I do not know whether there is an agreement that I should take up this Bill now. I believe the notice is a day or two short, and I undertook not to press for the necessary suspension of the Standing Orders to take those Bills unless there was unanimous consent. You were not in the Chair when I gave that undertaking, and it is for that reason that I wish to make the matter clear to you now.
HOUSING (BUILDING FACILITIES) BILL, 1924—SECOND STAGE.
The position is that an order was made to put this Bill on the Orders of the Day for to-day. The question of consent now is another matter.
I have notified you that I objected to proceeding with the Bill on the Second Reading without the ordinary notice. Members received this Bill yesterday morning. It is an important Bill, and it requires consideration; the time has not allowed that consideration which it deserves. Apart from that, I want to make my position clear. It is that when Standing Orders respecting Legislative measures have been adopted, after careful consideration, I believe it is absolutely necessary that those Standing Orders should be complied with. It was with a view to insisting that compliance with the Standing Orders should be the mode of procedure that I notified you that I objected to taking the Second Reading of this Bill without the four days' notice which the Standing Orders require. I recognise, however, that the Dáil did order that the Second Reading was to be taken to-day, and that that creates some difficulty; but I would suggest to the President that while we should comply with the Order, and the Dáil take the motion for Second Reading, and receive his statement on the matter, then we should adjourn the discussion to allow members to have time to consider the proposals in the Bill before proceeding with the Second Reading debate.
That proposal is quite feasible. That is to say that the motion should be moved and seconded, and that the adjournment of the debate should then be moved to some more suitable day. I do not know what day Deputy Johnson has in his mind.
I will be satisfied with to-morrow, if that is satisfactory to the Leader of the Dáil.
I beg to move the Second Reading of the Housing (Building Facilities) Bill, 1924. It is, perhaps, the third occasion upon which I have addressed myself to this subject, and a good deal of explanation has already been given by me regarding the main points of the main clauses of the Bill. On the last day some question arose regarding the use of Irish manufactured materials. I think particular stress was laid on the manufacture of bricks. My previous recollection of the number of bricks that a house of, say, five rooms would absorb was something in the nature of 20,000. But on inquiry I got the information on the last day that anything from 3,000 to 5,000 bricks would be required for a house of three or four rooms. On investigation my information is that that figure is not correct, and that one might assume that the average number of bricks that would be required for the 3,000 houses proposed under the Bill, granted that brick was used to the same extent that it had been used in the city of Dublin, would be something like 17,000 bricks per house, and that the total number of bricks required for the entire scheme would be in the neighbourhood of 50,000,000 bricks. I think that is a sufficient answer to those who made certain representations regarding the condition of brickworks throughout the country.
If the scheme be found possible to work, if the terms proposed in the Bill are accepted and acceptable, it is, on the face of it, a sound business proposition for brick-manufacturing companies throughout the country to get busy, so as to have the necessary material available for the construction of those houses. Up to this, most of the work in urban districts, and, in fact, in rural districts also, of providing houses for persons for whom it is intended that these three thousand houses should be built, has been done by local authorities, either by rural district councils, urban district councils, or county borough councils. There is a departure in this proposal inasmuch as you are bringing in a different order in this Bill to provide housing accommodation. It is, I think, generally admitted as the very essence of this particular problem, that the provision of housing accommodation is the most uneconomic service we have got, and that every effort must be made to eliminate any charges pressing on prospective tenants or purchasers of the particular class of house proposed under the Bill.
We, having examined the problem in all its phases, have come to the conclusion that apart from any culpability there might possibly be attached to local authorities in providing housing accommodation, it would be impossible for them, in the nature of the case, to avoid the expense inseparable from the administration of the service by the local authorities. I think, on one or two former occasions, I dealt at some length with that particular subject. There is the question of the collection of rents, the small sums involved, the difficulty of collection, the question of repairs, the hundred and one other expenses inseparable from the administration of a service such as this, which make it impossible for a local authority to administer the service without enormous expense. I recollect, shortly after my appointment as Minister for Local Government, having considered the question of labourers' cottages. Previously I had had some slight experience of the matter and I found in one area where the R.D.C. had constructed 1,400 dwellings, that it would have saved the R.D.C. £12 per annum if it had made an absolute present of those dwellings to their occupiers and would have made a saving, in addition to that, in office expenses or charges for officials' service in connection with those cottages. I made reference also to the fact that local authorities are occasionally subject to pressure for the inclusion of certain items in the construction of those houses which, I think, at present they can be scarcely said to be able to bear.
