Before reporting progress I had given this Bill an unqualified welcome because it contains some very positive provisions. It is the first time in the history of this State that the term "homeless" has been defined. Also it is the first time that each local authority must take responsibility for the homeless people within its area.
The Minister urged Members to give the provisions of the Bill due consideration. The 166 Members of this House who are also members of local authorities, together with the Minister and Departmental officials, have a wealth of experience and expertise between them. Hopefully, we can bring forward a Bill that will meet the requirements of housing generally. I feel certain the Minister will give consideration to and take cognisance of the various proposals and amendments which Members may advance so that ultimately a more rounded and equitable Bill will result. I am glad he issued that invitation to Members to participate fully and no doubt they will.
I would urge the Minister to give due consideration to the views expressed by the Simon Community, an organisation that has rendered great service to the homeless over the years. They must have a wealth of information and knowledge about the problems obtaining in this area. If they have misgivings about certain provisions of this Bill then it would behove us to take them in tandem and, if at all possible, accommodate them, likewise any held by the St. Vincent De Paul Society, the itinerant settlement committees and all others who have been dealing with the problems of the homeless, the disabled, the aged and so on. All of them have a worthwhile contribution to make to the formulation of this Bill together with local authorities and elected representatives. As a consequence of the deliberations of all of these groups I feel confident a Bill will emerge that will meet the needs of the homeless and those seeking housing.
I had been speaking briefly on section 8, urging greater co-operation between the various housing authorities, not only in urban areas within a local authority but also between the various local authorities themselves. I was advocating greater reciprocal arrangements between these housing authorities. This would mean that if a person residing in one area, for reasons of transfer of employment or otherwise, must move to another, that person would be accommodated. Indeed, we might extend that provision somewhat further. I have no doubt that that provision will be forthcoming, just as in the case of social welfare benefits, where there is a reciprocal arrangement for the payment of such benefits between member states of the EC. If not in the short term at least in the long term, I feel confident that some such arrangements will emerge whereby people wishing to transfer from one state to another will be facilitated, that member states will make some payment in lieu of rehousing, in lieu of houses that have been left vacant in one state, their occupants having taken up residence in another. However, perhaps that is looking a little too far forward. I would settle for greater co-operation and understanding in mutual transfers at the moment between urban and county councils and various county council areas.
Section 9(2)(g) and (h) deals with the provision of houses for the elderly, disabled and handicapped. Unfortunately, much is left to be desired in this regard especially in the planning and design of these houses. Most of the residents of them are senior citizens in their sixties or seventies or even older. I urge that a prototype house be designed by our architects. Surely it would not be beyond the capability of our design team of architects to design and plan a house suitable for the elderly, disabled and handicapped. I have in mind doing away with steps and the introduction of ramps and suitable handrails and supportive facilities to enable the elderly, disabled and handicapped to go about their houses. I know senior citizens in my area who reside in senior cititens' houses and in each house is a conventional bathtub. These people have never used their bath facility. They are afraid they might slip in the bath and injure themselves and modesty prevents them from seeking a person to assist them when bathing or showering, so they have gone without using this facility. These are little points that would make the houses more acceptable and beneficial to the type of people whom we aim to rehouse.
Section 13 of the Bill makes provision for sites for travelling people. I know this is a very vexed, emotive question. Generally, people are in favour of rehousing itinerants provided they are rehoused far away from those people's own private residences. We can all come up with the most spectacular and loveliest of sites for rehousing itinerants, but invariably these sites are well removed from our private dwelling houses. Local authorities need a great deal of diplomacy to reconcile the needs of travelling people — who live in atrocious and appalling conditions, especially the young people — with a duty to the settled community. Many a person has put life savings into the purchase or erection of his own private dwelling house, and it would be an injustice to such people if an itinerant halting place was placed alongside them. Whether we agree with it or not, we know that the value of land and houses adjacent to these halting sites has been reduced immeasurably. Therefore, any housing authority must take the balance between doing justice to those people who need rehousing and to the settled community who have a right in law and in justice and are entitled to the enjoyment and pleasures of their house, the privacy of their home and the maintenance and value of their property if they have sites for sale. Here the work of social workers who can assess the families who are in need of rehousing and are prepared to be rehoused and to accept the normal living conditions and social graces of the settled community is invaluable.
I suggest that halting sites to be established should be small sites capable of holding five or six families at the outset. A site should be well managed and discipline should be within it as far as possible and a fulltime overseer should be employed to see that it is properly regulated and managed. All necessary services should be supplied, particularly a full scavenging service. Voluntary bodies could be encouraged to participate in playing an active role in the maintenance and upholding of proper standards. Only along this road can we eventually make any dent in the huge number of itinerant families and travelling families who wish to be rehoused, who wish genuinely to participate in the settled community in a housing estate or in a halting site. With the co-operation of voluntary bodies many of the problems there could be avoided.
Great credit must go to the national resettlement committee and the programme they have embarked on. I have a list here of all the local authorities who have participated in providing housing and halting site accommodation for travellers and in the various schemes. The health and social welfare services are making provision for the service of the travelling community. I hope that the general impetus of this will be maintained. It is encouraging that the Department will cover up to 100 per cent of the cost of these sites and the cost of rehousing itinerant families.
