Yes, they have just come up. The bye-laws set out that you must be four years resident before you can be considered for housing. But the names of those fellows who had just come up are there and they were mentioned as part of the 9,000, and even as families of over four. When you put that sort of thing over here, can you blame me if I am cynical and if I try to spill the beans to the public? The truth is that there are only about 4,500 on the list who are considered by the local authority as requiring houses. The rest is a fictitious number. If the City Manager were a politician, he would not have given that number but being an honest man, he gave every application for a dwelling. He even gave the names of people who had three rooms. It does not matter what you are if you apply; if you own a mansion, it does not matter if you apply. They will be included in an answer to a query on how many people there are on the waiting list.
The truth is there are little more than 1,000 people of four and five. That is all there are on the housing list. Just imagine a statement that there are 9,000, with four. The truth is there are only a little over 1,000. Of those 4,500, there are 1,100 families of one and two. How does that compare with the statements made here— reckless statements, all made so that the people outside will think this is a terrible Government? I think there is no truth in it. I will make the case that it was a mistake for the Opposition to make any reference to housing at all. It would have been better for themselves if they never opened their mouths about houses because they were speaking in total ignorance—even the former Minister for Local Government. He had a good knowledge of housing then, but he knows nothing about houses now. He might dig up an answer by reference to books and getting data. But that is no use. You cannot get the feeling of the thing from books; you can only get the feeling of the thing from living with it.
I have the official number—it is 4,401. It might vary. Amongst that number there are actually 1,100 families of one or two persons. There are only a little more than 1,000 families of four or five persons. That puts an entirely different complexion on the position. Of those 4,500, there are 750 families returned from England. Do not forget that in the past two years we housed approximately 750 families from England. More than 1,500 families came back—and we had to house them. The 750 we housed naturally had to get priority on the list because of the size of their families. We could not leave a wife and a gang of children out on the street. If you take those from the 4,500, it leaves only 3,000. That would be the true housing position, if it were not for the fact that people came back from Britain, not through any fault of anyone here. We did not expect these people to come back, and we could not plan for something we did not know about. You might say that the local authorities along the seaboard in France should be blackballed by the French Opposition because they had not houses ready for the Algerian refugees. How could the local authorities know that de Gaulle would throw up the sponge and pull out of Algeria? How could they know that these refugees would descend on their areas? If suddenly a million people come back, would it be fair to say: "You never built houses; look at the housing list."
That is not the truth. Up to 1960, they were running away. The housing problem was practically solved in 1960. I can prove it. Then suddenly the British brought in a measure—the Rent Restrictions Act. At one time in England if one were being overcharged, one could go to a local court and get the rent reduced to 30/-. In 1960, the Rent Restrictions Act was amended and landlords were given power to charge what they liked. That has a lot to do with people deciding to come here and preventing those at home from going away. They started to charge £3 and £4 per room and that is what is being charged at the moment.
Apart from that, in and around 1960, there was a lack of overtime. The unions decided against overtime. All those were earning up to £20 a week—double time for overtime, treble time for Sunday and they were making £20 a week and so everything was rosy in England. Rent was 30/- and income £20 a week. The fact that all this ended up around 1960 was something we did not know. How could the Housing Committee know? Gradually the housing vacancies began to reverse. Since we found there was a changing approach, we started to plan again. But again we hear this cry: "You only built this number this year." It takes two years from the planning stage to produce a house. It takes three or four years from the planning stage to produce a flat and there is a wait of two or three years.
The Opposition made a political issue out of this and I am going to see that it boomerangs on them, although I have no desire to do it. I might be supporting the Government, because there is need for the Government, and I make no apology for it, but I have no intention of taking sides in a general way on politics. I have been a member of the Dublin Corporation Housing Committee since 1955 and as vice-chairman I was attacked, although the main attack was on the Minister for Local Government who had nothing to do with it at all. The Minister for Local Government at no time refused a penny to Dublin Corporation nor did he at any time hold up sanction except for the usual short periods. Whatever guilt may attach to me, he is the innocent party. This business of trying to make political capital out of this situation has no foundation at all. Evidence would want to be produced to show that we asked for money and that the Minister refused to give it, or delayed giving it.
We asked him only for what we wanted. The City Manager and his officials are the executive authority and they administer the estate. The committees, such as the Housing Committee, are the policy makers. It is the Housing Committee which decides: "We will build flats, or we will build houses; we will build so many flats or so many houses, or we will not build them." If any brickbats are to be thrown, they cannot be thrown at the Minister for Local Government. We decided in 1959 that we would not build any more houses on the perimeter—and that is the only place we had land—that there was no demand for houses, that the people would not go out to them and that instead, they were coming in. It would have been unfair to the ratepayers. The houses were being wrecked by children playing cowboys and Indians in them and lighting fires. Under those circumstances, what sane person would decide to go on with the housing programme on the perimeter of the city?
