Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 19 Jul 1934

Vol. 18 No. 32

Housing (Gaeltacht) (Amendment) Bill, 1934—Second and Final Stages.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Connolly)

This Bill is introduced to amend and extend the Gaeltacht Housing Act of 1929, which was the principal Act dealing with Gaeltacht housing. The 1929 Act, which was the first and principal Act, made provision for the sum of £250,000; subsequently, under the amending Act of 1931, an additional £100,000 was provided, making a total provision of grants and loans for housing in the Gaeltacht of £350,000. The present Act proposes to increase this amount by an additional sum not exceeding £300,000, thus increasing the amount under the principal Act by a sum not exceeding £650,000.

The main change in the original Act is in sub-section (1), Section 3, which increases the former maximum grant of £80 in the case of occupiers of holdings of a poor law valuation of £10 and under as follows:—(a) In the case of an occupier of a holding of the valuation of £5 or less, the maximum grant is increased to £90; (b) in the case of an occupier of a holding of a valuation of more than £5, but not exceeding £10, the maximum grant is increased to £85; (c) in the case of an occupier of a holding of a valuation exceeding £10, the maximum grant remains at the former figure of £80. In determining the amount of the valuation of the holding regard will be had to all the holdings in the possession of the applicant if he should own other holdings than that on which the existing dwelling stands.

Sub-section (2) limits the amount of grant and loan that may be made under the principal Act to a sum not exceeding £160. By this sub-section, in cases where an increase in grant is given, the loan (the maximum amount of which was formerly £80) shall be correspondingly reduced so that the total amount of grant and loan shall not exceed £160. Experience of the principal Act has shown that there are substantial numbers of poorer Irish-speaking homesteads in the Gaeltacht unable to avail of the Act through inability to provide the money required for the erection of a house over and above the amount of the grant, or to assume liability for a loan of the amount necessary. The increase of the grant in the case of poor persons is designed to meet this difficulty. At the same time the reduction, as from the 1st October next, in the rate of interest payable on loans from 5½ per cent. to 4¾ per cent. will operate to make the burden of a loan in all cases less onerous.

Section 4 restricts the operation of the Act to Irish-speaking households, that is, homesteads where the Irish language is in habitual use. It is felt that as the primary purpose of the Bill is for the benefit of the Irish-speaking districts, the operation of the Act should be confined to Irish-speaking households. The Local Government housing provisions are considered inadequate to cover all non-Irish-speaking households, that is, those in which English is in habitual use.

I think that covers the main purpose of the Bill as the Bill has operated since 1929, and I think the changes are those that I mentioned, namely, an increase in the grant in certain valuations not confined to the activities in the wholly or purely Irish-speaking households. Most Senators know what the experience of the operation of the Gaeltacht Housing Acts has been up to the present and I feel this requires very little explanation. It is an extension of the activities hitherto prevailing and an increase in the amount of the grant by £300,000 as the previous amounts already voted have been practically exhausted.

Mr. Staines

I welcome this Bill, but—I hope the Minister will not mind my saying so—it has been introduced a bit late in the day. The £350,000 granted by the last Administration has been spent and I think this Government should have brought in this Bill sooner. When it did bring it in, I think the Government should certainly have granted more than £300,000 for Gaeltacht housing. The Gaeltacht is a very important place, and it is very poor. We want to encourage the Irish language and to keep the people in the Gaeltacht. Whether we want to keep them there or not, they will stay there. If you try to transfer them to the rich lands in County Meath they simply will not go. America is closed to them now and the only change available is harvesting in England or Scotland. While they remain in the Gaeltacht and while we want to encourage the language we should at least give these people good housing. I understand that 20,000 new houses are required in the Gaeltacht and 10,000 houses require to be renovated or reconstructed. It would cost £2,500,000 to do the work that is necessary, and that is the reason why I say £300,000 is a very small donation towards the work to be done there. Does the Minister know the number of applications that are in for new houses and the number of applications for reconstruction of houses in the Gaeltacht? I have been in the Gaeltacht a good deal in the last two months, and, certainly, I must say the housing conditions there are bad. Of course, the conditions would have been worse but for the £350,000 already spent there. That was a great matter, but when you come to the question of houses to-day you find you want ten times the number you are providing for. That is the reason why I say £300,000 is a very poor instalment for the Gaeltacht especially when you consider that Gaeltacht grants since this Government came into power have been reduced to the extent of £29,000. There is no use talking of preserving the Irish language or sympathising with the Irish language if we cut our grants continually and then come along with a great flourish of trumpets and bring in a new housing scheme and say that the Government are giving £300,000 when everyone knows it would take £2,500,000 to do the work that is necessary.

