I should like to make some observation on those things which were not mentioned in the Parliamentary Secretary's opening speech. The particular tasks facing him raise issues which are very much in the forefront of the public mind at the moment. The present occasion should not be used as one on which simply to talk about what I describe as the small print of how much is being spent on a particular memorial park, a pighouse, or a Garda barracks. I would have wished it to be an occasion for discussing more general issues, such as conservation in its broadest implications. This would seem to me to be appropriate. An issue like conservation crosses the boundaries of a great many disciplines and the boundaries also of a great many Government Departments. It is obviously difficult to put it into a particular pigeonhole, but I would have wished for a more general discussion on conservation and such a discussion might well have fitted very appropriately into this Vote.
We might also have had a general discussion on a matter I raised some time ago in regard to the Office of Public Works in relation to improving design—the design of furniture, the design of building, the whole texture of the physical objects in our lives. Design is rather poor. We have a great need here aesthetically and also in competition since, if we go into Europe, comparisons will be made with other countries against which we are competing. There is a role to be played. There is also the question as to whether sufficient public money is being spent.
To elaborate, whether we are describing society nowadays as a simple capitalist society, a mixed economy, or whatever you like to call it, the role of the State as an employer, as a consumer of gross national product, as a procurer of goods and services, is becoming more and more involved. Because of that, greater responsibility devolves every year on offices, such as the office we are now discussing, and on the various organs of State to purchase, build, procure and service. The role in physical terms expressed as a percentage of gross national product has grown bigger and bigger and it follows from that that the role in innovation, design, quality, techniques, be it in relation to the building of a house, the construction of a table, or the running of a restaurant, must simultaneously grow greater and greater.
If we are to accept the management techniques traditionally associated with the public service, it ends up that we have ugly and antiquated buildings containing ugly and antiquated furniture and with a service offered to the public at large which is perhaps well exemplified, to the extent that it is a symbol, by the restaurant of Dáil Éireann. I know that that restaurant is run by a committee of this House but it is symbolic.
Therefore, we face the question that, since the participation of the State sector is greater and greater, we have to design mechanisms by which beauty, innovation, originality, general increase in the quality of life in regard to buildings, furniture, and such like, can systematically be brought into the experience and the lives of the population day by day. If we give sufficient attention to the aesthetics of the houses, furniture, and so on—this relates to Garda barracks, schools, national parks, harbours, golf courses, furniture—it is all profoundly relevant to what we are discussing under this Vote. Yet it is I think striking, if one makes national comparisons—and it is obligatory to do so when we are facing, apparently with equanimity, a time when we will be making national comparisons with the nine other countries of the expanded ten EEC—in the roughest, simplest, economic terms. It is, therefore, necessary to make comparisons in regard to the quality of life and in regard to the things we have to offer.
I am bound to say that it was shocking to me that none of this aspect of relatively vast and growing expenditure of public money, none of this aspect of using that expenditure in regard to texture, beauty, quality, design, architecture, fabrics, furniture, and so on, was brought out. We now have ugly Garda barracks, ugly schools, indeed, an ugly Dáil—a beautiful Georgian building desecrated with ugly furniture, ugly carpets, ugly restaurant, ugly chairs; a lack of taste, a lack of style, a lack of feeling for the quality of life and the beauty of things which would make us competitive with people such as the Italians or the Danes where these things are in-built and greatly fostered through the educational system. We have to face competition with these nations. Surely, in the expenditure of moneys on public works and public buildings, we might start developing public and national policy in relation to the quality of life, the texture of things, the beauty of objects?
I have said already on another occasion and I do not intend to repeat it at length now that we have in this country a great culture but mostly a verbal culture. We were so smashed up and degraded that words were what we could take with us inside our heads. We could take the beauty of words and of sounds with us in our poverty, in our being scattered and degraded. We could not take the beauty of furniture or of houses with us—except for the Georgians, the landlords and the rich—because we had not the wherewithal to build houses. We do not have beautiful houses, beautiful furniture, beautiful textiles, beautiful objects, and so on. There are exceptions, but, in general, we do not have these things. In general, this is the aspect of our culture which is weak. It is therefore the aspect where the expenditure of public money should direct itself—not just to providing suitable facilities for work for students of agriculture or for gardaí or for fishermen: it should concern itself also with the extension of the cultural standards of all of these people.
