asked the Minister for Local Government if he has taken a decision on the repeated requests of the Kilkenny Corporation to receive a deputation to discuss the completion of the housing scheme, the site for which has been developed for over a year.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Kilkenny Housing Scheme.
55.
The Kilkenny county manager was requested on the 30th October, 1959, to prepare for Kilkenny Corporation a housing programme which, in scope and order of priority, would accord with their statutory housing responsibilities. A decision on the borough council's request that I should receive a deputation of their members to discuss the housing position in the borough has been deferred until the manager's report has been submitted to and considered by the council.
Has the Minister considered the report of the county medical officer of health on the housing position in Kilkenny, and in view of that report, is he not prepared to sanction the completion of this housing scheme?
Kilkenny Corporation wish to build houses for newly-weds, persons desirous of getting married and other non-priority groups and at the same time, to take no positive steps to secure the rehousing of families living in condemned houses and overcrowded conditions. A survey by the county medical officer of health early in 1959 established that 128 families were living in unfit houses in the borough, including 99 families in dwellings which were incapable of being repaired. Before he would agree to the corporation's proposal to build 48 further houses in Walkin Street the Minister requested evidence that the building of the houses would result in the re-housing of an equal number of families living in unfit dwellings. It is on that very point that I am trying to get the manager and the council to agree. When that has been done, certainly they will get every co-operation.
Now that the Minister is aware so many people are living in unfit dwellings, is he not prepared to allow us to complete the housing scheme to enable us to give houses to people living in unfit dwellings?
By all means. If and when that assurance is given, my sanction will be readily forthcoming.
That assurance was given in my hearing by the former Mayor of Kilkenny. There is no doubt that these people would have first claim on any houses built. Does the Minister regard as "newly weds" people with two or three children living with their parents in corporation houses for a number of years past? They have been forced to remain there for five or six years because the Minister would not use his regulations to enable us have them rehoused.
On this point, not only for the benefit of Kilkenny Corporation but for every other housing authority, may I have it clearly understood in regard to those people in their community whom they are responsible for housing and whose conditions put them into a particular class, that until housing authorities are prepared to build for those classes, no consideration can be given to the building of houses for classes outside that group?
The housing authority always built for those classes. Is the Minister hoping that with emigration as it is, the need will disappear?
When I get the assurance I am looking for, sanction will be given.
The Minister got that assurance long ago.