I suppose there is more than a little anomaly in the fact that two residents of the same constituency in Cork are discussing this Friday afternoon a problem in Cork city, 160 miles away, when both of us would prefer to be well on our way back there, if not there at this stage. Nevertheless, the problem of the flats at Blackpool is extremely important. The Minister is probably more familiar with the problem than I as he is more actively involved as a constituency representative in the area. There is not much point in my describing at great length the problem, but for the record and because it is important, the unanimous view of the Blackpool Development Group, the Blackpool Community Association and the tenants is that the flats should be demolished. I do not think the tenants are too concerned whether they are demolished as long as they get out of them and the flats are not used for human habitation or for family housing.
Cork Corporation, at a time when the Minister was still a member, voted heavily in favour of demolishing the flats. I do not intend this to be anything but a factual statement, but the flats should never have been built. They overlook a scrapyard. As most people know, the scrap metal business involves a lot of noise which continues well into the night. This is not a suitable environment; it also generates a fair amount of dust. On that score alone it is an unsuitable location for family housing.
Clothes washing facilities in the flats are, to say the least, restricted and it would not be exaggerating to say that the facilities for drying clothes, simple things like that which are associated with ordinary family living, are impossible. Carrying small children up to the higher flats is difficult, if not impossible. Many years ago when I was a member of the Labour Party I visited those flats while canvassing for a man who is since deceased, Pat Kerrigan. Those flats were one of the least pleasant parts of my introduction to Cork — I had only been in Cork for two months at that time, I remember mothers of small children crying in desperation because of the sense they had of being locked in, the difficulty in getting a pram up and down unsuitable steps, the unsuitability of the balconies and their perpetual fear that children would fall off the balconies.
After all the mistakes of the past, we have now at least got to a stage where the tenants, the corporation and the local community all agree on what should be done. The problem is that there is nowhere else for the tenants of those flats to go because there is no money available in Cork for local authority housing. The housing record in Cork is unspeakably bad. I am not blaming the present Minister for that but I will blame him if he does not now do something about it — he was not the Minister at that time, although his party are responsible.
Last year Cork Corporation must have achieved something of a record — they built one house. This year Cork Corporation will build 25 houses. There are now, effectively, 2,000 applicants on Cork Corporation's housing list. Those 25 houses will have to be distributed among 2,000 people. In addition, there are considerable numbers of potentially very good flats needing refurbishment in Mayfield and The Glen, in the same part of the north side of Cork which cannot be refurbished because of lack of funds.
There are people living in accommodation that everybody agrees is appalling, which the tenants are finding increasingly unpleasant but because of a decision, which I would not hesitate to describe as the most anti-social decision taken by an Irish Government in recent years, to effectively end local authority house building, problems are piling up of which the most extreme is the flats in Blackpool. Because of that and the tendency of Cork Corporation in recent times to use the flats as a place to relocate tenants who have been unsuccessful in securing alternative accommodation or who have been evicted, the long standing tenants of that area are becoming increasingly angry and demoralised about their physical living conditions.
They highlighted the presence of human excrement in the flats; they found vermin there and provided evidence of dead rats, etc. and members of Cork Corporation will recall this. This is an indication of those people's extreme frustration. They are entitled to better from us, they are entitled to somewhere decent to live. I do not believe housing is a matter of choice or policy for Governments, it is a human right. The right to shelter of a standard which enhances one's dignity and one's family is not something people can have taken from them by the pressures of financial constraints. We are running into an extremely serious social crisis, the housing crisis, which will have a spill-over into a mushrooming of homelessness and result in the collapse at a frightful rate of family structures because a family without a home will have great difficulty in surviving. The particular flat complex in Cork city is perhaps an extreme example of what happens when good quality housing is not provided. The situation will not improve or go away and families will live in those flats until Cork Corporation are given funds specifically tailored to enable them to dispose of that property and allow the tenants to move out into decent accommodation.
Whether the flats should be demolished or used for community purposes, business purposes or for something else is a separate matter. What is quite clear is that they are not suitable local authority housing for families with small children. People have fallen from the balconies of the flats and have been killed or injured. I appeal to the Minister, in his early days as Minister with the interests of his own constituency at heart, to act on this matter, to bring it to the attention of the Government and to have the funds made available.
