Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll suggested, as a way of reducing building costs, the roofing of houses with felt, tar and bitumen. I do not want to pose as an authority on this matter but I might point out that I have laid roofs and I have put roofs on various types of buildings. I suggest that the only roofing materials we ought to consider for our people are slates—either natural slates or asbestos slates—and tiles. Felt and tar are quite all right for factories and sheds but they involve costly maintenance year after year and in my view they are utterly unsuitable where the housing of human beings is concerned. We have some excellent slate deposits in our country but unfortunately they are not developed to the extent to which they might be developed. Take, for instance, the Killaloe slate. Though it has been exported to various countries, it is difficult to obtain the Killaloe slate here. For years, the Glasgow Corporation covered their housing schemes with nothing but Killaloe slates and, in fact, special cranes were erected at Limerick docks to lift cargoes of these slates week after week for delivery to Glasgow. The GlasgowCorporation were not as particular as our architects here. The Glasgow Corporation took the smaller slate which, in my opinion, is not a bad slate at all. If it is properly laid, it can make a very fine roofing.
What our architects here would not sanction was welcomed by the architects and engineers of the Glasgow Corporation. They took all the small slate from Killaloe—and Killaloe did not bother about taking out the big slate. Natural slate, asbestos slate or tiles are, I think, the only three proper roofing materials suitable for the housing of our people. The houses are being built in mass concrete, in block concrete, in solid walls or in cavity walls. Whatever it may be, these walls are capable of holding and deserving of carrying a decent roof, particularly having regard to the fact that families will live in these houses for years to come. I trust that whatever efforts in the way of economy are made we will not fall for the proposal of Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll or anybody with a similar suggestion, to turn our houses into cattle-sheds or factories with cheap felt and tar roofs.
There is another aspect of it which may be worth looking into—the question of professional fees. It is a delicate question to talk about because these professional people are very jealous of their interests, but I regard these professional fees in relation to housing as pretty onerous. I wonder if there would be any possibility of working out a simplification which would enable transfers from one occupier to another, from X to Y, or from Y to Z, on something more like a reasonable basis than exists at present. These fees are too onerous and I have seen many instances in which they were totally unjustifiable. I am a layman, but many of these charges are unjustifiable, in my opinion, and, having regard to the fact that we are engaged in a national housing drive, while I do not want anybody to work for nothing or below the standards of his profession, I feel that a gesture could be made in this connection by some lowering of the fees, some simplification of the legal costs of transfers, without any loss of prestige onthe part of the professions but with great gain to the country and to the tenants in particular.
Dealing with the question of the cost of houses I have spoken about the prices charged for materials by builders' suppliers. I feel also that the builders themselves could be subjected to some small examination. Anybody will be inclined to make as good a profit as he can, but I think the operation of the direct labour system has served a fairly useful purpose in acting as a check upon prices charged by building contractors. They have their job of work to do, but, if they have a free rein, without any competition, there may be a tendency to look for excessive profits. I am not making any charge but the suspicion and the suggestion are always there. The operation of the direct labour system is in itself a check on prices going too high. That system has not been operated to any considerable extent in this country, but for the past few years it has come into its own, to a certain extent but a very limited extent. The direct labour contribution was not very great, having regard to the total building in the country, but in many cases it has been very successful. I cannot say that it has been 100 per cent successful, but I know that considerable savings have been effected to local authorities in some areas by the operation of that system. That perhaps, may be some reason for the unwarranted hostility being shown by the Builders' Federation to the direct labour system. I see nothing wrong with a local authority which is appointed to run the affairs of a city or county in the best interest of the citizens trying to do the best it can, and embarking through its own engineering staffs, on a direct labour scheme of building in the knowledge that it will result in a saving financially and in at least as good, if not a better, job.
Whatever about the cost of direct labour, it did a very good job. The materials are the property of the local authority, so that they put in only the best and the finish given to houses bydirect labour has in all cases been better than that given by contractors. The houses are well built, with good materials and good finish, which means that there will be lower maintenance costs upon them. If all that can be secured at the same time as making a saving as against the building contractors' costs, I do not see any justification or reason for opposition. There may be some justification for the builders not liking it, but surely it is an encroachment on the rights of local authorities to attempt to prevent or interfere with the operation of direct labour where a local authority has the machinery and the engineers at its disposal to carry out this work. I trust that the direct labour system will continue to operate so that we may have a check on any tendency towards rapacity in the prices of building and building materials.
