There is a house in North Great George's Street which at present is in fairly good condition but which in a very short period, the next year or so, will not be in such good condition, unless repairs are carried out to the roof. The landlord of that property has no intention of repairing the roof. In fact, his clear and manifest intention is to allow this roof to fall in so that, in due time, the house will be condemned by the corporation and the existing tenants will leave the house and be given accommodation by the corporation and he in turn will let the house, having then made the repairs, to tenants who will pay him what he will consider the market price at that time. In other words, there is a racket going on in Dublin in house property.
I know that the Minister at different times has said that he intends to curb the rapacity of some of these Rachmans in property in Dublin but so far he has done nothing. The only penalty a landlord involved in such doubtful activities can incur is to be brought every few months to court, called there by the corporation, and pay a derisory fine of about £5. The landlord's whole object is to get rid of the tenants who live there at present and who over the years have built up certain rights on the house.
The tenants in the house in North Great George's Street have no desire to leave that house but under the law, they have no way of ensuring that the landlord will carry out his duties to maintain the property. In fact, last year, the tenants got a man in to preserve to some extent the roof of the house.
This goes on while we all agree that there is a scarcity of housing accommodation in Dublin. There are certain people in Dublin who, for material gain, are involved in a vandalism which the law cannot stop. If a vandal, an ordinary hooligan, wrecks public property, we penalise him by putting him behind bars but men involved in property speculation in Dublin can with impunity wreck whole blocks because it will mean a higher return to them when they get the existing tenants out. This is a ridiculous situation.
The question can be asked: how much more sound property is there in Dublin in which there exist long-established tenants whom the landlords wish to get out of the houses and, having got rid of them, turn them over to public maintenance in new corporation schemes? If we are serious about the housing situation in Dublin, then we must and should turn the searchlight of public scrutiny on these very doubtful and twilight practices going on in the city. It is completely wrong that the necessity of people to have shelter should be regarded as on the same level as any other business activity. It is far different. Human beings are involved and therefore social justice and the norms of what we consider to be fair public policy should control and curb these activities to some extent.
There are many more houses around the city in the same state, houses which could be saved, the fabric of which is quite sound, but the landlords of these houses wish to clear long-established tenants and instead get tenants with no traditional history who are not protected by law and to whom, therefore, they are enabled to charge very high rents. I draw attention to the extent of the high rent question existing in Dublin at the present time. There are people who consider it legitimate to look for £5 and £6 a week for single rooms in Dublin from people who may be earning only £12 to £13 a week. It it not at all unusual to find certain people in Dublin who are ineligible for corporation housing, young married couples, for example, who must spend nearly 50 per cent of their weekly income on the provision of shelter over their heads. How can you expect these people to get sufficient money together to rear a family or to be able to save, to practise this virtue of thrift we are always saying is necessary in our citizens, when these unfortunate people are forced to pay an inordinate amount of their weekly income on the provision of shelter? There is no possibility of such couples ever getting together the amount of cash that would be necessary as a deposit on a house. Therefore we can understand the desperation of many families in Dublin who see no prospect of getting any decent accommodation in the years ahead.
One thing we should see to in regard to corporation houses is that the period between one tenant leaving and the next coming into that house is shortened as much as possible. I do accept that this is a very complicated job and that, even for paper work, there has to be some delay. However, it is very difficult to explain the situation to people who are looking for accommodation, perhaps, in a particular area. They will say that such-andsuch an address has been vacant for so many weeks, and it is hard to explain that, in accordance with the waiting list, such accommodation is already booked for families of a certain size. The authorities should see to it that the accommodation that is vacant is filled as rapidly as possible by the people for whom it is reserved properly in the first place.
We should, especially in the city of Dublin, consider once more what we consider to be adequate housing standards in the year 1968. It is true that the corporation have announced their intention of clearing out Corporation Place and giving the people better accommodation in this area. They should also look at Benburb Street which was built in the late Victorian period and does not now in the least fulfil the standard of accommodation we should have in 1968. The front doors of these houses in Benburb Street are open all night to any person passing along the street. There is no way one can shut the main doors of this accommodation which is in a dimly-lit street. It is extremely difficult to see how hygiene and other things can be preserved in such antiquated accommodation. All of us who are acquainted with the problems of housing in Dublin are aware of the ravages being made on the health of children due to their poor living conditions. Every week we send medical notices to the corporation from one doctor or another who is dealing with the family in question stating that such-and-such a child is suffering from asthma as the result of the conditions in which he is living.