In the City of Dublin representations in respect of the provision of one class of material as against another imposed what amounted to a rent of 2/- a week on the houses. If we start out with the premise that we require a low rent, obviously you cannot achieve that purpose if any additional expense would have to be incurred in providing the houses. In comparing the sums which it is proposed to grant in respect of three, four and five-roomed houses, I think it will be found we are more generous in respect of the subsidies in each case than has been the case in other places which are very near this country. In respect to the proposal to leave the levy only a percentage—5 per cent. I think in the first year—of the rates on these houses, it will be found we are associating in a remarkable manner local authorities with the provision of these houses.
There may be difficulty in the matter of providing building material. The Government has no desire to enter into competition, or to interfere in any way with ordinary business transactions through the country, but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the cost of building materials is a considerable item in the provision of these houses. We have made calculations, and have estimated the amount of material that will be required in each case, and if, on examination, it is found that the charges made in respect of building materials are prohibitive, then it will be for the Government—and provision is made in the Bill for a Minister of the State to intervene—to correct any evil tendencies of that particular description. I said on the First Reading that this question of housing was a very important and complex one, and that it had not yet received anything in the nature of either a royal or a republican or a democratic or any other sort of solution, and I do not know that there is any such sort of solution. I think it is a case in which various attempts will be made, year after year, of seeing how far there can be an improvement upon the previous year's work, and of endeavouring, with the general help of all sections of the community, to contribute something towards the solution of this problem. There is no use in saying that the sums which we propose to provide under this Bill are not sufficient. I do think, having regard to the amount of money that is involved in each particular case, that the subsidy is a considerable one, and that it is a real earnest of our attempt, taking into consideration the size of our purse, to deal with this problem; and, even if it were a thing that our revenue and expenditure bore a much more favourable outlook than they do, I do not think it would be advisable that we should set a standard of a heavier subsidy than what is proposed in this case. It would mark too great a difference between value on the one hand and payment on the other.
It may be that in the course of the discussions on this particular Bill references may be made to some suggestions, one of which first appeared in the Press, and another of which, I think, Deputy Johnson fathered some years ago; and that was the formation of a special Housing Committee or a special Housing Authority, and a greater, if this be the right term to use, standardisation of the provision of essential building materials for these houses. At any rate, this is a start which may be made now at the most opportune time in the year.
We have been told for some years that we had not utilised private enterprise as much as we might have. This is an opportunity at any rate for private enterprise to show how much better it can do than local authorities have done. I will admit that we have not given private enterprise the same great opportunities as the local authorities have had during the last twelve or eighteen months, but I think it will be conceded, even by those engaged in private enterprise, that the last twelve or eighteen months did not lend themselves to a serious consideration of this particular problem. The other point that may possibly arise is a letter which, I think, Alderman Hadden of Wexford sent to the Press, dealing with the borrowing of money by local authorities over a period of years. I am having that suggestion examined, but on the face of it I would say this, that it brings back all those expenses to which I have already referred, and that it does not call for the effort which is called for under this Bill. This purchase of premises by persons able to purchase them makes it, as it were, too easy for the cream of the people who are looking for this class of house capable and able to spend the amount of money that we have put down for this particular class of house here. In considering the housing problem one must bear in mind that with these subsidies and with these great helps that we are giving, that those for whom we are supplying these houses must themselves bear the maximum amount they are capable of bearing.
I have evidence within the last couple of years that there are people very well able to pay very much more than they are actually paying for houses that are provided out of public funds. I do not know that there is any section in the Dáil or in the community which stands for a policy of that sort. I came across one case which, I think, I mentioned on the last day, in which something like £17 came in every week into a family exchequer. These people bid for a house provided by a local authority up to one-third of its cost, and offered £2 for admission to the house, whereas other families having only a quarter of the amount in some cases were prepared to put down as much as £50 to be allowed into this house. If the idea be that people want the provision of these houses at the maximum cost to the State or the local authority, and at the minimum cost to themselves, I say that we are not being met in cases of that kind with the sympathetic gesture, if I may say so, that we are making in these cases. I beg to move the Second Reading of the Bill.
MINISTER for DEFENCE (General Mulcahy)
I second.
I beg to move that the debate be adjourned until to-morrow.
Question—"That the debate on the motion be adjourned until to-morrow"—put and agreed to.