With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 31 and 32 together.
In the eight years to 1968-69, the number of houses built annually has gone up by almost 120 per cent. The recent White Paper projected a further increase of approximately 30 per cent by about 1975, at an estimated annual cost of £75 million at 1968 prices, in addition to a further £17½ million or so a year in subsidies met from central and local taxation. The White Paper outlines the steps which the Government intend to take to encourage the number of houses built annually to rise to this level as they have risen each year, with one exception, during the past eight years, instead of slumping annually after a sudden surge, as they did during most of the 1950s. The projections in the paper are based on the need not only to eliminate bad housing already in existence but to meet future needs as they arise—without at the same time disrupting the building industry by sudden booms and slumps. I should emphasise that there are degrees of unfitness and overcrowding and that, as the White Paper indicates, a ten or 15 year programme does not imply that a person living in poor accommodation will have to wait ten to 15 years for rehousing.
With regard to Question No. 31, I I do not see the point of selecting, as a target for local authority housing, output in a particular year in the past when war-time deficiencies were being made up and the level of private building was about half of what it has been in recent years, particularly when people are now better able than they were then to buy their own houses. The increase in total output projected in the White Paper will meet the needs of many persons who would in the past have sought local authority houses.
Further, the 80,000 or so houses provided by local authorities since about the time to which the Deputy refers greatly increases their capability for dealing with applicants who would normally qualify for one of their houses.
In general, I would refer the Deputy to the statement in the White Paper that in the event that needs require a level of building about 1975 above the projections in the paper the projections will not be regarded as limiting the level of building and that in so far as the economy can afford it any higher level of building required will be aimed at.
