I was pointing out that my amendment requested the Government to give effect to the Interim Report of the Town Tenants' Commission on the working of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act, 1899. That report deals with this particular question. The Final Report of the Commission is of a more general character and deals with the whole question of housing. The housing question is one that has been spoken of and written about a lot. To attack it in its entirety would be a colossal job, and I think it is best taken in separate sections. In that way we are more likely to arrive at some constructive conclusions and to make some positive headway than if we were to tackle the problem as one big question. The question really has not been seriously tackled at all when we realise the few thousand houses that have been built here since the war period. In Great Britain, up to the end of last year, they had either authorised the construction or completion under the 1923 and the 1924 Housing Acts of no less than 1,300,000 houses. Making allowance for the difference in population, our contribution to this problem is absolutely insignificant when compared with what has been done elsewhere. We have barely made up the ordinary normal wastage. We are only doing that, I think, in recent years, and that only in certain districts. Before the war, we were supposed to be about forty thousand houses in arrears.
We built no houses during the war period. We have built a few thousand houses since, which, as I have said, barely keep pace with the wastage that is going on. The position undoubtedly is a very serious one. We have only been tinkering with the question so far. It is true, of course, to say that practically the whole problem is one of finance. If money were available in a sufficient amount, a commodity for which there is such an urgent demand would inevitably be forthcoming in a short time in sufficient quantities. The costs of building and of building materials have gone up enormously since the pre-war period. It was not possible, in recent years, for builders to build houses and let them at an economic rent without a subsidy of some kind. The position, therefore, is that there are many speculative builders who would be quite prepared to build decent houses if they were able to find purchasers for them, people who would be able to purchase them at the price at which they were built. The trouble for those would be purchasers is to find the necessary money. In that respect the banks are an impossible proposition. No bank will, I believe, advance money now for the purchase of a house for a longer period than ten years, and that at a very high rate of interest. In such circumstances the burden that would have to be borne is an impossible one for the average person, even the person of moderate means.
It is just in this direction that the report of the Town Tenants' Commission on the working of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act, would make a great step forward towards the solution of this problem. The report summarises the nature of the Act of 1899. It says:—
The Small Dwellings Acquisition Act, 1899, with the amendments introduced by the Housing (Ireland) Act, 1919, empowers the local authority for any area to advance money to a resident of a house within the area for the purpose of enabling him to acquire the ownership of that house.
The conditions under which money is advanced are: (a) the market value of the house does not in the opinion of the local authority exceed £800; (b) the amount of the advance does not exceed 90 per cent. of the market value; (c) the advance shall be repaid with interest, in weekly, monthly, quarterly, or half-yearly instalments, within a period not exceeding 50 years; (d) the interest shall not exceed ten shillings per cent. above the rate at which the authority is able to borrow the money; (e) the applicant resides in the house, or undertakes to begin residence therein not later than six months from the date of the advance, and (f) is not already the proprietor within the meaning of the Act of a house to which the statutory conditions apply.
The great problem is the making of money available for local authorities to advance it for the purchase of these houses. That Act was put into operation by the requisite statutory resolution by only a small number of local authorities before the war, with the result that there were only purchased under it 565 houses. Of these, 358 were purchased in the City of Dublin. As a result of their inquiries, the Commission gives a reason why that Act was not more widely availed of. Amongst the reasons given are: (a) ignorance of the facilities which it provided; (b) delay due to the elaborate procedure laid down; and (c) difficulty experienced by local authorities in obtaining loans for the purposes of the Act. The majority of people in pre-war days were not anxious to purchase their houses. Rents were reasonable. It was comparatively easy, in most districts, to get accommodation and even to change from one place to another. There was a general desire to shirk the responsibility which ownership of a house entailed. The position, of course, has altered enormously since the war by the tremendous shortage in houses and the failure to make good even the normal wastage over a great many years. In 1923, the Act was amended in Great Britain. That amendment raised the maximum amount of the market value of a house to which this Act applies from £800 to £1,200. The amount originally was £400. It was afterwards raised to £800, and in Great Britain it is now £1,200.
The Town Tenants' Commission recommend that a similar amendment to the Act should take place here—that the market value of houses be raised to £1,200—as to the period for repayment, which is at present 50 years, their recommendation is that it should stand. The Commission also recommends that advances be encouraged mainly in the case of people desiring to buy new houses or, say, in the case of speculative builders. You do not relieve in any way the housing shortage by helping people to buy houses of which they are already the tenants.
One result of the amendment and extension of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act would be to encourage the speculative builder again. I believe that, in addition to whatever encouragement may be given to local authorities and to public utility societies, the private speculative builder should also be encouraged to make his quota towards the solution of this very important problem, and for one reason that you would encourage the building of a better type of house than is now being built. We shall very soon, I am afraid, lose the very science of house architecture by the type of wretched shelters that are being erected at the present time. It is a terrible commentary on what seems to be the awful necessities of the time when you find the Dublin Commissioners erecting three-roomed concrete houses along some of the finest boulevards around the Metropolis. Splendid new roads, like Griffith Avenue and others, are being lined with three-roomed concrete houses into which large families are being thronged. That is inevitable, and means that in a very short space of time these areas on the outskirts of the city, and in some of the best parts of the city, will become slums. They will take away from the value of property in the vicinity and they are certainly no credit to the capital of Ireland.
