For the provision of housing, Bills have been passed and moneys voted by the Oireachtas, including, under these Bills, £850,000, and £1,000,000 made available in 1922. These made provision for a total of 18,134 houses. Of that number, 10,717 have been, or are being, erected by private persons or public utility societies, and 7,417 have been, or are being erected by public bodies. The sum of £200,000, which it is proposed to make available by the Bill now before the House, provides for, approximately, 3,550 houses, so that with the moneys provided under this Bill the total number of houses provided since 1922 will be 21,684. The Bill before the Dáil at present is framed approximately on the Bills that have been before the House already, with this exception, that in the first place no provision is made for the financing of reconstruction. The amount of reconstruction that was done under previous measures was pretty small. Generally speaking, the houses that it was proposed to reconstruct were situated in unsuitable or congested areas and the original form of construction did not lend itself to reconstruction. The first object of the 1924 Act was to induce the owners of tenements in Dublin or elsewhere to convert these into flats, but no material progress was made in that direction, and it is considered that the money available by the local bodies would be more satisfactorily put into new houses. So that one of the differences between this Bill and the Bills that went before it is that reconstruction has been dropped.
Another change in the Bill is that the remission of rates by the local authorities in the case of houses built by private persons and utility societies assisted by State funds is made mandatory—that is, the partial remission of the rates for twenty years. The third difference is that the size of the grant made available to private persons, utility societies and local authorities is reduced. With regard to the matter of the reduction of grants, the giving of State Funds to the assistance of housing arose originally because of the fact that certain classes in the community have to be assisted in some way by public funds of one kind or another if they are to be provided with sanitary houses, and so that there would not be over-crowding, with the insanitary results that arise directly from over-crowding. An estimate was given of the number of houses required for the working classes in 1919. I am informed that that estimate was a generous estimate because the local bodies understood that there was a large sum available for houses, and for that reason the estimate supplied by the local authorities was pretty generous. In 1919, that estimate was altogether put at 40,000 houses. If these houses could be provided at a cost of £300 per house, the total capital sum would be £12,000,000—a very considerable sum of money. The financial aspect of the problem is so great that, apart from other reasons, the State cannot bear on its shoulders the burden of solving this particular problem, particularly where there does exist or is supposed to exist, as far as the Central Government is concerned, machinery in the local authorities which could be more adapted for the purpose. At any rate to give very considerable State assistance to the building of houses for an indefinite period would be unduly to keep up the cost of house-building. It would, no doubt, solve the problem if that State assistance were given, but it would solve it by saddling the community with very considerable sums of debt and, as I say, it would still keep up the cost of building and, therefore, create an interference that would re-act in future years on the provision of houses to meet the ordinary wear and tear, because, there would be annually a number of houses required to be built in order to meet the normal wastage. So that too great State assistance at the present moment would saddle us with debt and would make the cost of house building continue to be unnecessarily high.
However, steady progress has been made since 1922 in the reduction of building costs. Building costs here may fairly be compared with building costs in Great Britain, but if the house problem here is to be solved the present building costs must be reduced. Fairly substantial reductions have taken place since 1922. That position has been assisted very much by the State. That was done, in the first place, in 1922 by making very considerable grants towards the building of houses. The State grants at that time were to the extent of two-thirds of the total cost of the houses. Grants of such magnitude were only countenanced from State Funds because of the extraordinary circumstances of that time. Building operations had stopped in the country for a very substantial period. Machinery had to be oiled and assisted to get into motion again. In 1924, in order to induce the particular capital lying in the hands of private persons to fall into the building arena—in order to induce this capital in the hands of private persons to be put into building —State grants were made available to private persons to build houses. In 1925 a reduction in the amount of the grant given to private persons took place. A further reduction is now made in the grants. In the case of a three-roomed house, in 1924 a private person was given a grant of £60. In 1925 he was given a grant of £45 for a three-roomed house. Under the present arrangement, it is proposed to give a State grant of £45 for a three-roomed house—same as under the Act of 1925. The reduction in the grant under the present Bill is in respect of the larger class of house.
However, by suitable withdrawing of the amount of State grants given to private persons, we are getting down to a normal situation. We are passing to the normal stage when we take it that State grants will not be made available to private persons building at all, but the reduction is being made in such a gradual way that, having assisted private capital to flow into housing, private capital will still flow into housing without any great jar by the stoppage of State grants to private persons just at this particular time. A very substantial contribution, too, has been made to the reduction of housing costs by the work that has been done in arriving at the most economical type of house. Much work has been done by the Local Government Department. In the first place, they made a very careful examination, particularly in respect of the local authorities, to see that the most economical use is made of the site. The design, secondly, is very fully examined to see that all unnecessary and uneconomic factors have been eliminated. In the same way, on the form of construction, thickness of walls, windows and roofing, a considerable amount of thought has been brought to bear in the Department, so that to private persons or local authorities building the greatest possible amount of advice is given so that unnecessary expenditure be eliminated in this matter. In the same way, a considerable amount of elimination of expenses in connection with professional fees has been brought about. These are the contributions of the State to the reduction of costs in housing.
