Vol. 97 No. 10
I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £102,110 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1946, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Public Works (1 and 2 Will. 4, c. 33, secs. 5 and 6; 5 and 6 Vict., c. 89, secs. 1 and 2; 9 and 10 Vict., c. 86, secs. 2, 7 and 9; etc.).
Votes Nos. 9, 10 and 11 may be taken together.
Following the procedure of previous years, it is proposed to take Votes Nos. 9, 10 and 11 together. Vote No. 9 bears the salaries and expenses of the administrative and technical staffs of the Office of Public Works, which is the Office responsible for the administration of Votes Nos. 10 and 11. Vote No. 10 provides the necessary funds for the purchase of sites and buildings, for the erection, maintenance and furnishing of Government offices and other State-owned premises throughout the country, for the construction and improvement of national schools, for the erection of major military buildings, for arterial drainage, for the maintenance of parks and State harbours, and for a number of minor activities. Vote No. 11 is a small Vote providing for the expenses of the management of Haulbowline Island in so far as the island remains in civilian control.
On Vote No. 9 there is an increase of £19,130 in the Estimate due mainly to the payment of cost-of-living bonus at an increased figure and to additional staff for drainage work which will result in higher expenditure on salaries and on travelling and subsistence. A slight decrease in receipts is expected. Of the officers whose salaries are borne on this Vote, 20 are on loan to other Offices. Vote No. 10 for Public Works and Buildings—at £834,441 shows a decrease of £29,464 on last year's Estimate. Sub-head B— New Works, Alterations and Additions —is decreased by £10,000. We are hesitant to embark on any new projects not definitely urgent in view of the difficulties of the supply position. As will be seen from the detailed Estimate, we have in mind a number of important building schemes which we have had to defer during the emergency.
We are again repeating the figure of £250,000 for grants for building and improving national schools. Our expenditure on this service last year was £227,757, which is £28,754 less than the expenditure in the previous year, 1943-44. The decrease is explained by the fact that in 1943-44 expenditure on certain large schools in the newly-developed Dublin City areas was heavier. We are making every effort to overcome difficulties of supply and to keep this important service going. The provision for airports has been transferred to Vote No. 56— Transport and Meteorological Services —administered by the Department of Industry and Commerce.
The new drainage code became law on the 1st March, 1945—the Arterial Drainage Act, 1945. The "Appointed Day" for the purposes of Part III of the Act has been fixed as at the 31st March, 1945. We have virtually completed a survey of the River Brosna catchment area and are proceeding with the design and preparation of a drainage scheme for that area. A survey of the Rivers Glyde and Dee catchment area is in hands. We are also completing the overhaul of our existing drainage machinery. Provision for expenditure on actual drainage work is not made in the Estimate. If we are satisfied later that a start on drainage works will be possible and desirable, provision for the expenditure involved can be made by way of Supplementary Estimate. There is an increase of £18,000 in the amount provided for maintenance and supplies to meet rising costs of materials and labour. There are also slight increases in the amounts put forward for furniture and for fuel, light, etc. Vote No. 11 for Haulbowline Dockyard is in the usual form and calls for no special comment.
The important item to be discussed on this Vote concerns drainage. I confess that I am disappointed at the very meagre information which the Parliamentary Secretary gave the House on the subject. This is work to which we looked forward to give the greatest relief so far as unskilled labour is concerned. I should like to know when the Parliamentary Secretary expects work to begin under the national drainage scheme. When the Drainage Bill was introduced the Parliamentary Secretary was not very optimistic as to the date on which work would actually start, after the Bill was passed. He certainly frightened some of us when he envisaged drainage work not ending for 28 years. Considering the size of this country, if it will take about 28 years to complete drainage, one begins to wonder whether we are facing up to this problem in a serious way. I imagine that that period should be sufficient to complete the drainage of a country half the size of the Continent of America, having regard to all the machinery and appliances at their disposal for such work. I am afraid as a result of the passing of the Drainage Act that, instead of the drainage problem being cured between the appointed day and the actual completion of the work, the position will be worsened rather than improved. It has to be remembered that field drainage to a large extent depends on work to be carried out under the Act. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary when concluding will be able to give more information as to when employment on this scheme will commence. When we hear members of the Government, both inside and outside this House, talk about the grandiose post-war schemes which they say are in preparation, or that are ready to relieve the unemployment that is bound to arise towards the end of the emergency, and when there is vagueness as to when work is likely to start, we are inclined to become very suspicious as to the practicability of any of these schemes. The House and the country are entitled to expect from a Government that have been in office for a long period, and that have been free for the last five years from the major worries of the war, that they would have prepared schemes to absorb the unemployment at once. As far as I know no such schemes are ready, even the national drainage scheme. For that reason, I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to give us further information on this matter when he is concluding the debate on this Estimate.
