Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 8 Jul 1971

Vol. 255 No. 6

Committee on Finance. - Vote 26: Local Government (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

Go ndeonófar suim nach mó ná £13,762,000 chun íoctha an mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31ú de Mhárta, 1972, le haghaidh tuarastail agus costais Oifig an Aire Rialtais Áitiúil, a chuimsíonn deontais do na húdaráis áitiúla, deontais agus costais eile i dtaca le tithíocht, agus scéimeanna agus deontais ilghnéitheacha, lena n-áirítear deontais-i-gcabhair.

—(Minister for Local Government.)

Mr. M. O'Leary

It was interesting yesterday to hear the replies given by the Minister for Transport and Power to questions tabled by me. The subject matter of these questions also concerned the Department of Local Government. The questions concerned the final plans for the development of Dublin Bay. At a meeting last week the Minister for Transport and Power spoke on this subject. Yesterday I asked him whether his Department had a copy of the detailed plan for the development of Dublin Bay, when the plan prepared by consultants was handed over to the Dublin Port and Docks Board and when the plan would be available for public inspection. The Minister told us that the relief model of this plan was received by the Dublin Port and Docks Board at the end of May, 1971, and, he declared, some of the diagrams had been prepared also; he said that some material had been submitted to the board but the balance was still awaited and that when the entire material has been received for publication, it will then be submitted to him and to Dublin Corporation and will be on public display. The Minister told us that it is not possible to be precise as to the date on which the plan will be put on public display.

The Minister for Local Government, in the absence of any co-ordination to deal with problems of environment, has this problem together with all the other matters that come within the ambit of his large Department. The whole future of Dublin Bay is a matter of great concern to the people of this city. I cannot understand how anybody could put forward, justifiably, the argument that there must be an absolute clash between industrial progress and the preservation of amenities. If there is proper planning, this need not happen. It should be possible to improve dock and port facilities without damaging the amenities of Dublin Bay.

The Minister for Local Government must be aware of the concern of the various associations both on the north and south side of the city in this regard. There has been a general demand that the bay be preserved as a special amenity area. There is a great mystery as to the future of the bay. Last November, on the television programme "Newsbeat", the chairman of Dublin Port and Docks Board said he did not understand why people should be worried about the bay proposals because, he said, by January of this year the contents of the proposed plan would be in the possession of the public. Yesterday we had a Minister telling us that it will be later in October. I hope that the various associations, residents' associations, and so on, will get copies of this plan as soon as possible and that their views will be taken into consideration and will not be ignored. At present in Dublin, even under our legislation, if the city commissioner agrees to any final plan it will go through without consultation because we have not got a Dublin Corporation. The city commissioner and the Minister may decide what is to be done without real consultation. I hope the Minister will ensure that the residents' associations and all the other groups concerned with the future of the bay will be listened to and their views acted upon.

Dublin Bay as been described as the lung of Dublin. It is essential to the well-being of all Dublin people. The future of the bay is not simply a fad of a few eccentrics. The bay is the most massive amenity we have in this city. I can think of no other city of comparable size which has such a magnificent bay just a short distance from the city centre. It would be tragic if ill-considered plans were acted upon and this priceless amenity bartered away. This is a possibility if we permit any commercial body to proceed without considering all the factors involved in any development plan. We are learning more and more that industrial progress, national progress, is not simply a matter of considering only the commercial factor. The people who work in the factory must live in decent conditions. This bay is important to people from all over Dublin. Therefore, the Dublin Port and Docks Board cannot be permitted to develop plans which they consider to be satisfactory without consultation with all other interests, without being forced to consider the social costs which must be taken into account in the formulation of any final plan.

I would urge on the Minister that An Foras Forbartha, who are doing such excellent work all around the country, should be made the nucleus of a central environmental control unit in his Department. If we cannot have a new Ministry, as in Britain, devoted to environmental problems, at least let us have a section which is devoted to looking into this matter on a national scale. Though An Foras Forbartha is in touch with the various local authorities the possibility of even closer liaison should be examined.

Of course An Foras Forbartha could be doing far more valuable work if their finances were improved. Money spent on the development of An Foras Forbartha is money well spent because the retention of the resources of our countryside, proper planning, decent architecture, all these, which to some are peripheral matters are items which, as our country develops, we see to be more and more important. Other European countries with a more settled tradition than our own have recognised this.

Such an environmental section could look at related problems like air pollution and noise. There have been many articles written in the last year or two on air pollution in Dublin. I have here a letter published in one of our newspapers recently written by a gentleman who works in the department of social medicine in Trinity College. He makes the point that judged by public health and aesthetic criteria Dublin has a major problem of air pollution regardless of comparisons made with the North of Ireland and the UK. He says it is a serious matter here in Dublin. There are studies going ahead on this matter. The Minister may have noted reports recently of a mysterious white cloud which apparently came in from the sea in the Sutton/Howth area, much to the discomfiture of some of the local inhabitants. We would need to look very closely at the kind of material industrial firms are at present belching into the air of Dublin with detrimental consequences for all the inhabitants. Medical authorities are realising more and more that this kind of noxious material, sulphur dioxide pumped into the air, can have very serious effects on the health of old people, children and in fact on the population generally. It is with something of a shock we realise that the position in Dublin, a small city by European standards, is considered by authorities so serious as to merit very close attention.

Such a section could also look at the matter of oil pollution. One wonders how much it adds up to on the national level. One sees reports from time to time of oil pollution of strands and beaches at various parts of the coasts. The risk of pollution grows annually. With this kind of tanker traffic going on it is probable that the real answer is international agreement to improve the behaviour standards of large tankers carrying fuel oil. We must continue pressing internationally for better legislation on these matters. Our southeast coast is quite close to one of the busiest of all oil tanker routes. When one thinks of oil pollution one remembers the "Torrey Canyon" incident. It may be unpopular to say this but it is necessary to say it: the Whiddy Island terminal brings the possibility of such an incident nearer for the whole of our south-west coast. One accident with these huge tankers could drench all that coast and it would take an amount of detergent, which in any case is not the final answer, to clean up the resulting mess.

In fact, I have never understood the background of the Whiddy Island terminal. There is a similar plan being suggested for portion of the Welsh coast at present and the negotiations are long, arduous and difficult. The authorities there are bargaining for the last penny. They will get a very big price for their final agreement, if there is one, and the safety and behaviour standards will have to be rigorous. We did not get one penny out of the Whiddy Island terminal. A south sea atoll would have made a better bargain with the company than we succeeded in getting from our non-negotiations. I do not know how many people are employed there now but there are very few. The tourist potential of the whole south-west area can be affected. That is something to remember in considering whether the economic advantages of that terminal outweigh the potential dangers of oil pollution.

I see that the Government have accepted the recommendation of the inter-Departmental working group on oil pollution that overall responsibility for oil pollution clearance be assigned to the Minister for Local Government. Practically everything in the line of environmental problems appears to have been dropped into the lap of the Minister for Local Government. For his own sake he should try to get all these matters properly co-ordinated. There are so many loose ends lying around with various committees examining air pollution, noise control, oil pollution and so on that it is becoming a Parkinson's Law situation.

Noise is pretty bad in Dublin. In Britain and other European countries there is effective noise legislation and at least an attempt should be made to reduce the level of traffic noise. One authority has suggested that if a worker were subjected to the O'Connell Street noise level at traffic peak hour for a 40 hour week he would certainly have his hearing impaired if he would not become stone deaf. Medical authorities are agreed that a continuous level of noise of that volume will impair the hearing. Apart from industrial work, the Dublin noise situation is now bad and needs careful study and control.

I do not know whether other Deputies have similar problems but one of the problems that arise in environmental control in Dublin is that in certain residential districts one finds small factories setting up. For example, one finds industrial undertakings that are apparently protected under different Acts. We have approached the Minister regarding the problems of residents of Richmond Road, the lower portion of Drumcondra, complaining of the way in which that residential area has been, so to speak, stealthily converted into an almost heavy industrial area. The answer we are given is that a change of user has taken place. A factory or workshop engaged in light assembly work in the 1950s may have evolved into a factory or workshop engaged in heavy work, involving heavy material and machines pounding behind somebody's garden wall. This is how it developed in the Seventies. Apparently, the legislation does not cover this kind of development or change in the industrial activity carried on. It is a problem in many of these areas.