Deputy Dillon was guilty of one big evasion. He said that 270 houses were built in 1959 but he did not refer to the 1,600 vacant houses, which meant that there were really 2,000 dwellings which nobody was taking. It would condemn the whole Opposition if that evasion were dragged out in court. The fact that there were 1,600 houses vacant actually put the corporation in a position which was almost as good as they had been in in 1950 when there were 20,000 people in urgent need of dwellings. I can give you the details from all the official corporation minutes which I have here. There were 800 applications for transfers back into the city from Ballyfermot and Finglas in 1959 and 1960. There were 1,500 refusals to go out. There were 1,500 houses lying idle for months where one after the other people said: "No; we want a nice flat in the city, around the corner from where we live at present." That is the truth and the figures are there. As I said, children were breaking windows and the ratepayers were being billed for windows, frames and doors which had been smashed and the ratepayers were in a panic. Yet Deputy Dillon comes in and says that only 270 houses were built in 1959. Although in 1959-60 there were 3,000 on the waiting list for houses, half of that number had been offered houses and would not take them. Deputy Dillon read out only one side of the picture without referring to the other.
In 1951, there were 2,588 houses built and the vacancy rate was only 194, which was nothing. Now we come to 1960-61 when 279 dwellings were handed over. There were 1,260 vacant dwellings, making an actual housing contribution for those on the waiting list of 1,539. That was as recently as two years ago. In 1959-60, there were only 505 dwellings handed over but there were 1,605 empty dwellings. We actually had 2,110 dwellings to hand over to those who wanted dwellings. How can the Opposition make a case there?
Members here are ignorant of the position in Dublin and likewise the people outside are ignorant but the members here are in a position to elicit the necessary information. How can the people outside judge a statement, which may be bandied around at the next bye-election, that no houses were being built, that only 500 were provided, when actually the truth is that there were 2,110 available in 1959-60 as against a total in 1951-52 of 2,239, almost as many dwellings provided when there were 20,000 on the waiting list, and they were bad cases.
Do I require to proceed any further? I will. As they say in court, when one side introduces a certain line of argument the other side is entitled to rebut it and I will certainly do that. Considerable play was made with the fact that in the first two years of the regime of this Government housing dropped; that in 1958-59 the present Government built only 460 dwellings. But it had nothing to do with the Government. Do not forget that if there were only 460 houses built, there were 1,393 vacancies. If only 460 houses were built in 1958-59, who was responsible? Who planned two years in advance? If only that number was built in that year, that was because in 1956 there had been no commonsense planning.
When a decision is made to build houses, there is, first of all, what is called a rough sketch plan, and to that the committee agrees in principle. That plan goes back and, after a month or two, we get a working plan with all the details. We examine that. We may alter it. If we alter it, it has to go back again for perhaps a fortnight, after which it is sent to us once more. If we agree to the working plan, it must then go to Local Government. They, of course, have hundreds of applications, and there are such things as priorities. It may take a fortnight, or a month, or two, before it comes back from Local Government.
Then we have to prepare bills of quantities—100 houses to be built, so many rooms, walls of such and such a thickness, so much wood, so much glass, etc. These are advertised and the contractors tender. Time is passing. When we eventually decide which is the best offer, we must once more send it to Local Government because they must approve the expenditure. It comes back and we must bond the contractor; we must make sure that he has money and that he is not like some of the fellows in 1956 who went bankrupt and left houses half finished. All that takes a year. By the time the builder gets on the site, 14 months may have elapsed. That cannot be avoided. The important point is that it takes about two years from the time the actual decision is taken to the time the house is handed over.
If there were only 460 houses built in 1958-59, it must be remembered that Fianna Fáil came into power only in March or April of 1957. No one could expect them to get cracking immediately. They are responsible only for the last three or four months of 1957. The song and dance here is about the few houses built. There were few because there was no planning in 1956 and, because of that, there was a big drop. There was a big drop in the previous years, too. I have evidence here that, between 1956 and 1957, 1,100 workers were sacked; about 1,000 houses were not built and all these workers went to England. Later, when we tried to get going again, there were no workers available.
I have here the minutes of the Municipal Council of the city of Dublin, 1957. Now if I were to give the names of the Fianna Fáil people on the Council, there would be cries of "Ah!" I will give the Coalition names. No one can call them liars. Councillor Denis Larkin, T. D., Chairman of the Housing Committee, and a supporter of the Coalition Government: a good man on housing, he asked how many dwellings as distinct from cottages, flats and reconditioned houses were under construction in July in each of the years 1948 to 1957 inclusive. I shall deal with the last two years because they are the vital years.