The standards of our public buildings in Ireland are deplorable except for the old ones which we neglect and desecrate. The standards of the new buildings are deplorable in design, in furnishing and even in maintenance. It is difficult to find a public building in Ireland which reaches the ordinary standards of hygiene obligatory in private homes. It is true of this Dáil as well as of other public buildings. It is a very shocking thing. I would have wished to hear a discussion not just on conservation but on the power inherent in the expenditure of so much public money to improve the aesthetics, beauty, quality, sense of the texture of life, for the whole of our people through this large expenditure.
We might appropriately have had a discussion also on pollution partly because it is relevant. This year, pollution is a go-getter. It is big in America. You can make money now by investing in firms which will spend their energies clearing up the environment we are so lightheartedly desecrating. It is better that people should concern themselves with pollution because it is fashionable and profitable than that they should fail to concern themselves with it all. Even in a little country of less than 3,000,000 people, a country with a low population, we are desecrating the extraordinarily beautiful bay around which this city is located. We are desecrating water works as well as desecrating beautiful buildings. We might appropriately have had some discussion on the whole question of pollution under this Vote. We will have occasion later on to develop our ideas, suggestions and even our suggested legislation on this matter. I do not propose to do so now.
I want, now, to turn from these introductory observations to the more precise matters in hand. When he is replying, I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to use this occasion to indicate to us some of his thinking and of the Government's thinking on matters of conservation and pollution and, above all—I keep coming back: it may be my genetics or my rearing —on the question of the beauty of the physical objects in our environment. We have to go back in Ireland practically to the bronze age to get beautiful physical objects. If we are to have a place in a modern Europe, we must hark back to those roots. We have to have objects—architecture, furnishing textiles and so on—which go back in a valid way to the roots we possess, not in the trivial, debased way, the rot of corny pseudo Celtic designs which now surround us but which go back to the idioms, shapes, which yet can express the modern world in terms that are simultaneously contemporary and functional and, at the same time, have their roots in our individuality, nationality and culture. I suggest that the expenditure of large amounts of public funds on public works and buildings should be guided all the time by this consideration which is profoundly culturally important but also economically important. We make this ridiculous distinction between our culture as meaning language, which is very important, and other things. We believe we should devote great attention to the preservation of our language but culture is vastly more than language.
Culture is the sort of chair you sit on, or the way you thatch your house, or the way you built your house, or the sort of knife and fork you use, or the way you lay your table, or the way you cook your dinner. It is all those things so that to separate your language from your general culture is to destroy your culture and, therefore, to destroy your language as well. To fail to realise that we need public expenditure not just to revive a language but to revive the making of objects in a specific cultural tradition is a serious failure in terms of any real national renaissance. I have said this before and, no doubt, I will have occasion to say it again. I am sorry if it has been emotionally expressed but it is something I believe very profoundly.
I should like to turn now to the text of the Parliamentary Secretary's speech I want to turn to the matter of the building of new schools in the light of the specific experience of my own constituency and, if I might be more precise still, in the light of the specific experience of the area of Greenhills, Ballymun, Manor Estate, that area of the North County Dublin constituency.
No one, of course, can do other than welcome the allocation of moneys for new schools, but the specific experience of my own constituency—and I am sure this is so in other constituencies as well; I do not believe it is unique in North County Dublin—is that there is a lack of correlation in planning between the building of the different physical facilities that go to make up a community. We might, without being exhaustive or without having considered the matter in great detail, quite simply enumerate what some of these physical facilities are.
Of course, we need houses. This is obvious and of primary importance. We need schools. We need churches. We need playgrounds. We need shops.