Those of us who have contact with this problem are aware of the number of nervous diseases being caused in Dublin. One has only to talk to the people who are acting in a professional capacity in St. Brendan's or St. Loman's to be told that the housing situation is one of the main causes of these diseases. There are many families whose health is being wrecked due to their appalling living accommodation.
One cannot produce a statistic to show how exactly the health of children is affected, but there is no doubt that there is a serious effect on a child who has no room to play at home. You meet cases of mothers who never allow their children out of their prams, although they are of an age that should be out running around; if the people in the flat underneath object to the child running around the room, that child must be kept in its pram until it is three or four years of age, and those are not unusual cases.
There are some people who talk about the danger to family life in Dublin. I would say the biggest danger to family life here is the present scandalous housing situation, and singly this is at the bottom of most family troubles. Nobody has calculated the ill effects or how far it goes into the next generation. We all have only one childhood, and if our childhood is one given over to cramped accommodation in which we cannot run around, in which our health suffers, this must have a very grave effect upon our intellectual development. If we believe that all the children of the nation should be cherished equally in matters of education, I do not see how we can achieve that if the housing situation is not improved dramatically.
We must also look into this question of suiting people's human desires in regard to where they want to live. At present the practice is that when a person who is on the waiting list is offered accommodation when his turn comes, very often it is a place he will not accept. We must, as far as possible, see that we suit people's family requirements. A chap may live at one end of the city and be offered accommodation at the other end. There are other people who may be on shift work or who may be on permanent call in their job and who would find it extremely difficult to meet the demands of their job and home life if sent out to live in a place like Ballymun.
Apart from the extra expense involved in removing people from the city centre, we should consider whether we want the city centre to become a morgue, completely devoid of people, of inhabitants, which has happened in some of the cities of Europe and which they now regret. We must see to it that the older parishes in Dublin are preserved by developing housing there. There are on either side of the river, in the centre of the city, wide tracts being given over to car parks. The fact is that we should be developing flat building schemes in that area. There are people in the area, dissatisfied with their present accommodation, who would be very happy indeed to remain in their familiar surroundings, the neighbourhoods in which they were born and reared, if there were decent accommodation available in the area for them. We cannot forever continue the flight, north, west and south into virgin land for building purposes. We must utilise the vacant areas in the centre of the city.
It is far cheaper to live in the centre of the city than it is to live in the hinterland. That is demonstrably clear when one compares the prices in Moore Street, for example, with the prices in the new supermarkets and retail shops in the suburbs. It is a year now since Canon Doyle died. He did his utmost to prevent the depopulation of Arran Quay parish. There were areas in that parish which could have been used for building development. Instead of that there is throughout the whole area the development of car firms and car parks. Property is allowed to deteriorate and no attempt is made to arrest the flight of the population from the centre of the city to the outskirts.
There are more flights than the flight from the West and the flight from the land. There is also the little publicised flight from the centre of the city. This flight has certain detrimental effects on community living. It is no light thing to wreck a community. Whole communities in Dublin are being sent north and south and west. This trend must undoubtedly have very serious social consequences. It will affect the children. They will be reared in the kind of anonymous relationship that grows up in this kind of environment. The trend has been noted in other countries. We will be no exception. The social consequences on the children coming from such areas are disastrous.
One of the most dangerous symptoms is the automatic acceptance of the idea that the centre of the city is dead. There has been no attempt to keep people in their own neighbourhoods. The depopulation of Arran Quay is puzzling, to say the least of it. This is an area well supplied with schools, churches and shops, with an open playing area in the adiacent Phoenix Park. Why it should have been permitted to die is something that passes my comprehension. To me it would appear to be a planner's dream for imaginative development. Instead of that the area has been allowed to develop into a desolate wasteland. There would be a better understanding and appreciation of planning policy if such areas were utilised for the housing of our people. That kind of planning would engender the confidence of our people in our planners. Nobody at the moment looks on planning with any great enthusiasm because planning seems to consist in the main of these huge, soulless monstrosities in Ballymun, a shadowing forth of Orwell's "1984". Digging out people's roots is a very dangerous recreation.