Mr. Blythe

One of the changes in the Bill is that it limits the grant, and I presume the loan, to Irish-speaking households. The operations of the original Act were simply confined to Irish-speaking areas. There is something to be said for each of these plans. There is something to be said, for instance, for simply helping people in what is an Irish-speaking district and not trying to go down too closely into the status of individual households. On the other hand, I see a justification for what is proposed in this Bill. But I think one of the dangers under the scheme now proposed is that it will not be strictly carried out, that is to say, there will be a good deal of misrepresentation or, shall we say, fraud, in connection with it. There are areas where you can be sure whether the household is an Irish-speaking household or not. There are other areas where it is very difficult for an outsider to say. It is easy enough for the neighbours to say but it is very difficult for people coming from outside. Whatever advantage from any point of view may be obtained by confining the operations of the Act to Irish-speaking households, there is no doubt there will be greater loss if that provision is incorporated and, in fact, houses that are not Irish-speaking get the benefit of it. I would like to express the hope that the Government have deliberately decided upon this plan and putting in the figures they have will recognise the necessity of not allowing this provision to become a dead letter in any way. I think it would be much better to leave it out of the Bill than to allow it to become a dead letter. They will have to devise a very careful scheme in order to prevent constant misrepresentation. I have seen households that were Irish-speaking where the parents did everything they could to prevent the children growing up Irish speakers. Yet the children did grow up Irish speakers because of their neighbours. A stranger coming in would find that the father and mother and the grandfather and grandmother never spoke Irish, yet that would be a household that beyond any other would deserve to have the facilities of this Act refused to them. As this provision, which is difficult to operate in many areas, has been put in, it is in order that it may not do the opposite to what is intended, that the Department will have to consider a system of checks and counter checks in order to defeat the many misrepresentations that will be used not only in English-speaking families but by the neighbours also even though those neighbours will complain that the grant is given to people that are not entitled to it.

Mr. Guinness

In connection with what Senator Blythe has said, I have not read the Bill very carefully, but I would like to know if it is intended that no grant should be made except to those households where Irish is spoken. If that is so, what is the condition of arriving at that decision? Will inspectors go around and call into each house? If so, the family may speak Irish for the inspector's benefit, but once he is gone they may revert back to English. It must be an extraordinarily difficult thing under conditions of that kind to enforce the provisions of the Bill. When the Bill was before the Dáil, a question was raised in connection with one particular phase. A Deputy spoke of a case where a member of a family who had been absent for several years abroad, be it man or woman, and who amassed a certain amount of money in America and returned home without any knowledge of Irish whatever. Would the intrusion of that person into a family militate against the family getting a grant? If so, I think it would be a great hardship so far as that particular family is concerned. I see great difficulty in enforcing the provision referred to by Senator Blythe by which only households which are definitely and genuinely Irish-speaking will get these grants. In my own experience, which is certainly limited, I have come across only one person in the West of Ireland who could speak no other language than Irish. That was some years ago. I have looked for that and that was the only individual I ever encountered who knew only Irish.

Mr. Comyn

I am sure this measure will be administered with discretion and good sense. Senator Guinness is quite right in saying that the person who can speak Irish and no other language is very rare even in the West of Ireland. There are some dwellings in the Gaeltacht where Irish is habitually spoken and where it is the language of the people. I am sorry to say that, speaking generally, these are the dwellings in which the people are least able to look after themselves in the way of getting State grants.

The Acts which have been passed in relation to housing in these districts made no differentiation in regard to the language spoken in the different households. Without knowing fully the working of these statutes, I am of opinion, from my observation of Irish-speaking districts, that the people who, up to the present, have got grants are mainly the English-speaking people in the Irish-speaking districts. The truth must be told that they are probably the most intelligent people in these Irish-speaking districts. In any case, they are the people who have known best how to take advantage of beneficial legislation. Probably, the Minister has found that in these districts there is a residuum of genuine Irish-speaking households who have not taken full advantage of the legislation. A special Bill is probably necessary in order to prevent the others—the English speakers in the Irish-speaking districts —from gobbling up all the relief.