There should be no clash between carrying on industrial undertakings and living in a decent environment. All it requires is planning and a proper appreciation of priorities. Obviously, we have allowed a situation to develop in which residential districts are infiltrated by industrial undertakings and this is unsatisfactory.

The amenity situation in central Dublin in connection with corporation flats and so on is deplorable. The Minister during his term of office has associated himself to a great extent with the idea that there should be suitable amenities for our young people. I have seen the Minister in various forms of déshabillé jumping into swimming pools around the country. It is good that at last we have a Minister who can swim. The Minister is to be congratulated on the number of swimming pools being erected throughout the country.

Mr. Clinton

I am looking forward to seeing the Minister jumping into the pool in Ballymun. People have been on that site for five years.

Mr. M. O'Leary

The Minister was reported, the other day, as saying he would have to cut down the number of swimming pools in future if it meant we were not building sufficient houses. I have not seen any contradiction of that. I can imagine other forms of Government expenditure involving far greater sums than the meagre amount so far spent on providing swimming pools. As a State, we have done very little in this matter. I do not know the figures but I should say that a higher proportion of our young people than probably in any other European country are unable to swim and that is because they have no opportunity. How many of our primary schools have any facilities for pupils who want to learn to swim? Very few. The secondary schools may be somewhat better in that regard. In the Dublin area where there is a large population of young people there are as yet very few swimming pools.

The problem in regard to central city flat complexes is that when they were being built apparently nobody ever realised that children must play, with the result that the only place the children can run about is in neighbouring streets. As a result of the chaotic planning of the city, the neighbouring streets have large trucks thundering through them day and night. Here, again, I think legislation is required. As we move towards greater containerisation, we find trucks becoming larger and our streets unable to take them with resulting damage to property and to life and limb. They certainly contribute to blocking traffic in various areas. In other countries national legislatures have prohibited companies from increasing the size of trucks beyond certain limits when these are used in the streets of their towns. None of our towns or villages is designed to permit the passage of these trucks. The roads are unable to bear this type of onslaught. The traffic at present in the Dublin dock area must be seen to be believed. The area is one tangle of heavy traffic. The planning of the city and the situation of the docks mean that heavy traffic must pass through residential areas.

The lack of amenities is what I am concerned about. Children in these localities should have some open spaces in which to play but the bureaucratic imagination which designed these flats did not consider the nature of children or their propensities for playing and did nothing about it. We now have a large child population in the centre of Dublin and they have no place to play. In the summer months when these young children are on holidays there is a tragic situation. The Minister has often appeared on television in holiday time calling for care on the part of people at the seaside and for the avoidance of swimming fatalities. Where children are bottled up in a city area with open water nearby obviously they will go swimming in, perhaps, dangerous conditions and, considering the nature of Dublin Bay now, certainly in polluted conditions. There is no place for them to play because in the neighbouring streets they are menaced day and night by heavy trucks. I realise that we have this general legislative provision that 10 per cent of the land area of any new scheme should not be built on and I hope that people are abiding by this legal requirement. However, when looking at some of the new plans I doubt it because there appears to be very little open space surrounding the flats. Even in the case of Ballymun, we are slow in providing community facilities. There appears to be an idea that it is sufficient merely to erect the houses. This shows an absence of human regard and most authorities in Britain have departed from this type of approach.

Apparently we proceed regardless of what has been learned in other countries. In Ballymun and in similar housing schemes neither shops, community centres nor swimming pools are provided. The result is that there is an absence of community life in the area. It is true that shelter is provided but there is not normal community life. Many other countries have a special Ministry to tackle this problem because they realise it is important. They realise that many of these matters are interrelated and are of immense importance. The problem about environment is that nobody is concerned. There is no political support for the matter, there are no votes in ecology. Each man looks after himself and is not worried about the environment. Government Departments look after their own areas of concern but until there is a section that will look after this problem exclusively it will be forgotten and the resulting mess will not be cleared up.

The penalties for oil pollution in Dublin Bay are ridiculous and are no deterrent to an industrial firm that wishes to dispose of crude oil or effluent. I would ask the Minister to look at this aspect of legislation because, as matters stand at the moment, dumping of oil and waste products is carried on extensively by many industrial firms. The law does not strictly prohibit this practice.

Recently a few hundred gallons of crude oil were dumped in Dublin Bay. In a recent incident an estimated 256 gallons were spilled at Clontarf and 135 gallons of detergent were used for cleansing operations. Oil pollution was reported at the Bull Wall on 27th June, 1970. It went practically all the way along the Bull Wall and the bathing places on the west side were covered in heavy black oil. It was stated at the court case that it was the same kind of oil as had been found previously. Cross examination revealed that the amount of oil spilled at the Bull Wall was between 400 and 500 gallons and at the end of the case a bill for £197 16s 10d in respect of the cleansing operations was furnished to the offending firm.

Mr. Molloy

Is the Deputy quoting?

Mr. M. O'Leary

Yes, from the Irish Times dated 4-11-70. The rivers in the Dublin area have been seriously polluted and it appears from the legal point of view firms can do this with impunity. At least now we discover the damage after it has happened. I would ask the Minister to give urgent consideration to this matter and to ensure that the penalties are sufficiently large. It is impossible to park a car on a yellow line in the Dublin area without geting a fine of £2 but hundreds of gallons of crude oil can be poured into river or sea and the offender will get a bill sometime later from an apologetic official. Has the Minister considered this matter? Does he envisage having a specific section to cope with the problem?

Mr. Molloy

Action has been taken to establish a special environmental section in the Department. I shall be dealing with the matter in my reply.

Mr. M. O'Leary

The corporation now have a considerable land bank and they have given a sizeable portion to private building groups for house-building purposes. The fact that the corporation have this land bank means that, to some extent at least, they can control the price of building land in the Dublin area. I say "to some extent" because the price of land in recent years has rocketed, with a subsequent burden on those trying to buy houses. The corporation have given 150 acres to unnamed building firms, but I hope they will avoid following the example of what occurred at Donaghmede.

Purchasers of houses in the Donaghmede estate had to wait for two years and found that the deposit price had increased by £300 or £400 in the meantime. From what I could gather, the fault occurred because of the type of contract drawn up by the corporation and the building firm involved. The corporation did not specify any schedule of building operations. Apparently it was an open, clauseless agreement but its detail was a great mystery and it is difficult to get information about the nature of the contracts the corporation hand out to private builders. I do not know why there should be this air of mystery or why the details could not be made known. If the contract is not drawn up properly, this means that the eventual price the purchaser pays will bear the marks of the inflated price increases of land.

The people I blame for this are the Dublin Corporation. They drew up the contracts and evidently they did not consider the dilemma of the purchasers. This left the purchasers unprotected against the upward movement of prices on the open market. This is quite apart from the most peculiar delays which occurred in Donaghmede—over two years on a particular scheme.

Building firms which do not carry out their contracts on time, whose work is not satisfactory, who have delays in the provision of houses, should not get business from the local authority. Land which the corporation bought should not be handed over to them for development purposes. The corporation can demand a high standard in such contracts. As yet I have no evidence that will convince me that the corporation are driving a hard enough bargain with such firms in the city area. Donaghmede was brought to my attention by several people in my constituency who were prospective purchasers of houses. They complained to me over many months about the delays which occurred and the expense in which they were involved. From what I could see, the corporation were most culpable because of the type of agreement which they had drawn up with the building firm concerned.

I hope that votes at 18 will be incorporated in the next local elections. I see no good reason why we cannot have votes at 18 in the local elections. As other people have remarked, we hear all sorts of ministerial objections to youthful demonstrations, but if we are to involve youth in politics I should like to see young candidates standing at the next local elections, and I should like to see a greater participation by young people in the management of their city. I am not convinced by the Government statement that such is their love of democracy that they cannot bring in the necessary legislation to provide votes at 18 until they have had their referendum on whether votes at 18 should be introduced for presidential and local elections. This kind of dewy-eyed attachment of the Cabinet to democracy does not convince me and I cannot see why we cannot have votes at 18 at the next local elections. We might have a different corporation as a result.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Dublin Central): A Fianna Fáil corporation.