Everyone accepts that there are places unfit for human habitation. There are many hundreds living in accommodation which has been condemned as unfit. These people cannot get alternative accommodation from Dublin Corporation. The only way in which one can get on the present preference list is by having two children as rapidly as possible and, if one can do it, three children as rapidly as possible enables one to qualify that much quicker. That is the policy of the corporation. It is regrettable that our housing situation should be so bad that our City Fathers advise young married people to beget X number of children as rapidly as possible in order that they can be put on the list. The begetting of children should not be motivated by the hope of getting accommodation. Begetting children is a private matter between husband and wife. It should not be something governing one's place on a housing list. But that is the present tragic situation here in Dublin. Unless the accommodation is excrutiatingly bad a family with one child must wait indefinitely.
There should be a complete inventory made of accommodation needs and the kind of accommodation in which people are forced to live at the moment. Many people are unaware of the conditions under which their fellow citizens are living. Social justice is becoming more and more popular and everybody is helping one weak section or another. The housing position might improve if these fellow citizens appreciated the extent and gravity of the present housing problem. The first step is a proper realisation of the extent of the problem. The next step is the tackling of it. There must be a solution to the problem of newly-weds. They must not be compelled to live with in-laws in already overcrowded accommodation. There must be some halfway stage to solve the problem of newly-weds. Even one room in which they could be on their own would be an improvement. That is a problem that must be tackled separately.
There is then the problem of old people. One questions the wisdom of putting old people in chalets isolated from neighbours. All modern studies seem to suggest that old people retain their mental health if they are kept in the normal community structure. It is bad policy to segregate the aged. In some instances our treatment of the aged is somewhat reminiscent of the treatment meted out to lepers in less enlightened days.
It is time we brought old people into schemes with young people, that we considered the problems of our old people, that we considered how they may be kept in touch with people in their locality, how they may be kept sufficiently warm and how they may have sufficient to eat. Many of our old people have not sufficient food in the conditions in which they have to live. If old people are isolated from general schemes, put into caravans in places here and there and cut adrift from their neighbours, there is a grave probability that they may fall into ill health. We often hear people saving that old Miss So-and-So has not been seen lately. We should ensure that the discovery of hardship among old people should not be left to chance and an effort should be made in big housing schemes to ensure that no old person should die in an urban community without care.
It is scandalous that young people who are newly married and who cannot get a house under the regulations of Dublin Corporation should be levied to the extent of £5, £6 or £7 a week for a single room. There is no penalty under the law for this and yet we can say that it is absolutely wrong in a Christian society that anyone should make money in such a manner.
I would like the Minister to deal with a rather disturbing matter which has arisen of late, that is the manner in which the Minister has countermanded the decisions of local authorities with regard to planning permission. I am thinking especially of the Mount Pleasant affair in Dublin. After many years of refusal by the local authority to develop that site, the Minister has reversed the local authority's decision and has granted a person the right to develop a petrol pump station at this place. It is correct to say that nothing has happened over the years which would justify such an action by the Minister. The traffic flow at that point does not suggest that the erection of a petrol pump would help the free flow of traffic. It is a pleasant and open green with a certain appeal and too many such places in Dublin are now being blotted out.
This decision of the Minister must produce a certain lack of confidence in the planning powers of local authorities if, when they make a decision, the Minister can grant an appeal, in this case the appeal of a man wishing to develop a petrol pump. That is a serious situation and must lead to a lack of confidence in the local authorities. If the Minister makes such a change on appeal, it is important that he should publish his reasons for making such a change. The local authorities must state the reasons why they will not permit a certain development and the least the Minister could do is to state his reasons for permitting the development of a petrol station. If justice is not seen to be done on all such occasions, it will be further proof to the rumour-mongers when they suggest that all is not well in these areas.
This is an extremely delicate area. There is money to be made. A site that may not have been worth much yesterday may be worth £60,000 tomorrow because of its permitted development or because of its proximity to another development. If the granting of permission to develop means a difference of £50,000 in the value of a site, the least we can expect is that the Minister should give an explanation for his change of decision. I understand that a similar case has arisen in Galway where the Minister gave permission to a man to build a bungalow. The local authority had turned down the application to build because the proposal interfered with the view towards the seashore. Yet the Minister, on an appeal by a German citizen, accepted the appeal and the man can now build his bungalow. The local authority does not know whether it is to be a singlestorey, two-storied or three-storied building.
The Minister holds a very important post at this time in this matter of permitting developments and he must see that profits are not made in this connection because somebody possesses a site which is in close proximity to some other site. I hope the Minister will answer some of these points when he comes to reply.