With regard to the Local Authorities (Works) Act, here again the Minister was in a position to provide employment and very useful employment. I regard the employment being provided under that Act as employment of a national character. It was promoted by the county councils, the elected representatives throughout the country, who put forward schemes from their own localities for the prevention of flooding and any work which tends to reduce such flooding while, at the same time, co-operating with agriculture in preventing crops being washed away, must be regarded as a national investment. I do not think that even the Central Bank could crib about the utilisation of money so spent.
In the first year of operation of the Act, I have a distinct recollection of some rivers in my own county and in adjoining counties which were relieved permanently from the flooding which had taken place for years and if we had had to wait for the Arterial Drainage Act, it would not be an unreasonable estimate to say that it would have got down there in ten or 15 years' time.
In the meantime, this flooding was taking place. I remember a deputation from Counties Tipperary and Limerick waiting on the Minister when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministerfor Finance to tell him of the plight of the people living beside the Newport river and the Bilbo river. The Newport river had burst its banks and for miles around there was nothing but flood water to be seen. There were no boreens going into the houses —they were all canals, as in Venice— and the people had to use boats to get to their houses. One can imagine the condition of those houses after that flooding. Turf banks were swept completely away, and every bit of tillage and crops they had were gone. It is very hard to estimate what the loss sustained by these people was on the occasion of that flooding in 1946, and I am aware that some of these people have not yet recovered from the losses of that kind.
At the same time, the Bilbo river decided to take a hand in the game, and it swept through its banks, flooding houses and lands in Cappamore. Other rivers such as the Morning Star river did the same, but in the first year of operation of the Act, two of these rivers were brought under control and, in the second year, the problem was cured. In two seasons, the Newport river and the Bilbo river were cured. The Morning Star river is up in the Golden Vale where the finest land in the entire country is, and this land had also suffered from flooding. There was little incentive to the people to till or to work their land, knowing what was going to happen when the river burst its banks. In one year, that was cured, and that is only one small sample of the work done on some of the rivers I know.
I know the rivérs in West Limerick equally well—the Maigue and the Deal —and these, too, have been cured. There is still some work to be done, but very good headway was made in two years, because these were submitted by the local authority for the approval of their engineers and eventually the approval of the Local Government engineers. There was no question of any overlapping or wasting of money because they were so framed as to fit in with the eventual operation of the Arterial Drainage Act, whenever that would come about.
As I say, it would be difficult to estimatethe value to the country of the work done under the Act to prevent flooding. The trenches which were constructed along the roadways provided an outfall to take away the water from lands on which work was carried out under the land rehabilitation scheme put into execution by the Department of Agriculture. Why the Act has fallen into disfavour I find it difficult to understand, but that it has fallen into disfavour is certain. It was not even referred to by the Minister in his speech and the figures are very eloquent. The advances shown in the Book of Estimates for the execution of works under this Act for the last four years were as follows:-1950-51, £1,750,000; 1951-52, £1,220,000; 1952-53, £650,000 and 1953-54, £400,000. The average number of men employed on works under the Act in 1952-53 was 1,840 as compared with 4,751 in 1951-52. But in March, 1950, there were as many as 13,850 men employed on such works. The very big decline in expenditure and in the number of men employed is indicative of the fact that the Minister and the Government are not in love with, or are not in favour of, the Local Authorities (Works) Act, that they are inclined to cut it out entirely.
The drop in the figures I have quoted occurred at a time when there was increased unemployment in the rural areas. Works provided under this Act were very useful inasmuch as they provided employment for men at a time when they were not wanted for agricultural work. The fact that they were employed during idle periods on the land and that they were kept available for farm work when it again offered was a great benefit in my opinion for the countryside.
They were having their houses built and work was provided for them in the rural areas through the medium of this free grant from the Government without any contribution from the rates. It was an incentive to people to remain on the land and, as I say, it kept them in the rural districts during idle periods on the land, so that they were available for tillage work in spring and harvest when they were required for such work. Ruralworkers cannot live on their fat in between the time that they are wanted for spring and harvest work. Some work must be provided to maintain them in employment in between seasons.
The Minister has given considerable grants from the Road Fund for the maintenance of main and county roads for which I give him all credit. In that respect I should like to pay tribute to the magnificent work done by the county authorities on the main roads of the country. They are doing a very meritorious job with the assistance of the grants they are getting from the Minister. I have nothing but commendation for the work done on the main roads but when you come to the rural areas, there is a vast gap left and figures recently supplied show that 22,000 men departed from the lands of Ireland in one 12 months. There was a drop of 22,000 in the number of workers on the land from June of last year to June of this year. That condition of affairs to my mind was contributed to very considerably by the failure to operate the Local Authorities (Works) Act to the extent to which it should be operated. Many of these men would have got employment on these useful schemes at the same rate of wages as county council workers—a condition making for their happiness and contentment and which would have prevented them drifting from the land into the cities in this country or migrating to cities across the water.