Mr. M. O'Leary

We might have younger candidates and greater participation by younger people. Deputy Fitzpatrick says we would have a Fianna Fáil corporation. I bhfad uainn an t-olc. I think it is unlikely that we would have a Fianna Fáil corporation since we will not have a Fianna Fáil Government much longer. Be that as it may, who can predict the ways of the electorate? They are unknown to man and, perhaps, the electorate of Dublin consider the Fianna Fáil record a good one. Perhaps they do. At any rate, I should like to see the 18 year old section of our electorate being given an opportunity of passing their verdict on the Minister's administration and on the Government's general behaviour. I understand that the local elections are due next year. There is no reason why the Government should not concede that right to the 18 year olds. Their interest in local government should be welcomed rather than repulsed by refusing to give them the vote.

In view of the various objections to the creation of a Greater Dublin authority I hope the Minister will consider dropping that plan. The whole trend in the thinking of local government is in the direction of neighbourhood power rather than the creation of ever larger authorities. This plan seems to me to be a step backwards rather than anything that could be described as progressive. It seems to me to be a plan which was dreamed up by some bureaucrat who considers that the greater the size the greater the efficiency that will be achieved. The contrary argument could be advanced with greater validity if you are considering the greater participation of ordinary people.

When Dublin Corporation were in existence they had to suffer the slings and arrows of incomprehension on the part of the citizens who could not understand their ways. They could not understand the mysterious workings of that body. They could not understand that all real power lay with the Minister even when we had a corporation. The termination of the activities of the corporation probably demonstrated to Dublin citizens for all time where the actual power lay. For a long time we had a curious dialectical situation in this House. The Minister for Local Government would say: "That is a matter for Dublin Corporation" when we talked about housing and Dublin Corporation would say it was a matter for the Minister. Between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, nobody understood who had control of the real decisions.

In their day Dublin Corporation suffered a lot from a bad press. The citizens did not understand exactly what authority the corporation had. Still less would they understand a Greater Dublin authority. Who could understand the ways of that body in new civic offices in a skyscraper looking over a new metropolis of nearly one million people if we include Dublin county, Dun Laoghaire and Dublin? The distance of that body from ordinary people would be immeasurable. There would be little understanding on the part of ordinary citizens of the affairs of City Hall. It would be a situation which nobody who has any regard for participation by ordinary people in the affairs of their neighbourhood could support. This is the big problem to be tackled in local government. How do we bring the local communities into real control of their own areas and give them effective participation and consultation?

Some political scientist should do some research into the whole question of control of the future of Dublin Bay. Apparently the Dublin Port and Docks Board are answerable to nobody. It reminds me of the saying in Boston that the Lodges speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God. I do not know who the Dublin Port and Docks Board talk to. They are a very mysterious body. Somebody should try to find out who has what say in the Dublin Port and Docks Board. They certainly provide a rival administration in the city and appear to have scant connections with any democratic process. Decisions are arrived at apparently but by whom we do not know.

When the ordinary citizens living in the area asked what was proposed for Dublin Bay they found every Minister in the Government supporting the Bay Association. The Dublin Bay Preservation group have many letters of support. Every member of this Cabinet has supported it at one stage or another, including the Minister for Lands and the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Of course, the Clontarf area is favoured for residential purposes by the Fianna Fáil administration. They have found the air of North Dublin salubrious. They have come from all parts of the country to live in that area. We had Deputy Blaney living there when he was a Minister. All the members of this Administration have lived in the North Dublin area at one time or another. For the best motives they have all supported the idea of making provision for the future of the bay. They have written the most eloquent letters. When there were meetings which they could not attend very helpfully they sent representatives of the local cumann to tell us exactly what they thought of the matter in question.

Yet the problem of the dissatisfaction of the residents apparently remains. They see no change, no variation, in what the Dublin Port and Docks Board intend doing. The industrial development continues and Ministers continue to send helpful letters to say that things will be all right by and by. They have been helpful. In fact, I think I recall the Minister for Industry and Commerce, as he then was, admittedly at an emotional moment—we all have emotional moments; I think it was in 1969, during the general election of that year—assuring the residents of Clontarf that in the future the amenity aspect of the bay would be preserved. He was not alone in that. Other Ministers have said much the same thing.

Now we hear that this plan, which was to be produced almost two years ago, is still being considered, all aspects of it. The manager of the Port and Docks Board declared in the "Newsbeat" programme last November that his plan would be ready for public inspection the following February and the Minister for Transport and Power told us yesterday that it will now be October before this plan will be open for public inspection. Why the delay? There seems to be no satisfactory answer to this two year period. The question remains: have the Port and Docks Board, in fact, exceeded their licence in the developments they have carried out so far?

At any rate, this whole matter of participation, of getting the local people interested in the problems of their area, involving them in decisions, and so on, is one I would urge on the Minister. I do not believe the White Paper seriously sets itself this task. The White Paper restricts its examination to looking to the structure as it now is and seeks a point of departure only in certain tidying up exercises and improvements in the existing situation. Why should we not give many functions back to neighbourhood powers? Why should the neighbourhood not be in charge of the parks in an area? There are other matters we could hand over to local communities. Why could tenant organisations not be involved in local administration? If there is a future Dublin Corporation I think the Minister should, in fact, reserve a place in such a corporation for the elected representatives of the tenant organisations. These various tenant organisations involving local people have done a great job in recent years. It has all been unpaid work. They have not been encouraged at official level. They have gone ahead with their work although they are not paid for their work. The only reason they have continued to work is from a feeling for their local community. All over the country we find these local groups working in these tenant organisations. Why, in a reconstituted Dublin Corporation, can we not have places reserved for nominees of NATO, the national tenant organisation, and also in other local authorities? I simply put it forward as a suggestion, a matter which the Minister could consider in any schemes of reorganisation.

Can we ensure a creative role for tenant and other voluntary organisations? Why must we see tenant organisations simply, as some officials apparently do, as people whom we must keep at a hostile distance from us? Why should we not involve these organisations in the planning of housing and so on? The objections are not restricted simply to the rent question and, on that issue, of course, the case has been made over and over to the Minister that the actual calculation of rent, whereby we take into account the incomes of other members of a particular family, is considered by the people involved to be a grave injustice. I wish the official mind could at least see its way to altering the way in which this rent is presently calculated or assessed.

I see no reason why the bodies like tenant organisations should not be involved in a more creative way in their local communities and should not be given more official recognition. They should be given official recognition and their status acknowledged. At a time when people say that confidence in democratic institutions is at a low ebb, it is one of the encouraging features here that the last ten years have seen such a growth in voluntary organisations of all kinds, organisations concerned with environment and community and so on. All over this city and all over this country we find these voluntary groups growing up. Any administration must encourage such a development and in local government we should seek to utilise properly the creative possibilities of these groups in the administration of the local area.

Mr. Molloy

May I ask the Deputy a question: has the Deputy read the White Paper in full?

Mr. M. O'Leary

Yes. Why?

Mr. Molloy

I find that very hard to believe.

Mr. M. O'Leary

Hard to believe what?

Mr. Molloy

Hard to believe that the Deputy read the White Paper in full.

Mr. M. O'Leary

I am talking about the desirability of involving tenants.

Mr. Molloy

The desirability of involving everyone is all contained in the White Paper.

Mr. M. O'Leary

I do not recall that the Minister names the tenant organisations.

Mr. Molloy

We did not name them, but we give them a place through the community councils of the area itself. We give them statutory recognition.

Mr. M. O'Leary

I name the organisations as groups which could be involved in more creative consultation in any future arrangement.

Mr. Molloy

I still find it hard to believe the Deputy read the White Paper.

Mr. M. O'Leary

The Minister does?

Mr. Molloy

Yes.

Mr. M. O'Leary

Incredible things often happen. I would urge on the Minister that on a reconvened council in this city tenant organisations should be given a place in the council. This White Paper has confined itself too rigidly to looking at the existing structure, with the vague formulations that he has referred to, not quite as specific a proposal as the recommendation that there be a greater Dublin authority. There we have an actual hard, specific line in the White Paper. The response it has met with up and down the country should suggest to the Minister that his proposal should now be dropped and that we should go back to a position in which smaller local authorities, working in liaison with a central authority, should be created rather than giving all power to a larger area council, as is suggested in this White Paper.