Mr. Connolly

I think that the House is generally agreed on the desirability of having this measure put through. As Senator Staines has said, this Bill might have been introduced some time before. There were, however, various difficulties in the way of its earlier introduction. In the first place, we were fighting for better terms, in the way of grants, for the people of the Fíor-Ghaeltacht. Secondly, it was contingent on some other arrangements being made with regard to the rate of interest for loans. However, the Bill is before the House now. The question of the amount it will take completely to house the people of the Gaeltacht does not arise because if, as Minister, I find, or the Department in the course of their administration find, that more money is needed adequately to house the people of the Fíor-Ghaeltacht, we shall certainly come to the Oireachtas and look for the money. We want to see all the people of the Gaeltacht— Breac-Ghaeltacht and Fíor-Ghaeltacht —satisfactorily housed. We want to abolish any poor and unhealthy accommodation which may exist in the Gaeltacht areas.

There is a real argument for confining the operations of this Bill to the Fíor-Ghaeltacht. That is particularly the case since the 1932 Act came into operation, because it has to be remembered that the actual money concession, while very considerable to the people of the Gaeltacht, is relatively small in its charge on the State. In the administration of the Gaeltacht housing policy, very valuable service is rendered by the Department to the people. The purchasing scheme, whereby contractors are invited to tender and to supply certain standard products, which are approved of by the Department, means that a very considerable saving is effected in the purchase of material for the houses. Again, the Department helps by provision of design, by survey and by inspection of the materials to ensure that the people get the right material at the right price. These are services of the utmost importance to the people of these districts. The people in the Breac-Ghaeltacht can be adequately dealt with under the 1932 Act.

Senator Blythe raised a very important question. It is one of the big problems in dealing with housing in the Gaeltacht—the possibility of deceit with regard to the use of the language and the danger that the new item of legislation embodied in this Bill might become a dead letter. All we say is that we have, as the Senator knows, highly experienced inspectors, all Irish-speaking, who know their districts and who know almost intimately the different families and the conditions under which they live. A question was raised in the Dáil, which Senator Guinness has raised here, with regard to the emigrant coming home from the United States or elsewhere. Whatever might be said about the migrant who comes back from labouring in the agricultural districts of Scotland or England, the case which has been invariably cited has been that of the return of the relatively comfortable emigrant from America. We have been asked "Are you going to put obstacles in the way of such people being provided with houses." I say "certainly." It is not our purpose to provide returning emigrants with houses. It must not be assumed from that that if a member of a family who has been in America for some years returns, it will militate against the entire family being provided with a loan or grant. The ordinary intelligent decision will be made. The circumstances of the people will be considered and the question whether or not they are fundamentally an Irish-speaking household. If a person migrated to Germany and came back speaking German, it would not affect the fundamental claim of the household. That matter can be easily left to the judgment, wisdom and experience of the inspectors who will be on the work. Senator Staines mentioned that it would take £2,250,000 to solve the housing problem in the Gaeltacht. I have been going into considerable detail with regard to that question and I am not in a position to say what amount it would take, but I am satisfied that it would take no such sum. It has to be remembered that ordinary housing operations can go on in the Breac-Ghaeltacht under the county councils and utility societies. This class of housing is in a special category and if the occasion arises when £300,000 more will be required, we shall come and ask for it. For the information of the House I may say that the total number of applications received is 15,564, and 9,327 of these have been dealt with. We shall be in a position to deal with a great many more now. It is of itself a slow process. Even when a grant is sanctioned, it is often two years before the money can be spent because very often the people do a great deal of the building work themselves and purchase the materials from the contractors selected in competition. With the assistance of the tradesmen or neighbours, they very often work at their own houses and it often takes two years from the time the grant is sanctioned until the house is completed. Two years would be almost the shortest period on which we could reckon on a house being completed.

Question put and agreed to.

Mr. Séamus Robinson

I move:

That, notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in Standing Orders 79 (1) and 85, the Committee Stage and Report Stage of the Housing (Gaeltacht) (Amendment) Bill, 1934, be taken to-day.

Mr. Connolly

I second the motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill put through Committee Stage and reported.

Report Stage and Final Stage agreed to.