To address this Bill positively one must at the outset recognise that a housing crisis exists. The housing crisis is now becoming a major social evil. Under the Housing Act, 1988, a national survey was carried out which found that 19,400 families were waiting to be housed nationally — we must ask what is the position now. This figure did not include homeless persons who did not seek local authority housing. A further survey was carried out in March 1991 in the Dublin Corporation area which showed that 4,377 families were in need of local authority housing; that there were 1,201 single person households and 3,970 family households. The same survey showed that 918 persons were on the homeless list. That contrasts with the June 1989 figure of 582, representing an 80 per cent increase in homelessness in one local authority area alone. The total number of local authority houses built nationally in 1983 was 6,190 and in 1990 the figure was 1,003 houses. For instance, in 1983 Dublin Corporation built 1,753 houses and only 35 in 1990, while Dublin County Council completed only 45 houses in that year. This is a national disgrace.
In my area, the new Dublin Fingal area, the problem has reached crisis proportions. The area stretches from Balbriggan to Howth and includes such built-up areas as Skerries, Swords, Malahide, Howth and Baldoyle as well as parts of Ballymun and Santry. In this area alone there are 682 urgent cases. Most families reside at present with their parents, causing serious overcrowding, or reside in rented accommodation and most have been married within the last two or three years. Overcrowding places an intolerable burden on families. In most of these families there is a high rate of unemployment and the people see no way out of their predicament. They readily tell us that Governments and local authorities generally have let them down.
This is one of the major factors contributing to emigration. People who come to my advice centres tell me that if they emigrate to England the men will readily get a job and they have a chance of getting a house there. Deputy Leonard referred to the number of people returning to Ireland but people are leaving my constituency because they cannot get a house. When they go to London they find they are housed quicker and have a better family life. They are also better looked after on social welfare.
The estimated cost of providing for the needs of those awaiting housing in the Fingal area of Dublin is in excess of £25 million. This figure has been given by the county manager and I am sure it is an accurate figure. It is not a great amount of money and if it was made available it would solve many of the problems in my area. To illustrate the point even further, in 1983 Dublin Corporation completed 1,753 houses; in 1984, 1,717 houses; and in 1985, 1,358 houses. Since this Government have taken office the number of houses completed has dropped to 33 in 1989, 35 in 1990 and 34 in 1991. People on the housing list achieve points for overcrowding and so on, but that is not good enough. I know people with 80 or 90 points but who cannot get a house from Dublin Corporation. In order to get a house they would need overall priority but, as a person who served on Dublin Corporation, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will know that to get overall priority a person would have to have a serious health problem or be a battered wife.
I commend Women's Aid who look after battered wives and get housing for them. The reason these people get overall priority is that they are in Women's Aid. That organisation do excellent work and again I compliment them. Their counsellors spend much time with the officials of Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council and are successful in their efforts to have their personnel housed. However, because these people get priority, which they deserve, there are no houses for people living in overcrowded conditions. Overcrowding in two and three bedroom houses in Dublin is leading to marriage breakdown. If appropriate housing were available families would be much happier and there would be fewer marriages breaking down. It is the duty of the Government, and local authorities, to provide adequate shelter for people. It would relieve the terrible tension that exists in overcrowded homes. Irish people like to own their own homes and like privacy and a front and back garden. The provision of this type of accommodation is a great support for families.
Under the new scheme we are trying to get people to provide their own houses. I appreciate and support that aim but our unemployment problem makes it impossible for people on social welfare to avail of the new shared ownership scheme because they would not be able to afford the repayments. Families are smaller and in the future pressure on housing will not be as great. We should legislate to ensure that smaller families can be housed in the future. In planning housing needs, we should constantly monitor the size of families.
My constituency is divided between Dublin County Council and Dublin Corporation. The county council have designed beautiful estates over the years, for instance New Grove Estate in Donaghmede, a lovely bungalow design estate which is well laid out with many open spaces. At the same time the designs of corporation estates is as they were 30 to 40 years ago, concrete jungles, ribbon belt development, house after house, road after road. We should get away from that and concentrate on building small housing estates with nice open spaces.