I think, too, the Minister could bend his energies to the provision of an annual report of his Department. I know there have been such reports, but the statistics relating to many matters in his Department are so out of date that it is difficult to get the figures in many cases. The Minister should ensure since his Department, who spread into so many areas and are involved in so many multifarious activities, that we should have each year some kind of indication, with figures and statistics, of the work of his Department. The last Local Government report was issued two or three years ago. This is an unsatisfactory situation, especially when one considers the nature of the Department. It is unlike other Departments in that they are not a single issue Department; they involve many different activities. An annual report should be produced so that intelligent discussion can be maintained on the Department's activities.

I hope the amenity aspect of planning will receive closer attention from the Department. If An Foras Forbartha, with their fund of experience, were given more money and had closer liaison with local authorities there would be an improvement in planning throughout the country.

I would ask the Minister to look at the problem of local authorities who refuse to heed the advice of their planning section and instead go ahead with developments which are not in the best interests of the community. I have no idea whether this is a widespread problem but I have heard the matter frequently referred to. I should like to know if the Minister has any idea of the extent of this problem.

An Foras Forbartha are doing a good deal to improve the qualifications of our planning officials. We have not given sufficient attention to this matter in the past. I do not know how many planning staff there are in Dublin but there are not many. Certainly we could do a great deal more to improve the training given to people who wish to make a career in planning. An Foras Forbartha offer five scholarships a year and this is to be commended, but we could do more by linking up university courses. This would be helpful to people wishing to make a career in this field. Planning is a new field for us and we are rather weak on the training of personnel. The Department could take the lead and make An Foras Forbartha the nucleus of a new development plan which would put all the resources of An Foras Forbartha into fruitful contact with the various local authorities so that the all round consideration necessary in proper planning would become a feature of local authorities up and down the country.

In the course of his speech the Minister recorded the improvement, as he saw it, in the housing situation. Where there is an expanding population there will always be a housing problem. The question is whether the housing problem need be of the proportions we are faced with in Dublin city in particular although the figures would suggest that the problem is pretty bad throughout the country as well. I do not think the situation need have been as grave as it is if the problem had been tackled in time.

Because of the shortage of houses in Dublin a young married couple with one child cannot be offered any accommodation by Dublin Corporation. A flat in Ballymun may be offered to a family with two children. There is no element of choice in where one may go and there is no possibility, if one's place of employment is on one side of the city, of getting accommodation adjacent to one's work. It does not matter whether a person is on shift work or what the nature of his employment is, he is unable to get accommodation to suit his situation. While waiting to obtain a corporation house or flat such a person has to pay £6 or £7 a week for a one roomed flat in any part of Dublin. This makes it impossible for anybody earning average male industrial wages to save.

There will always be a shortage between the expectations of housing requirements in any one year and the next—that is allowed for—but the shortfall in the Dublin housing situation in recent years has led to a great deal of trouble and no satisfactory explanation for the inactivity has been given. A society which cannot perform the elementary function of giving its citizens houses in which to live must obviously stand condemned. No number of official explanations will get away from the failure of any administration to provide sufficient houses for its citizens.

The situation is almost impossible for a person wishing to buy a house. He finds it impossible to gather together a sufficient deposit for houses which are rocketing in price week by week. The problem of land prices comes into the present price of houses in the Dublin area. I know a committee is sitting to consider exactly how land may be utilised for the building of houses and how the price of land may stabilise without interfering with the constitutional rights of citizens. I hope these studies come to a conclusion in the near future.

It would be interesting to hear what advice the Minister got from his legal advisers about the difficulty under our Constitution of intervening in the free-market play of land for building houses. If land prices in the Dublin area are allowed to continue to spiral no economy in raw materials will bring down the price of houses. We cannot avoid making a decision on the question of land prices if we are ever to provide houses at reasonable prices. It is a fact that in most countries it has been necessary to introduce legislation to stabilise and control the price of land necessary for building houses. I do not think we can avoid introducing such legislation here. We have got to get people away from the idea that this is expropriation. We are not talking about agricultural land. We are talking about land for the building of houses. I hope this study group will reach a conclusion in the near future and that we may proceed to the necessary legislation because we must do all in our power to provide sufficient houses for our citizens. The present position is deplorable. Young couples have no satisfactory accommodation and are left unprotected in an open market situation. They get no help from the State. They are living in rooms with very high rents and there is no possibility of their leaving those rooms.

We now have a situation in the Dublin area where a man may have a good job but has to leave Dublin because he has not satisfactory accommodation. Some years ago people left Dublin because they had no jobs. We now find that, perhaps, a skilled man in a good well-paid job who is anxious to remain in this country, has to leave it because he is living in impossible conditions and his wife—and who is to blame her?—refuses to live any longer in those conditions. We now have emigration because of unsuitable accommodation and lack of accommodation. Obviously, this is as much forced emigration as the other kind, the involuntary emigration arising from lack of work. There can be emigration arising from lack of accommodation. In many urban areas that is the kind of emigration that is proceeding at the present time.

The Minister need not think that building more swimming pools means less houses. He has spent very little on the same swimming pools. If he diverted every penny of official money spent on swimming pools over recent years, he would not build a row of houses in any part of the State. He must tackle land prices and he may proceed, as it is suggested he will, in the matter of system building and all these other developments. O.K., let him proceed in this way; it is advisable and constructive; but I would hope that the kind of houses we produce would not be of poor quality. I know that the Minister is suggesting that we should build houses of short duration, deliberately built for obsolescence. I do not know whether this is a practical idea. The Minister has proposed it as an element in providing cheap houses. Many of the houses built thorughout the State have been built of bad materials. One of the complaints commonly heard from local authority tenants is that they have paid over and over again for the houses in rent over so many years. Will the local authority houses built 30 years ago stand the test of time having regard to the materials put into them?

When houses are being built it is important to see that the neighbourhood is well planned, that we do not simply slap up a row of houses according to an old model. We are not putting cows in these houses. We are puting human beings in them. We must provide a human situation. In the past, little attention was given to this matter of landscaping a new scheme, seeing that community services were provided, that there were proper amenities for children, that swimming pools were provided. All of these matters were considered irrelevant luxuries. More and more we realise they are essential for human living conditions. This is what we should provide, not merely minimum shelter. Otherwise we will build up trouble for ourselves. We will build up communities of young persons who have no roots, no sense of community. We will create dustbowls, communities that become places from which to commute. People talk about commuter towns. How many schemes have been built in the Dublin area which could be desribed as commuter schemes? People consider that they are living in another part of Dublin and the new areas are ghost places. Local groups such as tenants' organisations have done their utmost to deal with the situation. At official level there is little done to help.

The entire Department of Local Government calls for reorganisation. The White Paper is evidence of at least some admission of this. The Department is unwieldy. I am talking about the actual working arrangements. I do not know whether the Minister has had in McKinsey or some other consultants. I do not think the Department needs that kind of thing but it certainly needs somebody to look at the working of the Department, see how it can be rationalised. I am glad to see at least one local area office opened in Ballymun which will answer queries of people in the Ballymun area on matters they wish to raise with officials. This is an idea the corporation should have taken up long ago. The corporation should not be afraid of the individual citizen. It should not be necessary for citizens to go to TDs or councillors. There should be area offices where citizens could go to find out exactly what they wanted to find out at any time. These would be welcomed. The idea that it is necessary that a TD should do this or that is a bad thing for the corporation itself and for the citizens. The TDs and councillors should see their constituents——

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government (Mr. Cunningham)

This is one of the proposals in the White Paper.

Mr. M. O'Leary

I know. I have remarked on that. I am glad to see the area office opened in Ballymun. I hope it will be extended. This is something we have been looking for for years. It is a development to be welcomed. People should be able to get information from their local office quite simply.

I would hope that the whole Department could be rationalised, that the officials working within the Department would understand more easily the chain of command in the Department. Dublin Corporation as at present constituted is a sort of Byzantine creation. Nobody knows exactly how control is dispersed throughout the organisation. It really calls for reorganisation all round. I am sure the same would go for the Department.