We need places of recreation. Then we might add to those other things that are essential for a total community but which are less obvious. Those are the main things. In the area I mentioned just now, it was perfectly easy to pre-diot the rate of building from the known planning permissions in regard to houses. One knows that with a certain labour force, with a certain investment of money, with a certain acreage, how fast the houses are going up.
It is perfectly easy to predict at what rate these houses will be occupied because the need for houses is known. Then you can say: "Around community centre X, by day Y, in year Z, there will be so many people with so many children needing all the facilities that are easy to enumerate." Yet it has happened in Ballymun and in the area of Greenhills and Manor Estate, and no doubt it has happened all over the country, that certain of the essential physical requisites of a community were built and that others were not built, specifically schools and Garda barracks in relation to the two areas I mentioned.
What sort of ridiculous lack of liaison is there between the different branches of our public service that we are incapable of the simultaneous planning of Garda barracks, and schools, and houses, and the other things that somebody like myself, not expert and without elaborate preparation for what I am now saying, can enumerate? If I can enumerate them, why cannot the different servants of the different Departments in the civil service get together and say: "We will have the playgrounds, and the barracks, and the schools ready at the same time as the houses are ready and the people come into them?" Why this ridiculous lack of liaison which makes for individual tragedies like children being killed playing in places that are not suitable for children to play in on the one hand and for the more general inadequacies like the lack of Garda assistance, or the lack of schools, or the long journeys people have to make to get their children into decent schools.
Who objects to planning? What Member of this House will resist the sort of crossing of the boundaries between Departments to integrate the planning so that all of these services can be provided simultaneously? The money will be voted and is there. The things are being done. Everybody welcomes their being done. Everybody agrees it is necessary to do them and yet they are out of phase, to use a scientific phrase. Because they are out of phase you get either bad policing, or bad schools, or bad playgrounds, or bad health facilities, or something equally obvious, because the planning is confined within the limits of particular disciplines under what one might call the bailiwicks of different Ministers.
I say this from direct personal experience in my short period in this House as a public representative, just less than 12 months, in one constituency. Why in Ballymun, and why in Greenhills and Manor Estate, why even in other places in my own constituency could not the schools, and the barracks, and the houses, and the shopping centres, and the playgrounds, have been provided in phase at the same time?
When we challenge Ministers as we did yesterday at Question Time in regard to Ballymun or in regard to lifts or playgrounds, we get nice reasonable pleasant people smiling at us and saying: "Do not be cross. We are doing our best." To the extent that they are civil in replying, which is a welcome change, we accept that they are doing their best, but it is an extraordinary piece of public foolishness, an extraordinary comment on the lack of co-ordination and, basically, it is an extraordinary insult to the very able planners we possess that we do not do these things in phase. We do not get the barracks, we do not get the schools, we do not get the playgrounds, at a time when an increase in population of a totally predictable nature occurs in an area where everybody who has an eye to see will know that that increase will occur.
So there is a major defect in our trusting of our planners. We are reducing able and highly qualified people to the extent of doing things of which they are ashamed. The planners who function in this country are dedicated and able people and they are ashamed of an end result like Ballymun where we will have a barracks sometime, yes, bless us, great, and the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary nods and says to us: "Do not be cross. We are doing our best." That is fine but the best is a little late and a little obviously late.
Those Ministers have public servants who could have told them years ago that it would have been late, and who had nice sophisticated predictions about what the population would be in Ballymun in 1971 and 1972, and what the need would be for Garda, and schools, and square footage for supermarket space or, indeed, for public houses where people could have a jar in peace and meet each other. This was all perfectly predictable and yet there was a failure to liberate the people who could make these predictions and who are, indeed, paid out of the public purse and who are employees of the State, and a failure to synchronise their efforts, a failure to allow them to do a job of which they could be proud.
When I hear about schools or Garda barracks, I realise, of course, that the building of a school or a barracks in a necessary place is admirable and laudable, but it has to be taken in the context of its timing and the timing is often ridiculous and often wasteful of national resources. It seems to me that this could be solved very simply by having better liaison. This is not a demand that calls for more expenditure of public money, but for less. When you do a thing at the right time almost invariably it is cheaper than when it is done at the wrong time, or when it is done in a rush as a result of protestations made to get it done. When it is done in a hurry you get a bad job and a dear job. When it is done in time you get a better job at a better price.