When we come to consider the position of the private person, under the measure that is before us now, normally, the public purse ought not to be opened to assist private persons to build houses. There is a definite difference between the communal responsibility for helping in the provision of houses for the poor and the responsibility that exists, or may exist, communally in respect of the provision of houses for the non-poor. There are very strong grounds why, with the problem that is before us, such public monies as are available should be devoted exclusively to assisting the building of houses for the poor, but such is the state of the building trade at present, after the period in which building practically stopped in the country, that the trade is only now getting on its feet; such is the position with regard to the amount of capital that can be made available for housing generally that it is considered still desirable, to entice private capital to come into housing, to assist private persons.
Under the 1924 Act, a private person building a three-roomed house got £60; building a four-roomed house, he got £80, and for a five-roomed house he got £100. Under the 1925 Act, that was reduced so that the £60 for a three-roomed house became £45, the £80 for a four-roomed house became £60, and the £100 for a five-roomed house became £75. What is proposed now is that a flat payment of £45 will be made to a private person building a house whether it is a five-roomed, a four-roomed or a three-roomed one, once it comes within the space area laid down in the regulations prepared by the Local Government Housing Department. There is a flat grant of £45, plus a remission of a certain amount of rates for twenty years. As far as the remission of rates goes, in a rural district with a house of £6 valuation, where the rates are 10/-, the grant as given to a private person through a reduction of rates alone, is £21. If we add to the £21, being the present value of that reduction, the £45 grant which he gets, that is £66 in all. £66, then, of grants or assistance from public monies is 15.2 per cent. of £400, if the house built is a £400 house.
In the case of a town area, if your valuation is £10, and the rates £15, the value of the remission of rates from the local authority would be £52 10s. to that type of house—a £10 valuation house in an urban district. Take a city area, where a house is being built by private persons at a cost of £1,000. The valuation is £28 and the rates 15/-; the value of the assistance from the local authorities towards the building of that house is £147. Adding to that, £45, the State grant, such a person building a £1,000 house is assisted to the extent of 19.2 per cent. of the cost. In spite of the reduction to 45 per cent. for a private person, very substantial assistance is being given under the present Bill both from the State and from the local authorities to private persons building houses.
In the case of public utility societies, they have been in receipt of the same amount of grants as local authorities—that is, for a five-roomed house, £100; for a four-roomed house, £80, and for a three-roomed house, £60. It is now proposed that a flat grant of £60 be given to public utility societies, the same as local authorities. The idea in giving greater assistance to public utility societies is in the first place because the formation of public utility societies helps to strengthen private persons who join these societies and get their houses built through them. It is, perhaps, more easy to get credit and to get houses built at a reduced cost when a number are being built together. Just as it was possible at one particular time to get industrialists to build houses for their own workers, it is felt that the fostering of public utility societies may, at a time when industrialists are not apparently prepared to do anything in the way of building houses for their own workers, give other industrialists or local authorities—who, for one reason or another, do not want to engage directly to too great an extent in providing houses for the working classes—machinery by the operation of which they may do a considerable amount to meet the housing shortage.
Now, in the case of local authorities, the grants available to them were £100 for a five-roomed house; £80 for a four-roomed house, and £60 for a three-roomed house. It is now proposed to reduce those grants to a flat grant of £60. One of the outstanding reasons for the reduction of these grants generally is that there is a limited amount of money available for this particular class of work. Such money as was put into building plans up to this was put in in the way it was put in because of the special circumstances with regard to the building trade, and with regard to the availability of capital. There have been complaints then on all sides that the class of houses being built has not been a class that has been satisfying the main and the important need. That has been recognised all along by the Executive Council, but the stimulation of the building trade was only possible, in our opinion, in the way in which that stimulation took place. Owing to the stimulation of the trade, the reduction in building costs and the facts that the trade was, to some extent, put on its feet again, we are now getting into a position in which we can divert the monies available to a greater extent for the provision of the class of houses that will suit the lesser-paid workmen and meet the need that is most crying for houses. Therefore, the reduction of the present grants to local authorities, while being, to some extent, measured by the reduction of costs in building, is also intended to induce local authorities to concentrate on, say, the four-roomed house, so as to meet the very special need of the lesserpaid working classes.
With regard to the costs on which these reductions were based, in May, 1926, in respect of a scheme of 104 five-roomed houses in the city of Dublin, the cost per square foot was 12s. 7½d. In September, 1928, approximately two years later, in respect of the same class of house, the cost per square foot was 10s. 9d. You have a reduction of 14.6 per cent., involving a reduction in the total cost of that class of house, which was 844 square feet, of £77 7s. 4d. As far as the reduction in the grants now is concerned, there is a reduction of £40 as compared with that reduction of £77 7s. 4d. In Cork, in May, 1926, in connection with a scheme of 148 houses, of which 18 were five roomed houses, the square foot measurement of the houses being 896, the cost per square foot was 12s. 9d. Two years later, in May, 1928, in connection with 152 houses, of which 16 were five roomed houses, the cost per square foot was 9s. 6d., a total reduction of 25.5 per cent., or a reduction in the building cost of a house of that particular kind of £145.