I would hope that the Minister would come forward with the necessary legislation in regard to land for the provision of houses and that next year we may see some real improvement in this matter of housing, that we will not see the housing situation becoming worse. One factor in improving the situation is the availability of cheap land for houses. I would hope that the Minister will see his way to having a new section on environmental control under his Department so that there would be co-ordination on this very important matter.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Dublin Central): We are discussing a very complex Department and I should like to thank the Minister for this brief which covers in detail every aspect of local government. Naturally, the Minister dealt with the housing situation in the early part of his speech.

I agree with Deputy O'Leary that housing is the most important factor in family life. It takes priority over health, education or any other service. The provision of a place to live is fundamental to family life. It can be said that the Department of Local Government and the Minister are making every possible effort, with the moneys available, to improve the housing position and to lighten the burden on those people who are without houses. Last year we completed 13,700 local authority houses. This was at a time when there were difficulties created by the cement strike. In spite of this there is still a backlog in Dublin, as any Dublin Deputy knows. The Government have done everything in their power to deal with the problem as it is their duty to do. It is not conducive to family life that a young couple with, perhaps, two children should be living in one room with in-laws. Because of the increasing cost of land for building, it is often impossible for the average wage earner to buy his own house.

When flats are being built we must ensure that there is proper planning. I am not very keen on high-rise flats such as those in Ballymun. Many of my constituents were transferred to that particular scheme and I find that most of them are not happy there. Perhaps in continental countries people have become used to living in 13 or 14 storey buildings but our people do not adapt to this sort of accommodation. When one considers the cost of land for building, it is easy to realise the problem facing the corporation but we must take a long-term view of the situation and do what is best for the community. Of course, economics must play a part in any planning but it is of vital importance that we take into consideration the wellbeing of the community.

The cost involved in the building of a house has increased during the past three years by about 30 per cent. One can realise readily how difficult it is for a young couple to purchase their own house. They may have succeeded in saving enough for a deposit only to find that what they thought would be the deposit had been increased by 10 or 15 per cent. They also have the problems of loans because building societies will not facilitate them unless they have a certain level of income.

Many houses have been and are being converted into flats. The corporation raised certain objections to the change in usage but I am not sure that this is wise. There are many houses that could be converted relatively easily and let at reasonable rents. The corporation may experience difficulty in acquiring some of these houses but I do not think they should inhibit those people who are endeavouring to convert them because at present the rents for flats are exorbitant. Some landlords are charging as much as £7 or £8 for a room. Therefore, if more flats were available there would be more competition and this way there would be a reduction in the rents.

Last week I had the case of a young wife who was endeavouring to find accommodation in any part of the city. The landlords whom she approached were willing to accommodate her and her husband at rents of about £8 a week but, when they discovered that the couple had a child, they turned them down. That couple had failed to secure accommodation in any flats that were available.

If the corporation would allow the conversion of houses I am convinced that there are many elderly people who would willingly sell their houses to private speculators. The corporation insist that car park facilities are available before they give permission for conversion. In many cases the houses I have in mind would be off the main road and, therefore, it might not be absolutely necessary that this particular regulation be applied.

The collection of refuse is also a matter of some concern in relation to the flats in my constituency where refuse is collected on one day a week only. Very often this means that the garbage must be kept within the flat for the entire week because people do not always have access to a garden in which they could leave their dustbins. I do not know how much it would cost the corporation to have collections on two days each week as is the case in the centre of the city. I understand that in the North Circular Road and South Circular Road areas, too, there are twice weekly collections so I do not understand the discrimination. Very often the stench from refuse in the chutes of corporation flats is unbearable.

There is a problem, too, in relation to control of these flats after 6 p.m. because after that time no caretakers are available. There are vandals running wild at 12 and 2 o'clock who have terrorised many of the residents of these flats. Many people have said to me that some control should be exercised, that people from outside can come in and destroy the whole locality during the night. I should like to see some supervision in these flats during the night. Unfortunately, a decision was taken by the corporation some years ago that there should be no caretakers in corporation flats at night. This is a bad thing. Representations have been made to me on several occasions to have somebody appointed to supervise. Many of the residents have been terrified by young blackguards going around at 12 and 2 o'clock in the morning.

Mention has been made here of the facilities made available to corporation tenants and the availability of information as to where they stand on the housing list and other problems which they encounter. I have always held that more facilities should be made available at 26 Jervis Street so that tenants could go in freely and get the information they require. At present there is one day a week when people are interviewed at a hatch. I pity young married people, often pregnant women whose husbands are at work, who have to go down to Jervis Street and queue for a considerable length of time and then on reaching the hatch get insufficient information. A proper bureau should be opened in Jervis Street where qualified men could give the required information to these people and not bring them back week after week. There should be a staff of qualified people to explain to them exactly where they stand, that it is no good coming down next week or the week after, that it is very unlikely their turn will be reached. They should be given the correct information, not at a hatch but in a good open space. At present they have to queue up at a hatch and quite often they meet a girl who is trying to do her best but still not able to satisfy their needs.

The differential rents system, I think, is a fair system. A person pays according to his means. A person with a low income pays a low rent. Unfortunately, overtime is taken into consideration although a certain amount of it is allowed. Often people who work overtime fail to report it to the corporation. This can go on for a considerable time. Eventually it comes to the notice of the corporation and they are then presented with a bill for £40 or £50. The corporation require an immediate payment and quite often issue a court order. This can create big problems. It is in the tenants' interests that they should report overtime as soon as possible because in nearly all cases it is eventually found out. Much hardship has been caused and may evictions have taken place because of backlogs of rent due on overtime. When a man who earns £20 to £25 a week gets a bill for £40 to £50 of arrears he cannot meet it. We should try to instruct tenants to ensure that they do not find themselves in this difficulty.

The traffic problem in Dublin is one for which nobody has a solution. Anybody who has been driving in Dublin over the past 15 years can see a gradual deterioration. The congestion is getting worse. I do not know the solution but I know that more off-street car parking will have to be made available. We see notices in the newspapers every day that certain streets are being made clear ways. This may be all right as regards a free flow of traffic, and I sympathise with Mr. Flanagan who is in charge of the traffic section of Dublin Corporation, he has a difficult job to handle, but this can cause hardship to local traders. I appreciate the difficulties here but I think the corporation must provide car parks or get some commercial companies to interest themselves in the building of car parks. If we have to pay road tax and tax on petrol some facilities should be made available to us and there is an obligation on the corporation to make car parks available. I compliment them on their recent decision to take traffic off Henry Street. This was an excellent idea and I am told the traders in that street are quite satisfied. Of course, what is good for Henry Street might not suit other areas. There are good parking facilities at the back of Henry Street and this is not true of other parts of the city.

It is important that we should have recreational facilities for young people. Unfortunately, in the early stages of planning our city they forgot we needed open spaces. Some of the flats that were built 30 or 40 years ago like Oliver Bond House have no open space available to them for young children. They have not got a healthy environment in which to grow up. Later, provision was made for open space. We must ensure that any open spaces that are available now will not be built upon, that the amenities which lie around Dublin will be made available to the public. I am thinking of the Dublin mountains. I know it is a long distance for many people to travel but we must ensure they are made available to the public at large. This is one of the finest amenities we have. We have Dublin Bay and the Dublin mountains and we must ensure that no private developer ever destroys those amenities. Improvements could be made to help the public, especially young wives and children, to gain access at weekends to Dublin mountains. First, we want more parking places for cars. At present there is considerable overcrowding and not sufficient space for parking. We need greater access to open spaces where mothers can bring their children. At present it is not easy to find places in the mountains where children can play safely. The area should be taken over by the Board of Works or Dublin County Council and a spacious park laid out in which children can play freely. More walks should be provided. Attention to these matters would greatly improve the amenities we have to offer.

The roads leading to the mountains are narrow and it is necessary to have a car if you wish to take your wife and family there at the weekends. Many of my constituents have not cars and the nearest they can get to Dublin mountains is Rathfarnham village and it is quite a long walk from there to Ticknock or other scenic parts of the mountains. The roads should be widened so that buses could operate between the mountains and the densely populated parts of the city, especially parts where people have no open space and must sit around at weekends in a concrete jungle. The facilities are there only to be developed and I do not care which Department undertake the work provided it is done. I do not know how much is private property or public property but the greater part of it should be public property.