Although there is a housing crisis I do not suggest that we should return to the guaranteed order scheme that we had in 1973 or 1974, when we built such places as Seagrange estate in Baldoyle. That is now an excellent development but the houses were built cheaply without a proper roof. It took from 1974 to the middle eighties to impress on Government, and local authorities, that without proper roofing there would not be proper heating. People in those houses worried constantly about the deterioration of the roofs. Eventually the residents association and local representatives got together to ensure that new roofs were put on those houses. It is now an excellent estate and the people there are very happy. However, it took the residents a long time to get proper housing.
We should consider Darndale, where we are refurbishing at a very slow pace. At the present rate of progress it would take another ten to 12 years before Darndale estate is refurbished. That is not good enough. The people there are trying to form a good community and to do so they need adequate housing which is properly insulated. I compliment the Department on the refurbishment work carried out so far. It is excellent, but the pace is too slow. More money should be put into this work. The refurbishment work will mean that we can house more families and reduce the housing lists, so it should be given priority.
The Swans Nest Court area, a flat complex in my constituency is in need of refurbishment. I raised this with the Department and in the House over the years. There are about 100 flats in the complex and of late there have been many complaints that the condition of the roof is deteriorating and starting to leak. That does not help the quality of life there and people are worried about it. The Minister should make more money available to repair the Darndale and the other flat complex. I am sure that Ballymun also could do with more money for refurbishment. Will the Minister take on board the need to provide money for refurbishment, and let us get on with the programme?
To solve the housing crisis, local authority house building must restart but I would not like to see the building of local authority estates on the scale of the mid-eighties, often on large greenfield sites on the periphery of urban areas. We should have proper planning. I do not want the Minister to develop the concrete jungles we had hereofore.
I know Dublin County Council have the designated site scheme. Many houses built over the years have large back or side gardens and owners should be encouraged to consider building a house for a member of the family on them under this scheme. People should be informed that they can do this under this excellent scheme. This scheme would help reduce the housing list.
I notice that houses which were built in Howth, for instance, for £500 or £600 are now fetching £50,000 on the open market. This enables people to move on to better housing or to buy two houses to accommodate a member of the family. I do not suggest that we go back to the days when we used to claw back a certain percentage of the purchase price but a sales schemes should be encouraged.
Many houses in my constituency have up to half an acre of ground surrounding them. We should encourage people to build an extra room to house a young family. It creates a good mix in society to have parents, perhaps looking forward to retirement, their children and their grandchildren living in the same dwelling. We should provide enough money for adding rooms to houses to accommodate young families. In many housing estates, I notice that in addition to having large gardens, there are large tracts of land behind the gardens. There are examples of this in Howth. We are very anxious to encourage the fishing tradition in the village. Fishing follows from father to son, however if the younger generation are not housed in the area, the tradition will die out.
Nowdays, fishing is a different skill. You must leave home at 4 a.m. to get out to the fishing grounds and it is very late before you get home. Therefore it is important to live nearby. The council should encourage the building of a second house when the back garden can accommodate it. Indeed, Dublin County Council bought some land in the area and I asked the county manager to give priority to local people, especially those involved in fishing. I am sure there are other villages like Howth which have a tradition in a particular field, perhaps weaving, where it is desirable to retain the local population but no points or priority scheme seems to cater for such persons and they must find accommodation elsewhere. That is a pity because the traditions that we cherish will just die away.
The council intend to build 14 or 15 houses in the Howth area and I asked the manager to consider allocating them to locals. However councillors being as they are look to their own constituency and indeed councillors from Balbriggan or Malahide would like to see their constituents housed in Howth and they kicked up a row about my suggestion and it was not accepted. Perhaps the Minister could help in this regard by perhaps adding a rider to any provision of money that people who follow the traditional occupations should be enabled to stay in the area.
Finding the deposit for a house puts a great burden on many people. At present the maximum loan available from a local authority is £25,000 — and this special category loan is paid back at approximately £256 per month over a 25 year period. This puts a burden on any family. The Minister should look at options such as exempting persons from stamp duty and providing grants towards the solicitor's fees. Indeed £25,000 will not go very far when you are buying a house, and in my area the cheapest house you will find costs more than £40,000. We should consider raising the maximum loan to a figure nearer to the cost of a house. Under the shared ownership scheme, the loan ceiling is £40,000, but it is very hard to find a house that costs £40,000. Indeed at present you will not find a good house for £40,000 unless the vendor is opting for a quick sale. More money must be made available for housing.