Section 12 of the Bill deals with reconstructing houses in need of reconstruction. I have in mind in this case houses normally termed low cost houses build by the National Housing Agency. In section 12 (2) of the Bill the Minister gives authority to reconstruct houses "which are in need of reconstruction by reason of defects in construction or design or of deterioration due to age". Each county has what I have referred to as low cost housing or NHA houses, and South Tipperary is no exception to that. I ask the Minister and the Minister of State here present to have a serious look at this type of reconstruction to find out whether we are throwing good money after bad. These houses have been a disaster. They were built when Deputy Molloy was Minister for Local Government, and the design, shape and type of house are not suitable to our climatic conditions. They had no solid fuel heating system. They were supposed to be heated by electricity. At that time the price of a domestic unit of electricity was in the region of 0.7p. It has gone to at least ten times that amount. Now the bulk of these houses are without this heating system, and without solid fuel heaters the residents must rely on gas heaters which in themselves are a danger from a fire hazard point of view and I am told that, rather than doing away with condensation, they increase the incidence of condensation.
Flat type roofs are not suitable for Irish conditions. As well as houses, schools, libraries and other public buildings have been build with this type of roof which has proved a disaster and many have had to be replaced. I urge the Minister of State and his officials to discourage the building of such roofs.
It is becoming evident that many contractors are unable to build chimneys which do not smoke. This is the case in Tipperary town, where they often need replacing. I would ask the Minister of State to have his officials check these out. With regard to these low cost houses one must remember the enormous cost to the health boards in terms of medical cards and tenants suffering from bronchial, asthmatic and other chest ailments. This must result also in a huge amount of officials' time being taken up in processing cases of people who wish to vacate these houses. I hope that this type of house will never again be built here. Certainly, the experience in South Tipperary proved that they are not at all suitable.
Perhaps it might be better to take down these houses on a phased basis and replace them section by section rather than pump extra money into trying to restore them. If they are to be restored it is absolutely essential that they include solid concrete walls and have solid fuel cookers installed and that an A-type roof be placed on each of these flat roofs. The services are on hand for the replacement of these houses — sewerage systems, site servicing such as electricity, water, telephones, roads and pathways. I understand the moneys are quite generous — 80 per cent of the reconstruction grants, I am told. I wonder could that money be better used in the long term by the replacement of these houses in toto rather than by reconstruction and the addition of missing items.
Section 26 states:
The City and County Management (Amendment) Act, 1955, is hereby amended by the insertion in section 2 of the following subsection after subsection (9):
"(10) An emergency situation for the purposes of subsection (9) of this section shall be deemed to exist where, in the opinion of the manager, the works concerned are urgent and necessary (having regard to personal health, public health and safety considerations) in order to provide a reasonable standard of accommodation for any person.".
I urge that this power be used very sparingly by all city or county managers and that they take into their confidence the elected representatives of their councils, to get their goodwill. If it can be shown that works are essential there would be full backing of the council members who are always very reasonable and will accept the managers' advice in such cases. They should not use the whip hand or bulldoze any work through against the wishes of the elected representatives.
There are two other points I should like to raise, one being specifically about loans. Many couples, unfortunately, find themselves in financial difficulties at present through unemployment or redundancy and indeed, not alone young couples but many in their early fifties with varied commitments such as commitments in relation to the education of their families. Through no fault of their own they cannot meet their obligations with regard to mortgage repayments and other loan repayments. Inability to meet these commitments puts pressures on the families and sometimes leads to desertion and separation. At the moment local authorities cannot do anything in these cases as the limits of repayment are laid down by statute. Perhaps the Minister could encourage the extension of the lending period to enable the overcoming of this, it is hoped, short period of upset for people who up to now have met their commitments.
I ask the Minister of State to have a sympathetic look at the increasing number of these cases and instruct the county managers and those responsible for handling the loans to call in each applicant, decide on the merits of each case and work out a suitable arrangement over a period of time in order to avoid undue pressure on the families concerned. That would mean that the lending authority would get back some part of the loan. Otherwise, the county councils would have to seek repossession in the courts, with all the attendant downstream evils.
With regard to any new housing estate, the density of buildings should be reduced. In Dublin and other areas a too high density has led to many problems, including vandalism. Our planners, architects and designers should learn from past experience, resulting in more attractive, brighter housing estates, especially for the young people of our community. With the prospects of employment not being great in the short term, there should be playing fields and open amenity areas for boys and girls for sporting activities. Often many houses are clamped together with no such facilities. It should be mandatory that in proportion to a certain number of houses there should also be a leisure amenity area. This would reduce vandalism as the young people would be able to use constructively and not destructively the leisure time which they undoubtedly will have in the future.
These are some thoughts on this very worthwhile Bill. There are fine, positive features in it. I hope that the views expressed by myself and other Members will be taken on board. If it is not possible to include them in this Bill, perhaps the basis would be set for future thinking on housing. Among the 166 Members of this House there is a great reservoir of talent, experience and expertise which it would be a pity not to draw on or tap to ensure that we will have a housing programme suited to our needs and, above all, adaptable by the local housing authorities and encouraged by each local authority member to be implemented in full. I congratulate the Minister on the introduction of this Bill, which I hope will be one of many to improve the lot of the homeless and others who need accommodation.