We have an organisation known as the Liberties Organisation concerned with the older part of Dublin. Major developments are about to take place and in the greater Dublin plan it is envisaged that there will be a number of car parks and even industries. This organisation did not protest about this; they did something positive. They employed a firm of planning consultants to draw up a plan that would be suitable for the people living around the Liberties. Planning, by and large, is for the people and there should be consultation with the people. This is not just a development scheme; it is urban renewal, which is a different matter, involving the views of those whose people have lived there through the centuries. The Liberties Association was granted its charter around the fifteenth century. People living there can trace their ancestry back three or four generations.

They maintain it was not good enough for Dublin Corporation to draw up a scheme which the corporation planners thought would suit them. They thought they should have been consulted as to what they considered suitable and they set about remedying the situation in a positive manner. They engaged the consultants to carry out a complete survey of the area, the number of people living there, how long they had been there, where they worked and how many were in each family and they asked these people how they thought that part of the city should be developed. They have now produced a comprehensive plan at their own expense on which they should be congratulated. This has been submitted for consideration to the corporation and the Department of Local Government. They have planned responsibly taking into consideration the value of property. This is not a pipe dream; they know the realities of the situation. They know a certain amount of industry is necessary there as well as a certain amount of business.

I am glad to see that Dublin Corporation are now willing to consult with them in an effort to harmonise the differences between the corporation's plan and that of the Liberties Association. The corporation had intended to put a major tangent road right through the Liberties, through the Coombe, which would completely split up the community. The association's plan was for this road to go on the outskirts, through the markets and thus preserve the community and then build houses within the area. This road is one of the major factors that must be taken into consideration. We know the major road must be built; it is a matter of where one's priorities lie. I believe the road should be built on the outskirts so that the urban renewal could take place on the inside. If, as the corporation envisage, the road is put through the Coombe, there will be housing on the left hand side and shops on the right hand side. Residents will have to cross this main road to do shopping. This does not seem to be a good policy and even from the corporation's point of view it may not be practicable. The development should be located near the shopping centre.

The association want development in phases. A certain amount of the area is now open space and they contend that this should be developed to re-house people living in the district since this has been their environment for generations. It would be wrong to break up a community when the object of associations throughout the country is to create a community spirit. This is lacking in many of our big schemes, especially in flats. If you can create a community spirit there will be less crime in the area. It can be proved that in this district there is less crime than in any of the flat areas around it because the community spirit exists. I hope when the Department are deciding this matter they will take into consideration the background of these people, how their forebears have lived there through the centuries and ensure that those now living there will be rehoused there.

The matter of pollution was mentioned in the debate this morning. While I accept that the problem exists and that we must do something about it, I do not think we should exaggerate the problem. There is no doubt that Dublin Bay is not altogether an acceptable place in which to swim. The Minister has stated that the Dodder and the Liffey are among the most severely polluted of our rivers. In the main, the Dodder is polluted by the canal which runs through a highly industrialised centre. When the new scheme in regard to the Grand Canal comes into operation I have no doubt that the problem will be rectified. I should like to know from the Minister what is happening in regard to the laying of sewers along the Grand Canal. This scheme should be expedited in order to eliminate the pollution caused by the Camac river.

Whoever is responsible for cleaning the stretch of the Liffey from Butt Bridge to Heuston Station should do something about the matter because it is in a disgraceful condition. There are many tourists around that area of the city and this does not present an acceptable picture.

It has been decided by the Minister for Transport and Power to hand over the canals to the Office of Public Works but there is an offshoot of the Grand Canal the Minister intends to hand over to the Dublin Corporation, namely, the section running from Suir Road bridge to James's Street harbour. This section runs through a densely populated area—through Fatima Mansions and Rialto. The children in this area are badly in need of an open space in which to play. The area is in a deplorable state at the moment. The canal is stagnant and thousands of children must play around this area and cross over the bridge to school in the morning. I hope when the corporation take charge of this area something positive will be done about this matter. The open space could be utilised for children in Fatima Mansions, Dolphin House and Maryland. The canal should be filled in and a playground constructed for the children.

In regard to the planning of the city, Dublin Corporation have only about seven or eight planners and I am told they find it difficult to get people. I doubt very much if there is proper accommodation available in any of the municipal buildings to accommodate the staff. The sooner the new municipal building is erected and proper facilities provided for the employees of Dublin Corporation the better. In regard to the housing sections at Jervis Street, Lord Edward Street, High Street and Castle Street, none of them is suitable for employees and Castle Street is a deplorable location for the offices of the traffic section.

It is proposed to build the new municipal building near Christ Church. I hope that none of the beautiful architecture is destroyed when the new building is erected. We have in this locality some of the finest historical monuments and buildings in the city. There is Saint Patrick's, Saint Audoen's and the Tailors' Hall and they must be preserved. We must not destroy any of these magnificent buildings when we are developing that part of the city. I know that the planning department will consider these facts. The view from the Liffey is very pleasant since the houses round Winetavern Street have been demolished. I would recommend that the area up to Christ Church be landscaped.

I now wish to refer to the signposts erected along our roadsides, advertising beer, cars and hotels. This applies in particular to the stretch of road between Dublin Airport and Santry and this is the first view that visitors get on their journey into the city. I cannot understand how people have got permission to erect those signs. They do not enhance the district——

Mr. Clinton

They did not get permission.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Dublin Central): In that case they should be obliged to take them down because they are a disgrace. I do not think the same thing would be allowed in any other country. I remember being in Lisbon some years ago; as one enters the city there is a huge floral display which reads “Welcome to Lisbon”. The contrast when one travels on the road from Dublin Airport is tremendous because all one can see are signposts advertising various products. This development should not be allowed to continue. We are defacing our roads and especially our main roads where we should put up the best show for tourists if we want to attract them.

I want to thank the Minister again for this comprehensive document which he has circulated to all Deputies. I should like to congratulate him on his new office and wish him well. He has a difficult task. The Department of Local Government impinge on every part of our lives.

Before I conclude I want to mention the question of rates. Rates are playing an impossible part in all our lives and especially those in the lower income group. No account is taken of a person's ability to pay. Income tax is charged and your ability to pay is taken into consideration. Account is taken of your ability to pay under the differential rents system. Irrespective of whether you have the ability to pay, rates are charged. Shortly the weaker sections of our community and those on fixed incomes will find it impossible to live in a private house. A widow of a man who had the wisdom to buy his own house, who became the owner of the house when he died, and who was left a fixed income of £7 or £8 a week was reasonably comfortable 14 or 15 years ago. Now she has to pay rates of £3 or £3.50 a week. This takes half her income whereas formerly it would not take one-quarter of her income. We must make some provision for this section of the community. Otherwise they will have to sell the property their late husbands worked hard to acquire.

I know the Government are considering this on a very wide scale. Let us hope that when this review is finished we will get some positive action which will alleviate the burden on this section of the community. I am not saying that this is not a burden on others as well, but it hits these people more than it hits any other section of the community. It is a burden on business people and on the white collar worker who is buying his own house. During the first seven years when he is allowed a remission of rates his outgoings are less. When the full impact of the rates hits him he has four or five children and he is less well able to meet the demand than he was when he started. Perhaps the remission could be phased over a longer period and perhaps he could pay more at an earlier date when he might be in a better position to do so.

I realise that the charges which are made on the rates—health charges and all the other charges—have to be met. It is not an easy problem for the Department or for the local authorities to decide where else this money could come from. Could some of it come from the Central Fund? That would mean additional taxation. Let us hope that some solution will be found especially for those with low incomes and on fixed pensions.

Mr. Clinton

The fact that Deputy Fitzpatrick, a Government Deputy, has been extremely critical of many aspects of local government draws attention in a very convincing way to the many shortcomings, the many defects and the many deficiencies in the Department. He said one thing which I should like to correct in case it might give a wrong impression. He alluded to the fact that the Government had built between 13,000 and 14,000 houses last year. This, of course, is only half the truth. Over 20 years ago we had reached the point where we were building 14,000 houses and 50 per cent of them were local authority houses. Last year we built a number of houses approaching this figure but not reaching it, and less than one-third were local authority houses. To be accurate, 28 per cent were local authority houses. These are the houses that are being provided and should be provided for the poorest people in our society.