I am in this difficulty, that, when I hear the Minister for Supplies speaking, I am sometimes led to believe that our principal difficulty will be to get the materials wherewith to put any public works in hand. Yet, when I hear the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance speaking, I get the impression that his principal difficulty will be to get the technical staff requisite to survey and complete the preliminary work necessary to put Gargantuan schemes in hand. However, as Deputy Morrissey has just pointed out, there seems to be one scheme of almost infinite size for which the minimum of raw materials to be imported from outside is requisite. That is, a comprehensive drainage scheme. But if a minimum of raw materials is requisite for that plan, it is equally true to say that a maximum of preliminary-survey and compulsory-acquisition work may be necessary. Is the Parliamentary Secretary in a position to tell us now that these preliminary steps are being, or have been, taken?
Deputy Morrissey dwelt on the question of field drainage and I want to add a word in support of his submission. We are all conscious that certain districts clamour loudly for the completion of the drainage scheme, believing that Utopia will dawn on the morrow of the scheme's completion. Then, disillusionment ensues and the life of the Board of Works is made miserable by persons protesting that the flooding is three times worse than ever it was before. I believe that that kind of disillusionment is due, in part, to exaggerated anticipations of what a drainage scheme will do, but it is also due to the fact that people do not realise that, no matter how good a drainage scheme is, it will not work unless the persons holding land in the area direct the water which lodges upon their land into the main drainage. The only way of doing that is to drain their own land.
I have already directed the attention of this House to the fact that, when King Leopold of the Belgians passed on to his son, the late King Arthur, the absolute ownership of the Belgian colonies in Africa, that enlightened monarch decided that the revenues from this great property should not properly be applied to his privy purse. Therefore, he announced that, with those revenues, he was going to recondition the land of Belgium, irrespective of whose private property that land might be. The result was that he increased the productive capacity of the land in Belgium out of all knowledge. In this country we have a strong Department-of-Finance prejudice against the spending of public money on the private property of citizens.
Would not the remarks of the Deputy be more relevant to the previous Vote?
This Vote deals with arterial drainage.
The previous Vote dealt with land improvement schemes.
My respectful submission is that this is the very dilemma into which I fear the Board of Works will fall.
The Chair presumes that the Deputy does not desire to reopen Vote No. 67 and discuss farm improvement schemes.
All I want to do is to direct the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the fact that his best effort in regard to arterial drainage will prove ineffective unless he can persuade the people to drain their own land. I leave out of consideration the provision of grants or material assistance. Possibly, those are not the vital requisites of the present situation. Possibly, it is publicity that is required. I know that some irritable Deputies will say that farmers do not want to be taught their business by Deputy Dillon. I find from my experience of publicity and propaganda that the most obvious things which every body knows about his neighbour's business, comparatively few people know about their own. I can see rushes and flaggers in my neighbour's field and I am astonished to see his land deteriorating for want of proper care——
That would seem to relate to farm improvements.
I am not asking the Parliamentary Secretary to provide money for this purpose.
Farm improvements could have been legitimately discussed half an hour ago.
Surely I am not irrelevant in saying to the Parliamentary Secretary that he should, in connection with the arterial drainage scheme, conduct a publicity campaign designed to persuade riparian owners and drainage-area owners that he is doing his part and that they must do theirs.
That would have been quite in order on the previous Vote.
I am suggesting that the Parliamentary Secretary should address himself to wealthy land proprietors, holding adjoining land, who do not want any assistance and who would not be eligible for assistance under the farm improvements scheme, and point out to them that they must, without any assistance or guidance from him, do their part of the work on their own land so as to make the drainage of the area a success. I am not asking for help, supervision or guidance from the Government. I am asking the Parliamentary Secretary to bring home to the people that he cannot single-handed make a success of the drainage of the area unless the people in the area do their part. Far from seeking assistance, the thesis which Deputy Coburn has often submitted in this House is peculiarly true in relation to this matter—that people have a duty to look after their own land and help to make the drainage scheme successful by doing their duty in their own close and encouraging their neighbours to do the same.
Now, I touch upon a detail dear to the heart of the Parliamentary Secretary as it is to mine. I should be glad if he would say whether he intends to put the Dromore drainage scheme on an early priority in the schemes he proposes to put in hands. If he does, I can assure him that it will bring comfort to the soul of Ballybay Town Council and I have no doubt that the reverberations of joy will be heard in Cootehill and other areas in County Cavan.
Now, in this connection, I should be interested to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary whether he has given his attention to the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority in America. It marks a completely new departure in the administration of the kind of job for which the Parliamentary Secretary is primarily responsible. Therefore, the Federal Government of the United States of America have taken a certain territory and they have withdrawn, from a wide range of Federal agencies, all their functions in that peculiar territory and have transferred those functions to a semiautonomous body, closely analogous to our Electricity Supply Board. The result has been that the Tennessee Valley Authority has been made responsible for industrial development, drainage, rural electrification, land improvement, provision of raw materials to these ends in that particular area. Now, I confess that my information with regard to the results of that experiment is largely drawn from sources which would be prejudiced in its favour. I have not seen an exhaustive exposé of the criticisms, but from what I do know of it, it has been an extraordinary success.