We are all the time told that we should aim at a balanced economy and that we should try to keep a reasonable number of people on the land. We should try to get a balanced community on the land, and that can be done only by providing for continuous employment in rural districts so far as it is possible to do so. I believe that the Local Authorities (Works) Act was a very useful instrument for that purpose. I am sorry it has not found favour with the Minister or the present Government, because it is perfectly evident that they are trying to slide it from their programme with results that are not going to be happy for therural community. I would ask the Minister seriously to reconsider his attitude towards this Act. The schemes of work are still there. They have been prepared by the various county councils and submitted by their engineers. They are on the files in the archives of the Custom House in Dublin, and if we want to get ready work for our people these schemes are waiting there to be utilised. There is very little engineering content in them; the work is mainly of labour content and they could be a most beneficial asset to the countryside if the schemes were restored to anything like the position which they held up to recent times.
Reference was made to the question of cottage purchase. I should like to suggest to the Minister that he should do everything possible to try and promote the purchase of cottages by tenants. Cottage purchase has been an old and a vexed question in this country for many years. In fact, the agitation for the purchase of cottages has gone on for over 50 years. Associations were formed many years ago by rural labourers for that purpose. When I was a mere schoolboy they were agitating for the right to own their own roof-trees. Eventually, after years, a Bill was introduced in 1936, under which a scheme was prepared, but there was an objection raised to that. Deputy Sweetman asked last night in this connection why so many cottages had been vested in tenants in Cavan as compared with other parts of the country. The scheme under which these cottages were purchased was based on a 75 per cent. purchased of the current rents. I can say that there was a definits hostility to that scheme throughout the greater part of the country, and I was one of those who created that hostility.
The scheme, as I say, was based on 75 per cent. of the current rents. It was the time of the economic war and we were proposing to give farmers a 50 per cent. reduction in their annuities. As cottage rents were held in the same suspense account as annuities, it seemed unfair to give the farmers a 50 per cent. reduction while tenants of cottages were expected to purchase their cottages on a schemebased on 75 per cent. of their rents. Since that time it has been made possible for county councils to sell to cottiers at a figure based on 50 per cent. of the current rents, and I think everything possible should be done to encourage and to speed up the purchase of cottages on these terms.
I have seen one suggestion that the county councils might dispose of cottages built at a certain date and hold those of another date. I think we should sell the whole lot, lock, stock and barrel. If the old cottages are going to be bought, they would have to be put into proper repair by the local authority before they are offered to the tenants. If the local authority does a competent job on the houses, I am sure most tenants would be prepared to purchase. If the tenant does not like the work which has been done he is entitled to an appeal. I think that if the county council were prepared to carry out repairs and to sell the cottages at 50 per cent of the current rents it would be a good job. It would be a good job for the councils themselves, because it would save them the cost of recurring repairs and other heavy costs. It will put the responsibility on the tenant to maintain his little home.
I believe that the majority of these tenants will not be wasters and that the experiment of establishing themselves as owners of their own homes is one that is worth trying. It gives a tenant a spirit of independence once he feels that his house is his own. I, therefore, urge on the Minister to try to get purchase schemes prepared with all possible speed by the county councils and then, when it comes to his own end in the Department, to give sanction to these schemes with the minimum of delay.
Already, I think, a fairly good spurt has taken place in this matter but it is not as swift as it might be. The sooner the cottages are transferred to the tenants the better. It would make for more harmony and stop the unseemly scramble. As the people want more houses, we will have to build more houses and the people with cottages ought to have them vested in themselves.
In conclusion, I ask the Minister to give his benediction to that and to help in every way he possibly can to put through the county councils purchase schemes under the new 50 per cent. terms and sanction them with the least possible delay. I congratulate the Minister once more on the splendid work which is being done on the main roads. A grand job is being done and the money which is being spent will be reflected in fewer traffic accidents, fewer lives being lost, and more comfort and convenience for the travelling public. The money is being very well spent by the county councils under the Minister's jurisdiction. I only regret that he has not gone as fact as I would like in regard to house building and the employment of people under the Local Authorities (Works) Act.
