in that publication about the need to increase the number of local authority houses being built. In the programme for national development for 1978-1981 the Government have the same prescription, cut down on local authority housing and get the people to rely on loans, low interest mortgages and grants.
In 1978 only 6,000 local authority dwellings were completed and I believe that figure will show a reduction this year. The number of starts this year will be a lot less than last year.
I should now like to deal with the allocation for local authority housing under the public capital programme for 1979. It is stated there under the heading of local authority housing that the capital provision for 1979 is £86 million and that that, combined with a generally more favourable cash balance position for housing authorities in 1979, will enable building activity to continue at approximately the same level as 1978. That is wrong. That amount of money could not possibly permit local authority building to proceed at the same rate as 1978. Those who wrote it must have known that because it represents an increase of only 6.1 per cent over 1978. We know that inflation has gone sky high. Even the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy on a radio programme on Sunday was hoping for a 10 per cent inflation rate. We know also that the sort of inflation about which the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy and the Government were speaking bears no comparison with that taking place in house building.
I put down some questions to the Minister for Education and discovered that he, in his allocation for school building for 1979, has allowed for an inflation rate of 23.9 per cent. We are aware that in regard to house building costs inflation is higher still. I think the Government acknowledge it to be in excess of 28 per cent and no doubt they are cutting down that figure as much as possible. The fact of the matter is that the allocation this year will build approximately 20 per cent fewer houses than were built last year.
I posed a number of questions to the Minister for the Environment today tabled for written reply in the hope that I would receive replies today. What I received were not replies, but I was put off; I did not get the replies I sought. For example in Question No. 289 I asked the Minister to tell me:
in respect of each housing authority, the number of new local authority house starts from and including 1970 to date.
I was told the information requested by me is being compiled and will be forwarded to me as soon as it is available. I wanted that information for his debate and of course the Minister knew that. My question was tabled in time for written answer today, but that is the answer I received. In another Question, No. 291, also tabled for written reply today I asked the Minister for the Environment:
the financial allocation to each housing authority in respect of the years 1972 to 1979 inclusive and the amount requested by each such authority in the same years.
The Minister referred me to a 1978 reply in that respect and I suppose I should be grateful for that.
As far as I can ascertain is seems that local authorities are being allocated about sufficient money this year to complete their commitments but, in respect of new starts, they will be cut back drastically. My colleague, Deputy Harte, established that clearly in respect of Donegal in an adjournment debate in this House. That is the position in regard to the allocation in the Capital Programme this year—a 6 per cent increase—when we know that there is a housing inflation rate of at least 28 per cent. The Minister did appear to be conceding at Question Time the other day that there was a difficulty this year so far as new house starts were concerned. That does not surprise me in view of the allocation made. The Minister has been telling us for some time that he is relying on low mortgage interest. Low mortgage interest is of no use whatever to people who want to build a house, who have no site and no money. It is confined to loans of £9,000 and not all of the £9,000 is subsidised; I understand that a figure of £5,600 or more is excluded and that there is a subsidy on the remainder. It is confined to people who live already in a local authority house, or who are tenant-purchasers of a local authority house, or who have been on the housing list for 12 months and have two children. I should like the Minister to tell us how many people who did not occupy local authority houses availed of this facility, how many people who were not already tenants of a local authority house availed of it. It is a special case. The people about whom I am concerned are those who are not even able to avail of that facility. I am satisfied that low rate mortgage interest caters for special cases, people who live already in local authority houses, who have saved money, who want to improve their position and move into another house. They are not in the category I am speaking about but it may be useful in the sense that it may get some of those people out of local authority houses and get some of the people about whom I am speaking into them. But it is of no use to people who are unable to house themselves.
The Minister talks about the SDA loans which are useless at present. The maximum loan allowable is £9,000, costing approximately £23 per week to service. We know that anybody who has not got a site, who wants to start from scratch and build a house will have a discrepancy between that figure of £9,000 and the cost of building the house of at least £7,000. When one takes account of the cost of house building at present, of sites, it will be appreciated that the SDA loans operated by local authorities are worthless unless to people such as small farmers who are reasonably well-off, have their own sites and can do a lot of the work themselves. They may be availed of also by people who are handy, who can undertake a lot of the work themselves. But it is worthless to people starting from scratch, buying a site and wanting to build a house on it. The Minister cannot deny that. At present sites all over the country are exceptionally expensive and beyond the reach of most people. I know they are dearer in some cases than in others. Sites in one town are costing approximately £4,000 to £5,000 each and are serviced by water but not sewerage. One rarely hears of a site going at less than £3,000 anywhere in the country. When that is added to the cost of building a house, the mortgage interest or the SDA loan, it is almost valueless.
I am talking about the people whose income will not permit them to house themselves. The Minister may talk about a figure of £80 a week and say that people should be able to house themselves on that. That might be possible if everybody was a good manager, if they manage their lives properly, were not extravagant, did not spend money foolishly, did not take a drink and perhaps did not back a horse. However, we are not all good managers. If the Government were good managers we would not have all the strikes we have and we would not have the economy in the mess it is in. The Government are obviously not perfect; they are fallible. We are dealing with people who are looking for houses. We are dealing with a cross-section of the community, good managers and bad managers.
The Minister will possibly talk about loans available from building societies. A person who wants to house himself will have to borrow at least £16,000 from a building society which will cost that person almost £50 a week. This is completely outside the reach of the people I am talking about.
I asked the Minister for the Environment today to tell me the allocation asked for and given in respect of each local authority for each year since 1970. He referred me to a question which gave me the information in respect of 1978 and told me the remainder of the information was being compiled. I looked at the information given in relation to 1978 and I found that only a fraction of the allocation asked for was given. I will take a few at random. For example, Cavan asked for £340,000 and were given £120,000; Kerry asked for £1,017,000 and were given £470,000; Meath asked for £992,000 and were given £300,000, and Monaghan asked for £300,000 and were given £125,000. It is no wonder we have so few houses being erected.
A situation which could become dangerous is developing. It is a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the people who are well housed getting much better housing and the people who have no houses being put on the long finger. In regard to house inflation, a modest house I know of was sold in October 1976 for £14,800. I thought that was expensive then but another house in a worse part of the same road, opposite to a factory, was recently sold for £28,000. I am told that in Leixlip houses which were going for £14,000 in the beginning of 1977 were going for £18,000 eight months ago and are now going for £24,000. That type house price inflation needs to be looked into.
I am not concerned with that in this debate. I put down this motion to get the Minister to deal with the people who are the direct responsibility of himself, of the Government and of this House: those who are unable to house themselves and, unless they win the sweep or the pools, will never be able to house themselves. The policy the Government are embarking on can bring nothing but unrest.
I do not know how the Minister for Finance can ask people to tighten their belts and be responsible when there are 140,000 people without adequate housing and who cannot out of their own resources house themselves. If we knew the true figure we would probably find that there are 200,000 people in that category. The policy of the Minister for the Environment is to cut back on local authority finance. The Minister for Education told me in reply to a question that the inflation for schools was 23 per cent. The Minister for the Environment knows that house inflation was approximately 28 per cent. I ask the Minister and the Government to reconsider their policy in regard to local authority housing, which they began in 1969, restated immediately after they came back to power in their Green Paper and their White Paper and which they are still implementing. This is an unjust policy, the same as the budget of 1978, which has brought us all the trouble we have at the moment.