Earlier I referred to the general lack of housing. Some private and local authority estates are overcrowded and very badly designed, and this leads to vandalism. When some estates were built, there was provision for access through a back laneway. While the intention behind this was good — to allow easy access to buses and other modes of transport — they are now used by young people who congregate and hold drinking sessions, thus creating general mayhem. The gardaí in my area are constantly patrolling housing estates because the vandalism is very worrying. The young people seem to be able to get their hands on unlimited quantities of drink and drugs and are causing serious problems to local residents, especially elderly people, who are afraid in their own homes. I would like to see the Minister introducing steps as early as possible to have these laneways closed up easily. At present it takes at least a year to have this done, even when every resident in the estate agrees to it because the matter has to be dealt with through the planning process. Legislation is needed so that these laneways can be closed off quickly.
Recently in a planning application for 40 or so houses in Baldoyle, which is part of my area, I noticed that it was proposed to leave a laneway to allow residents access to the nearby DART station. I could appreciate the planner's point of view because this would encourage people to leave their cars at home and use the DART instead. However I had to object to this proposal at council level as did other local residents and we were successful in objecting to the proposed laneway. People were very worried that young people would congregate in the laneway and cause mayhem in the estate. I recently visited a housing estate in Grange Abbey where young people have pulled down the side wall of a house which is just across the road from the laneway. Indeed one man who parks his buses in the laneway constantly finds that the windows are broken. We should introduce legislation providing a procedure to close off such laneways quickly.
While I like to see plenty of open space in housing estates, the local authority should be required to patrol those open spaces in order to prevent young people creating havoc by drinking in the open air. Because of the manpower shortage in the Howth Garda station, the Garda tell me they are unable to patrol these areas and they do not have sufficient staff to put a man on the beat. Indeed they also say that if they get rid of the problem in one area they are merely exporting it to another estate where the problem recurs. Again I appeal to the Minister to empower the local authorities to implement procedures to close off laneways quickly.
In my constituency Dublin Corporation have provided houses in the county council area, and I, as a county councillor, cannot take up with the corporation their problems with rent arrears, maintenance or indeed requests for transfers. I know it is proposed to reform local government but the Department should examine this problem and consider transferring the ownership of these houses to the local authority in whose area they are located and who would then arrange to collect the rents. This problem is prevalent in a number of constituencies and we are unable to deal with it for the corporation tenants because we are not elected to the corporation.
The shared ownership scheme looks enticing and should work. A few points should be considered in order to make the scheme efficient. The law agents' offices in both Dublin County Council and Dublin Corporation are dealing with a huge volume of work and cannot process documents quickly enough. People know this problem exists and that it may take a long time to establish title. Extra personnel should be appointed to process the documentation and to establish title more quickly. If that does not happen sellers will not be anxious to deal with people who are in a shared ownership scheme. An estate agent told me recently that he would be more likely to encourage a sale to a person getting a building society loan rather than somebody in a shared ownership scheme because in the latter case the sale could be held up for some time. A person selling a house should be confident that a sale will be closed very quickly. Estate agents and solicitors should also have that confidence. It would require extra money to provide more staff in local authorities but this is necessary to ensure that the scheme is a success.
I would encourage the Minister to consider joint venture schemes. At an area in my constituency, called Hole in the Wall, near Donaghmede, it is proposed to build 900 houses. The proposer tells me that the houses will cost in the region of £40,000 to £45,000. I think he is aiming towards the joint ownership scheme. We should talk to people who have planning permission of this kind to see if joint ventures can be organised with a local authority.
Deputy Leonard said it was a disgrace that there should be any houses without sewerage facilities. The Minister met a deputation from the Hole in the Wall area where there are 35 houses without sewerage. The new development will commence shortly and we must ensure that these people get proper sewerage facilities while the development is going on. I thank the Minister for meeting that group. They were quite satisfied but they are looking for action. They want the Government to provide the money for sewerage to these houses which are six or seven miles from the centre of the city. Sometimes people do not believe that there is a sewerage problem on the outskirts of Dublin. The Minister might discuss with the proposer of this development the making available of a sewerage scheme to the residents of St. Michael's Cottages in Hole in the Wall.