This debate on the Estimate for the Department of Local Government has been going on now for over a month and it is likely to continue for another couple of weeks. This is the usual pattern. Local government is used to fill in the time of the Dáil. To me this is all wrong. It certainly does not suit my book. I read the Minister's speech very carefully and I made notes on it. I still have those notes but the real reasons for making them have gone out of my head. The Minister made an extremely long contribution introducing his Estimate and he was commended for this by a number of Fianna Fáil Deputies.

I would not raise any objection to a 76-page speech were it not for the fact that it contained so much padding, so much pretence and so much propaganda. By that I mean dishonest propaganda. For example, there is no point whatever in making a comparison between the amount of money contributed by the State to the building of houses in 1960, 1961 and 1962 and the money contributed last year, without explaining that during those years the Government sat down and did nothing whatever. They built no houses, practically. They said we had enough houses. In fact, they said we had overbuilt houses and that in future investment would have to be in projects that would give a measurable return in goods or services. This was the stated policy of Fianna Fáil during those years: do not build houses. As a result of those wasted years we have an enormous backlog of housing needs particularly in the Dublin region.

Local government is an extremely important subject. When we start the debate on this Estimate we should keep at it until we finish because local government is of the greatest concern to everybody. It is about houses; it is about planning; it is about environmental conditions; it is about recreational facilities; it is about roads. It is about everything that affects the normal, everyday lives of people. Consequently it is something that all the people are concerned about—much more concerned than they are in fact, perhaps unfortunately, about things like the EEC. They are concerned about what affects them every day, that is, local government.

Added to the normal responsibilities of local government, in more recent times we had very welcome responsibility for sites for schools and, indeed, an important involvement and responsibility in the establishment of industrial development.

I should like now to make a few comments on these two responsibilities. For far too long they have, I think, been kept out of local government. Since 1961, when I came into this House, I have been pressing very hard on the Department of Industry and Commerce Estimate that the Minister should use his influence with the Minister for Local Government to get local government involved in this job of providing employment opportunities and the establishment of industry generally in the different areas. For far too long this was not done. Thank God, it is now being done, but it is being done very late, and, as a result, we have a situation in which we have a chronic 70,000 unemployed and an enormous number of people either having to emigrate or flooding into the Dublin region in search of employment, creating a whole pile of additional problems, housing problems, hospital and health problems, school problems and all the other problems that arise on a complete change of environment.

Had we adopted the policy years ago of involving local authorities in this type of activity we would have had industrial development in those areas in which employment was needed in areas in which there would be stability in industry because of the appreciation of the jobs provided, to say nothing of a balanced industrial development. I have very mixed feelings about these growth centres and the aggregation of the whole effort in a few centres. Speaking at meetings of my own party I have been quite critical of this. I am not totally opposed to it, but I go only part of the way with it. It has the effect of sucking the people in from the various rural areas. I think that is wrong. I know it is important to have a few pretty well equipped and strong industrial centres so that the various services required can be provided. The fact is the country is so small that services, wherever they are provided, are reasonably accessible. Had local authorities been involved earlier they would now be vying with each other to provide serviced sites suitable for industry and for housing. Of course, before that would be done it would be necessary to house properly those already in established industries. There are areas in which industries are pretty well established but there is nothing like the housing accommodation required in those areas. Recently we were out in Balbriggan. There is an industry there employing 400 or 500 people. We were met with what amounted to a public address from the management of the firm. I shall just quote a paragraph or two of this document. It is headed "Housing":

Inadequate housing facilities are prevalent at present in the town of Balbriggan. Not one county council house has been built during the last three years. There are now 150 names on the Balbriggan housing list and this list will double as soon as the first sod is turned in the Bath Road. We have approximately 40 employees on the housing list. The management have been in touch with other local authorities throughout the country with a view to finding out the various facilities they have to offer with regard to housing. Extracts from letters received from (1) Mr. Charles Curran, Chairman of Waterford County Council; some hundreds of good county council houses are in course of construction in the Dungarvan area in anticipation of industrial development there.

The Minister may say this is obviously a criticism of Dublin County Council for their failure to anticipate the demands in the Balbriggan area, to be in touch with the development of this local industry and to measure the requirements of the town generally. There is a very simple answer to that sort of criticism, but what I have just said is the typical reply we get from the Minister for Local Government. It is, of course, not the answer and I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary knows that it is not the answer. The whole organisation of local government in this respect is all wrong and has been all wrong. A certain amount of money is available for housing and other services. We have a certain capacity to provide houses. It is utterly stupid to say that local authorities have failed to do their job because the only reason why they have failed is because the amount of money available, and known to be available to them in advance, is restricted. The brake is put on, but no Minister will admit this. It has been Government policy over the years not to admit this and to say that it is somebody else's fault, that the Department are not holding up housing. Of course they are. The brake is put on.

I am not just talking through my hat now. I have been mixed up in local government for a long time now. I know the requirements in the area I represent in County Dublin. The members of the county council have known the requirements there for years. There is not one member who does not want more houses built. There is no member of the council, no matter what his political affiliations are, who is not forever pressing the management in the council to build an adequate number of houses. At the present rate of building we will not catch up on the backlog for at least six years, taking into consideration the influx of new people into the area.

Mr. Cunningham

I would like to hear more about Balbriggan. What is happening in Balbriggan?

Mr. Clinton

We are setting out to build houses there.

Mr. Cunningham

Have you got a site?

Mr. Clinton

Yes.

Mr. Cunningham

When did you get it?

Mr. Clinton

We have had it some considerable time. I cannot give the exact details now. There is so much development in the county I just could not give the exact details about Balbriggan now, but development there is at a fairly advanced stage.

Mr. Cunningham

That is a start anyway.

Mr. Clinton

But the people will still have to wait at least 12 months.

Mr. Cunningham

For what?

Mr. Clinton

Before the houses will be ready for occupation. The Parliamentary Secretary can take it that is a rough estimate of the position. The overall situation in the country is that we have about 2,000 applicants for houses and we have been providing houses at the rate of about 300 per year for the past few years. Last year the number was, in fact, down to 250 houses. This decrease was blamed on the cement strike. I think the blame was wrongly placed because the cement strike did not prevent private builders from providing houses. They were hampered in the same way as local authorities were. In my view it is completely wrong to oversimplify the matter and say that it is the fault of local authorities if not enough houses are completed.

It is said that the National Building Agency are solving the problem but that is a very questionable device. The National Building Agency have been brought in on many housing problems but local authority engineers and planning staff are still substantially involved. The National Building Agency employs consultants and the consultants produce plans which have to be agreed with the local authority. The local authorities know the standards and the requirements. I have seen plans coming back from the National Building Agency which require substantial amendment and alteration and these things, which would have been obvious to architects planners and engineers in the county council or local authority concerned, could have been dealt with at the very beginning. It certainly is not all plain sailing.

If we are honest about it the only way to solve our housing problem is to give allocations to local authorities and say to them: "This is your block grant, do what you will and can with that. Use it as well as you can, provide as many houses as you can and maintain standards at a reasonable level." There is no point in the Minister saying that there is only one occasion now when things have to be presented; it is to and fro and to and fro. The staffs of local councils and county councils spend a great deal of their time in this to-ing and fro-ing to the Department. Plans are presented to people in the Department who in many cases are no better qualified than the people at local authority level. They received similar training and have similar experience and yet one is passing judgment on the other. In my view this is a waste of scarce resources. These people should be involved in planning and building houses instead of looking at somebody else's plans and criticising them. They should be transferred from the Department to the local authorities.

The way to tackle the problem would be to give a block grant and say: "There it is, produce the houses, you have the local knowledge, you now have the means, you are qualified for this sort of work. We will have a look at what you are doing and give you a general idea of the standards we expect from you." But the Department have resisted this over the years. If this was done there would be competition between local authorities to see who could do the best job and there can be nothing healthier than that. This would entail local participation and involvement and the responsibility would be with the people where it belongs and not with the Department. As long as we have the present system the Department will blame the local authority and the local authority will blame the Department. This system has been retained for so long in order to give whichever party is in power the ability in devious ways to put on the brakes when money is scarce without saying, in fact, that money is scarce.

