In relation to housing in general there is, first of all, a lack of hard information on the extent of the waiting list at present in Dublin Corporation and no doubt the same position exists in other local authority areas. There exists in the Dublin Corporation a recommended list that numbers at present something in excess of 5,000 names—families waiting for accommodation. However, before you quality for inclusion on this recommended waiting list the corporation examine your application and decide whether, in their opinion, you qualify.
Therefore, when the Minister and members of the Fianna Fáil Party take refuge in this list and say that the problem is not really as bad as Opposition people maintain they are not facing up to the true problem that exists in Dublin, and I am sure other local authorities have a similar tale to tell. A kind of desperation is felt by many throughout the country on this matter of housing. The provision of a house is probably the biggest individual effort any family will make in a normal average life-span but the problem that faces many families is that they cannot provide themselves with a house through their own savings as very often the deposits are excessive. In attempting to gather together money for a deposit on an average wage they are often fleeced in private flats as there is no control over rents paid for such flats. It is quite common to pay £6 or £7 a week in Dublin for one room. I do not know what the figures are for other large urban centres in the country. Young couples, even though they may not wish to become a burden on the local authority, under the normal marketing laws at present cannot provide themselves with a house, even by being thrifty and being all the things the savings people advise us to be.
We must cut the cost and provide houses at a reasonable level. It is the first obligation of a normal democratic State to provide accommodation for its citizens and so to legislate that its people, by exercising normal prudence and thrift in their lives, can have minimum shelter. At present this State is condemned on this score because many of our citizens cannot provide housing, cannot purchase a house and cannot wait for a house from the corporation. Therefore, for many of our people the position is desperate.
The Labour Party recently had a private Bill in which we sought to control the price of land in the environment of urban areas. We did the same in the recent general election and for our pains were described as communists and all the other colourful phrases that one hears from Ministers at election time, because as we know, there is a very marked lack of charity and accuracy in the epithets given by Ministers at election time to people in the Opposition. The Labour Party honestly sought to tackle the housing problem and understood that to do so we needed more than platitudes and we certainly needed more than the attitudes evinced by the Department of Local Government, namely, that no housing problem or crisis exists.
We believed and still believe that a crisis exists and we suggested that the State had an obligation to control the price of urban building land. The Minister maintains that this would be repugnant to the Constitution. Under the Constitution we have been able to provide for compulsory purchase, to provide for arbitration proceedings and we have been able to curb, to some extent, private rights in the domain of property. We did not suggest the takeover of all land, or anything like nationalisation, but we talked about compensation to property owners. We certainly spoke about the necessity of controlling the price of land near urban areas because we have seen in the Dublin area the soaring cost of land for housing and this, of course, is passed on to the unfortunate person who attempts to purchase a house.