I draw the Minister's attention to what I would regard as a waste of money. I cite the case of one of my constituents who was living with his wife and child in the home of his wife's parents. It was a small cottage which the health board decided was unfit and they issued an order accordingly. The man duly reported to the health authority who told him they would give him a subsidy towards the rent of a house. He consulted several auctioneers and estate agents and found it difficult to find a house to rent. Most estate agents told him he would need a deposit, in one case a deposit of £600, the rent being £400 a month. The only place he could get a house was in one of the best estates in the area. He paid £600 in deposit, most of which was provided by the health board. He is paying just £400 a month in rent, with a subsidy of almost two thirds provided by the health board. To me that is a waste of taxpayers' money and it is wrong. He has one of the best houses in the area. More power to him if he can get it; it was the only house he could get. There are other cases like this. It would be better to recognise that there is a housing crisis and put the money to better use by building houses rather than wasting it in this fashion. The Minister might address this problem.
Dublin County Council and most of the local authorities insist on the highest standards in building construction, with proper regard for energy conservation and proper insulation. Proper attic insulation and double glazing should be required in all new houses. Grants for such insulation would be money well spent. It could save about £50 million a year in oil imports, according to a recent report.
We have been reading lately about water shortages in the Dublin area. Due to very dry weather conditions reservoirs have run down. A programme should be initiated by the Department or by the local authorities to enlist the co-operation of people in water saving. Manufacturers of water cisterns should be asked to introduce a smaller cistern which would save 50 per cent of water when flushing. More research would result in measures to save water in Dublin city. At times in the Baldoyle and Howth areas the water supply is throttled or turned off, giving people either reduced supply or none at all. We should encourage the manufacture of various water saving devices.
The north Dublin drainage scheme serves most of the housing estates from Finglas to Howth. One pipe takes in waste from houses, hospitals and factories and emits raw sewage at Howth Head. The EC have directed that we should install proper treatment works before 1998 or 1999. The north Dublin drainage scheme will have to be treated very shortly. Consultants have been appointed to recommend on the siting of a sewage treatment works and I understand they are looking at three locations. They tell us that the treatment works cannot be more than a mile away from the pipe. One of the sites they are considering is in St. Anne's Estate and another is a land-fill site in the Howth area. We reckon it is near the Baldoyle race-course or somewhere between Baldoyle and Portmarnock. A sewage treatment works is like an itinerant site: nobody wants it near them. The Baldoyle, Howth-Sutton area and all that area along the coast is a high amenity area. We would be totally opposed to the siting of a sewage treatment works in any of those areas. We have fought long and hard to preserve the open spaces in Baldoyle. We have fought off several planning applications down through the years and we will continue to do so. I want to put the Minister on notice today that we are not in favour of the treatment works being located in the Baldoyle or Howth-Sutton area.
There is a solution. We had a meeting recently with the consultants organised by the Howth-Sutton 2,000 group — an excellent group in that area who look after the environment — and they told us there is a solution. I have praised the group several times in this House and will continue to do so. The solution is quite simple. One can run a pipe from the North Dublin drainage scheme across to the Ringsend works. I understand that in time that will be a proper treatment works which will emit clean water into the receding waters in Dublin Bay. We in the Baldoyle, Howth-Sutton area are totally opposed to the sewage treatment plant being located in our area.
Finally, I should like to refer to the matter of housing. We have high amenity areas such as the Redrock site on which people are seeking to build houses. The answer to our problem in trying to preserve these areas is a special amenity area order. That is troublesome and it is very difficult to process through the council. I understand the Liffey Valley area amenity order was initiated by the Department of the Environment. We should look to that Department to preserve these spaces from house building. Howth needs a special amenity area order. These areas are being preserved at present by doing deals with people who want to develop these areas. For instance, we are saying to them in regard to Redrock mark II — as I call it, the second site beside Redrock — you can have two houses if you give us 40 acres. That is the wrong approach, it is piece-meal, it is not good and it is not fair to either side. In order to preserve these areas near housing estates the Minister and his Department should make a special amenity area order.