We have to bear in mind, however, that the Tennessee Valley is many times the size of our whole country and that the river constituting its backbone passes through territories of widely different characters, which complement one another in a general economy, but in connection with the Erne, where we propose to have a hydro-electric scheme under the Department of Industry and Commerce and under which, perhaps, we might be undertaking drainage works, under the Board of Works, and in respect of which land schemes may be put in hand under the Department of Agriculture, and in respect of which also industries may be promoted under the Department of Industry and Commerce, the point arises whether all these various matters could not be vested in a body similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority. That body could say: "There is the Erne Valley, which is delineated on this map. You are going to be charged with the production of power. Your district will have first claim on the power generated by this river. You can use it for the manufacture of artificial manures, for instance, for distribution at a very low rate in that area. You can supply current for the promotion of industry within that area. You can, out of the profits derived from your operations, subsidise, if needs be, drainage, or you can relate your drainage schemes to the general purpose of water control which you will require for the efficient use of the river as a generator of hydro-electricity." It is quite possible—and this is the difficulty that an Opposition Deputy always finds himself in—that on the examination of such a plan by the Minister's experts, it would become manifest, at a moment's glance, that the scheme was quite impracticable.
I have not the means at may disposal to pursue the matter fully or get expert advice such as the Minister and his Department would have, but it does seem to me that if an experiment of that kind were made in connection with a limited scheme such as the Erne, if it were found to be practicable and if it prospers, then the Liffey, and other rivers, conceivably, would be susceptible to similar development. Now, it may be held that our departure would be so small individually as to make it ludicrous to compare it to the Tennessee Valley Authority, but if our purpose is to distribute industries through the country rather than to allow the natural trend of concentration in cities to prevail, I consider that even on quite small rivers the matter of drainage, hydro-electric, and general development along the lines of the Tennessee Valley Authority might prove a very valuable expedient in this country.
Now, in connection with building, I have a few brief remarks to make. There is plenty of work to be done in regard to building, and I think it is a terrible mistake for us to shy away from undertaking great enterprises in the immediate future because they appear to cost a lot. This is a time when we should mobilise credit and use it boldly and resolve, if necessary, to repay it over the next 100 years. The extension of credit should not deter us from embarking on bold schemes at the present time, always provided that they are good schemes. As a start in that direction, one good thing would be to build a new Oireachtas, and it would prove to be an economy in the long run. We are eternally patching and tinkering with these buildings in order to make them adequate to fulfil the functions of an efficient Parliament. It is common knowledge that half the Deputies cannot find accommodation in which to write a letter. Even the Ministers' rooms are inadequate and they have not proper facilities. We are trying to get our meals in a Restaurant which is built on top of the boiler-house and in which no person could sit in the months of August and September. The permanent officials are obliged to sit in cramped quarters up at the top and their teeth are made to chatter with the noise of the machinery in the basement, because we are trying to dislodge a beetle through the medium of a vacuum cleaner in the roof. I understand that the roof is now infested with beetles and that it shall have to be rebuilt. Of course, some facetious individuals will possibly say that we ought to transfer all our activities into the museum and there function under the shadow of Taoiseach de Valera's boots, but I am not one of those who believe that democratic institutions are best accommodated in the museum. I believe that they are dynamic things which should have adequate facilities in which to work. Now, that is work which could be planned at once and put in hand as soon as material is available.
There is another matter to which I shall refer. I am told that one of the great difficulties of housing the poor in Dublin is that if you want to pull down the tenement houses you must have some place in which to put the people until such time as proper substitutes can be built for them.
That is the concern of Local Government.
If you will wait a moment, Sir. I understand that in that connection the authorities concerned have no open site on which to build, de novo, a block of houses into which they can transfer the inhabitants of a block of rotten tenements while they are pulling them down so that they may be able to put the people into decent places. I say, with regard to that, why not give the building authorities Mountjoy Jail? It is a dirty, old, smelly building, and they could pull it down and, say, build their evacuation block on that site. Then they could pull down the rotten tenement blocks, transfer the people to the evacuation block; then, when a new block was erected, they could pull down another rotten block of tenements, transfer the people to the new block, and so on. In that way, you can go on gradually cleaning up the whole place. Also, by doing that we will get rid of an antiquated and smelly old jail; we will provide the key of what has appeared to be an insoluble housing problem in the City of Dublin, and we will be able to provide ourselves with an eminently desirable public work, and that is the provision on the outskirts of the city of a decent, modern jail. By that I do not mean something like a first-class hotel, but a place where criminals and tough people can be kept under proper control and, at the same time, satisfy the Legislature that substantial justice is being done. I move to report progress.