The Housing Bill that is getting a Second Reading in the Dáil to-day puts a premium on this type of three-roomed house, because it makes provision for the same amount of State grant for a three-roomed house as for a five-roomed house. We must assume that this Bill will be an encouragement to public utility societies, public authorities even, and the private speculative builder to build the small type of house, because they will get the same State grant for it as for the larger type. The extension of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act would enable people, for whom there is no consideration at present, to get some consideration. There are people in constant employment whose salaries or wages may not be very big. But their employment is constant and fairly assured. These people are desirous of providing themselves and their families with something approaching decent accommodation. In Dublin, for instance, unless they have a minimum of six in family their application for a house is ruled out according to the present regulations. Now, the ordinary decent citizen would like to have all his children born in decent surroundings. He does not want to have to wait to have the first six born in a slum area in order that he may qualify for one of these Dublin Corporation concrete houses.
This Act would also make provision for the young married couple to start life in decent surroundings. It would enable people of that type, who are prepared to make big sacrifices in other respects in order to have a decent home, to enter into arrangements with a speculative builder and buy a new house in that way. The Commission, in their recommendations, suggest that money might, in the first instance, be advanced under certain statutory conditions, and providing that the speculative builder would be repaid as soon as he sold the house, the loan eventually being made to the purchaser of the house. The object of that provision is that it would save double stamp duties. That is a useful recommendation, because if each person had to go and make arrangements for the building of his own house it would mean enormous expense and be quite an uneconomic arrangement. The recommendations of the Commission take all these considerations into account. They put forward provisions that are capable of overcoming any difficulties that may arise.
There are plenty of examples of this type of legislation. I find that, towards the end of last year, in the New South Wales Parliament a Bill of a somewhat similar character was introduced. It was known as the "Government Savings Bank (Housing) Amendment Act." The Premier in explaining the Bill, said:—
Under the first part of the Bill the Savings Bank Commissioners were authorised to erect homes for eligible persons who would be required, in the first instance, to have only 10 per cent. of the cost of the dwellings, including the land which they desired to acquire. The title would be vested in the Commissioners, and the intending purchaser would enter into a contract with the Commissioners for the purchase on terms which would allow of the discharge of the liability in instalments within the reach of persons of moderate means. The Commissioners would provide up to 90 per cent. of the total cost of land and dwelling. The maximum amount they might furnish under the Bill was £1,200, but it was intended that for the present the limit should not be more than £1,000. A term of 30 years would be allowed for the purchase of brick or concrete dwellings, and 20 years for the purchase of wood or wood-frame dwellings.
That is what is being done in the New South Wales Parliament. It is making exactly similar provision to that which has been suggested in the report of the Town Tenants' Commission here. Similar arrangements are being made in other States of the Australian Commonwealth. All really that is necessary is to float at intervals a housing loan and make substantial sums available for local authorities as an inducement to them to adopt this Act, and so that they could deal with applications without undue delay. The purchaser of the house, of course, pays back the principal and interest on an annuity basis, with the result that it may not cost one penny to the taxpayers or the ratepayers of the country. What a splendid thing it would be if, by that means, we could build, say, 10,000 additional houses, apart from anything that the local authorities are doing. In concluding their remarks, the Town Tenants' Commission really sum up the arguments in support of this proposal. They say:—
Assuming that the amount of labour requisite for building operations and the production of materials is available, without having to be withdrawn from other productive undertakings, and assuming that an undue proportion of the expenditure has not to take the form of purchase of foreign building materials, the advances made to facilitate building operations are all wealth-producing advances. The measure of this production is not to be found merely in the sum-total of the new houses erected. A much wider complex of potential resources are made actual. The amount immediately expended upon the houses which afford the security for and eventually repay the loans, passes through a succession of hands and implements a succession of transactions of all kinds—the State itself all the while, through a variety of channels of taxation, earning a fair commission on the expansion of business that is promoted. Just as the effects of a tightening of credit (due frequently to causes which seem small in proportion to the results produced) are felt in every direction. so the bringing into play of such a large security as would be brought into being by the erection of, say, 10,000 new houses would have widespread beneficial reactions. In a sense, a nation as a whole lives by its expenditure. If the nation is to be prosperous, the expenditure must be both large and wise; if the expenditure is either restricted or foolish, prosperity declines.
That Report was signed by people who are anything but vague and irresponsible visionaries. It is signed by Mr. Justice Meredith, as Chairman; Mr. John J. Horgan, of Cork; Mr. J.J. Murphy, the Chairman of the Electricity Supply Board; Mr. M.P. Rowan, a Dublin trader; Mr. P.J. Byrne, Principal Architect in the Board of Works, and by the Secretary, Mr. John B. Hughes, Registry of Deeds Office. This is the Interim Report of the Town Tenants' Commission. It is sold by Messrs. Eason & Son for 3d., and is well worthy of study by anyone interested in the housing question. It is certainly a Report that deserves the consideration of the Government. Here it is not a question of giving a free grant. It is merely a question of making a few millions of money available, by way of a loan and on excellent security and under proper safeguard, and bringing into being a source of wealth in the way of rates, while at the same time giving much-needed employment. It directs a way of making a very material contribution to one of our most crying national and social problems at the present time. The recommendations of the Commission apply, of course, not only to the cities and the urban centres, but also to the rural districts. The Small Dwellings Acquisition Act could be applied by any local authority that passes the necessary statutory resolution. To that extent its ramifications would be more wide-spread in the benefits they would bring to the community than any mere legislation affecting town tenants in the ordinary sense of the word. I hope that the Seanad will pass the motion and the amendment, even if it be only with the object of drawing the attention of the Government to this matter and inducing them to give practical consideration to what, in my opinion at all events, is one of the most serious and practical proposals that we have received for the solution of this problem.