I know the observations I am making cross the boundaries of the particular area of responsibility of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and other areas of responsibility but life does not accept the categories it is divided into on the basis of ministerial responsibility. We must set up inter-departmental committees which can cross these boundaries and achieve the synchronisation of all the necessary physical structures that society calls for and which the public are paying for.
Since 1955 I have worked at the Veterinary College in Ballsbridge. This building is of a rather complicated nature. It is staffed by two universities but it is the property of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and the furnishings and maintenance are provided by the Office of Public Works. It is often very inefficient because there are demarcation disputes about what people may do. This same situation exists in Garda barracks and possibly in schools. I am not clear about this.
The point I want to make is that with regard to certain simple maintenance tasks like changing an electric light bulb or putting a three pin plug on an electric heater, which can be done by any half-educated person, frustrating delays occur. I appreciate that the employees of the Office of Public Works will say: "You must get us in to do this". This involves a considerable delay in getting the job done and is also to my mind a waste of money. Provided people's jobs are protected I think we should endeavour to get a localisation of maintenance jobs so that necessary maintenance can be carried out immediately by people on the spot. It was my experience that trying to carry on scientific research work in a building which was the responsibility of the Office of Public Works became ridiculous. My own solution to this problem was not to call anyone in but simply to do the job myself. This was, of course, not proper but at least the job was done. I then found myself attempting bigger and bigger jobs because it was quicker to do them than to call in the Office of Public Works because once they set the machinery in motion it would grind exceeding fine but it would grind exceeding slow. On occasion I have had furniture delivered from the furniture section of the Office of Public Works so long after I ordered it that I had forgotten what I asked for in the first place.
The Veterinary College is a very ugly building and as a place where one is trying to teach veterinary students proper standards of hygiene and cleanliness it is a dirty building. It is not the sort of building one can be proud of in relation to veterinary education. The same observations can be made about agricultural colleges around the country. One can only teach people in an environment where there is style, beauty, a sense of order and cleanliness and this does not obtain in any of the buildings which are the responsibility of the Office of Public Works.
It seems to me that some sort of devolution of maintenance responsibility would save both money and people's fury about the frustrating delays which occur. Generally, the colours are dire; the buildings look like battleships painted stout bottle green or gravy brown, but these could be improved and so also the general standard, style and tone of the buildings could be improved.
I do not want to refer to all the new works, alterations and additions contemplated in the 1970-71 Estimate but I shall refer to the buildings with which I am most familiar. I shall take them as examples of the quality and style of comparable buildings throughout the country. I am familiar with the buildings at the Abbotstown Farm. If my tot is correct the estimated total cost of a number of things such as experimental animal accommodation, a post mortem unit, a new lab block, adaptation and a piggery is £385,000, which is a considerable sum of money.
I have raised the next matter which I am going to raise here on the Committee of Public Accounts. I want to raise it here because we are following the British and we are getting to the stage of having what can only be called a monumental style of animal building and research buildings. One thing we can be sure of is that the things that buildings will have to provide in 20 years' time will be vastly different from what they are providing now. The one thing a farmer has to say to himself when he is spending his own money to put up a building is: "Goodness knows what I shall be using in 20 years' time; let us keep it simple let us keep it cheap but above all let us keep it flexible."
All over the country we are putting up structures connected with agriculture that are not simple or cheap but are totally inflexible and, therefore, absolutely predictably, will be redundant in ten years and then we shall have other estimates for other moneys for the conversion of buildings that have proved unsuitable for the purpose for which they were designed. By the time they were constructed according to these designs the situation had so changed that they were no longer needed for that purpose. We are developing what one could only call a monumental style in agricultural architecture. Therefore, I suggest that we need to consult specialists who know about cheap and flexible structures.
