I join in the appeal made by other Deputies that grants should be given in urban areas and that they should be retrospective. The Minister sanctioned the setting up of a Housing Commission last year. It is dragging on for a long time. I am sure it has secured useful information from evidence given before it by those who have a good knowledge of the housing question in urban as well as rural areas. For those who have a good knowledge of the problem, it was merely a waste of time, for everybody knew a year ago, before the setting up of this commission of inquiry, as they know now, that the housing problem is merely a problem of finance. It takes different forms.
Deputy Dockrell and Deputy Brasier spoke of the problem from the point of view of grants. Deputy Hickey spoke from the point of view of Small-Dwellings-Act loans, and house-purchase loans. The Minister, when dealing with his annual Bill last year in which all urban areas were excepted from the grants, said it was represented to him that far more important than grants were house-purchase facilities. I agree with that. We have a new Minister for Local Government now and why does he not consider that aspect of the problem? Both the question of housing grants and the question of house-purchase facilities are important. The Minister for Finance paid himself a tribute to-day—a tribute that I think was justified—in saying that he departed from orthodox methods in housing when he was Minister for Local Government and that he had achieved a substantial success. With that I agree, but, towards the close of his career as Minister for Local Government, he adopted a policy which the present Minister is perpetuating— a policy of curtailing the grants for house-building in the only place in which any house building worth talking about is to be done—the urban areas. He cut these grants out. I know the cases of several builders in Dublin who had their houses almost plastered and painted and they were cut out of these grants because they were a few days behind the 1st April last year. They lost £45 a house in that way.
The money stringency that followed was, to a large extent, due to Government policy and I hope I shall be in order in tracing the development of that. The money stringency set in and no purchase facilities were available. The Minister is aware that his predecessor, in his first burst of house building enthusiasm, left the Small Dwellings Act to be administered by the local authorities in the way in which it was passed by this House—namely, that it was at the discretion of the local authorities to provide house-purchase accommodation up to 90 per cent. of the market value of houses up to £1,000. The first knock house-building got came a couple of years ago when the Local Government Department circularised the local authorities that they should not grant a loan of more than 70 per cent. on the security of the market value of a house but that they could grant up to 85 per cent. provided collateral security could be found. The Minister knew well that collateral security could not, as a rule, be found. In exceptional cases, it was found but, as a general business proposition, it could not be found. That direction cut down the operation of the Small Dwellings Act to the few cases where house-purchasers could provide 30 per cent. of the market value of their houses. That gave the first knock to house-building in the urban areas. At that time, British insurance companies operating in this country, and operating largely in the City of Dublin, were lending money for house-purchase to the extent of 85 per cent. of the market value. Why should not the Government assist in the only way they will assist house building by helping house-purchase? Why could not the Government, within the last two or three years, authorise—they were not asked to provide the money—the same facilities for house-purchase that British insurance companies were giving here?
In face of all that, is it not a farce to set up a commission of inquiry into house-building? It is money, and nothing but money, that is required for house-building. The way to promote house-building is not to give money to the builder. The builder who cannot build houses and put them on the market is not fit to be there. Let him get out of the way. The builder wants no subsidy except a bit of a grant. That has the effect, in competition, of reducing the price of houses, but the important thing is to provide house purchase facilities on reasonable terms. I mean by that that the weekly or annual outgoings should be amounts which the people who are looking for houses will be able to pay.
Deputy Hickey says that they want 3,000 houses in Cork City. We want about 25,000 houses in Dublin. Through the housing policy of the Local Government Department, house-building has been held up in Dublin. How has it been held up? Subsidies were given by the Government for the housing of the working classes. The subsidy was standardised in the case of slum clearances at two-thirds of the cost of building cottages or flats. That two-thirds was fixed when the cost of building a cottage was £450, and the cost of building a flat £500. Costs have since gone up. The all-in cost of building a cottage now is about £600. I am speaking of pre-war and not present-day costs. The cost of putting up flats went, in some cases, over £1,000. I think I would be underestimating if I put it at £850. But, did the Government subsidy go up accordingly? No. Their subsidy is two-thirds of the £450 for a cottage, and £500 for a flat. The extra amount over that standardised subsidy has to be met either out of increased rents for the workers or out of increased rates.
A charge on the rates of Dublin had to be made, with the inevitable result that it destroyed the credit of the Dublin Corporation; it destroyed our borrowing power. When we went on the market and floated a loan for £1,500,000 to finance contracts that we had already signed and sealed with contractors who were building houses for the working classes, we could not get the money, and we are in that position to-day because we asked the Government to pay the two-thirds of the present-day costs, and they refused. We had to go on the rates, and the higher the rates went the less was our security for borrowing, and our credit went down. In the midst of all this, we have the farce of holding an inquiry in connection with housing. An inquiry into the circumstances connected with the building trade in Dublin has been going on for the last year and a half.