What would the Minister do in a situation—I am concerned particularly about my own local authority but, of course, I am concerned about local authorities throughout the country as well—where there are 2,000 applicants and we are building at the rate of 300 houses per year? It will take us far too long to catch up on this backlog unless some account is taken of the position in the Department and unless the way is eased to deal with it. We have been trying to set up machinery to enable us to build 500 houses per year and we may achieve this rate. We may be able to meet this demand within four years if we get the co-operation we need from the Department. The sort of co-operation I want is for the Department to say four or five years in advance: "At least this amount of money will be available to your local authority over the next five years, plan for that and build whatever number of houses you think can be built with this money."

The Minister has told us that the price of houses has increased by approximately 30 per cent in three years and the Department of Local Government is to carry no blame for this increase. I say there is an immense amount of blame on the Department. Everybody is criticising the price of land and I agree that the price of land for housing purposes is far too high. It is a very difficult problem to tackle. Very few people have regard to the fact that there is Government taxation of about £800 or £900 on every house built. For every £100 that a builder makes he gives back £58 to the Government which means that if he makes £1,000 he gives £580 back to the Government in taxation. As well as that, there is turnover tax on building materials, which amounts to approximately £150 to £200 and then there is stamp duty of £120 to £130. This is all direct taxation and has to be paid by unfortunate people who are endeavouring to provide themselves with homes. Young people who want to get married and establish homes of their own have enormous problems to face.

I have drifted from the involvement of local authorities in the provision of employment opportunities through the setting up of advance factories, industrial sites and all that sort of thing. I have said sufficient about it to indicate to the Minister the interest I have always had in this and the importance I have always attached to the provision of industry where it is needed in various parts of the country. With the absence of a proper policy for rural Ireland we are faced with many problems today. Even the EEC are beginning to appreciate the importance of a regional plan. We woke up to this a little bit too late, in my view.

Mr. Cunningham

There have been county development plans for the last number of years.

Mr. Clinton

We do not have local authorities involved in the provision of factory sites and advance factories.

Mr. Cunningham

Yes, all development plans that I have seen include sites specifically designated for industrial development.

Mr. Clinton

The Parliamentary Secretary should know that we passed the Planning Act in 1963 and it did not come into operation until 1964. At that time we were promised that it would only come in on a regional basis and the foolish decision was subsequently taken to give it blanket cover over the whole country, which included many parts of the country where no planning was needed. This meant that in areas where there was extreme demand for development there was no personnel to take the day to day planning decisions and there was no personnel to supervise. The situation has been chaotic in Dublin since the 1963 Planning Act came into operation because of lack of personnel to deal with it. It was impossible to deal with day to day decisions adequately or effectively. Very often decisions had to be postponed and foolish queries were sent out at the end of the two month period to keep the thing going. To say that we have had involvement of local authority planning in industrial development over a number of years is great cod because it is only in the last couple of years that any notice at all has been taken of this.

The establishment of the county development teams was quite a good idea. When I was trying to produce agricultural policy five years ago one of the very strong recommendations I made was for a rural development authority in order to ensure that development would take place where it should take place. In this whole business local government should have an extremely important part to play. Subsequently a Minister for Local Government talked about setting up a mini-Government Department in each county area. He was not far off the mark. It was another way of describing a rural development authority by whom all the resources would be taken into consideration and everything possible would be done to keep the maximum number of people dispersed throughout the country and to prevent the depopulation of rural Ireland that has such ill effects on rural Ireland and also on the areas to which there is an influx of population.

I want to talk about the responsibility local authorities now have. Local authorities take far too lightly their responsibility to provide sites for schools. I am referring particularly to the Dublin region. Local authorities should regard this as an extremely important matter. In fact, it is not taken seriously. We get a good many circulars from time to time but I should like the Minister to issue another circular asking local authorities to take the question of the provision of adequate school sites very seriously. There is a fantastic demand in the Dublin region for schools of all kinds. We have had controversy about community schools, comprehensive schools and the type and shape of schools. This is a matter that should be decided having regard to the circumstances in the area at the time. The responsibility and the power lie with the local authorities to provide school sites. On paper, vocational education committees have this power but no Minister for Education has permitted them to use it. I have gone to at least two Ministers asking them to allow us in County Dublin to exercise this power and they both refused. The responsibility rightly rests with the local authority but the attitude is that there are 20 to 40 acres available, that housing is a priority and they could not think of giving ten or 12 acres for a school, that they would have to secure a much greater area of land before that would be possible. There is no proper liaison between the educational authorities and the local authorities in this regard. While the managers say to me that the matter is very important and that they are very interested and that they will provide sites in the various areas in County Dublin where schools are required, it is not done. There should be pressure from the Department of Education and the Department of Local Government to ensure that it is done. Otherwise, schools will not be built in areas where they are required or, if they are built, it will be on inadequate sites, with no recreational facilities in close proximity. With proper planning, the school should be looking on to playing fields and recreational areas and there should be a swimming pool nearby, which could be used in the morning by the schoolchildren, when the adults could not avail of it.

I would urge the Minister to involve himself in this question of schools. There is a serious situation in Dublin county and I am sure in other local authority areas. I am chairman of the Vocational Education Committee in Dublin and I know what is involved and the many areas that are crying out for schools. The problem is not confined to vocational schools. The various religious orders who provide primary and post-primary education are experiencing the same difficulty. It is a responsibility that should be taken very much more seriously by the Department of Local Government. I should be very grateful if the Minister would direct special attention to this matter.

There was some reference to flat development. The Minister kindly sent us a copy of a speech he made in Rahoon, Galway, when he was opening a flat scheme there, and which he applauded to a considerable extent and compared with similar developments that had taken place in Dublin city. It is very wrong of the Minister to go to Galway and to hoodwink the people in that area into believing that flat development is desirable or a development that people who have experience of it want. He may not have done this deliberately. He may not have sufficient experience of the attitude of people who have been piled into flats in the Dublin region.

I have been extremely critical on many occasions of the Ballymun development. The Ballymun development is referred to in the speech by the Minister in Galway and applauded as one of the great deeds directly accomplished by the Department of Local Government and the Minister for Local Government, providing accommodation for 3,500 persons, or something like that, in the one development. I should like to invite the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary to make the same speech in Ballymun. They would be lucky if they got out of it with their lives.

Mr. Cunningham

Is the Deputy talking now about the Ballymun flats or flats generally or is he condemning all flat development?

Mr. Clinton

I am condemning it, certainly——

Mr. Cunningham

All flat development?

Mr. Clinton

——whenever it is possible to avoid it. If it has to be done at all, I would condemn completely high-rise flats. Ballymun is in my constituency and I have about 5,000 votes there.

Mr. Cunningham

Would the Deputy quote the Minister exactly?

Mr. Clinton

The Minister said:

This huge investment in Galway housing is, if anything, overdue. Dublin city has a major housing problem but the scale of that problem was substantially eased by the Ballymun project—a scheme undertaken over and above the normal housing programme of the Dublin Corporation.

Mr. Cunningham

I thought from the Deputy's précis of the Minister's speech that the Minister went into ecstasies concerning Ballymun.

Mr. Clinton

The Minister continued:

I am proud to have been closely associated from the outset with the development of the idea which has resulted in the launching of the scheme of 276 flats at Rahoon, a development which in design and magnitude will be a complete innovation in Galway. The flats will be hard to surpass in construction and finish and in the standard of accommodation. Big as is the project, I hope to see it completed within the next 18 months. As the flats are handed over during the next year and a half it should be possible to re-house the big majority of the families at present on the corporation's waiting list.

The scheme will be on similar lines to the successful redevelopment scheme at Keogh Square, Dublin, which has brought favourable comment from all quarters.

Mr. Cunningham

Is the Galway scheme a high rise scheme?

Mr. Clinton

I do not know. It may be five or six storeys high.

Mr. Cunningham

The Deputy is condemning the scheme in spite of what he does not know about it.

Mr. Clinton

I am comparing it with what it is compared with here.

Mr. Cunningham

The Deputy has said he knows nothing about it.

Mr. Enright

Deputy Clinton should be allowed to continue.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Clinton should be allowed to continue without interruption.

Mr. Clinton

The Parliamentary Secretary is being helpful in his own way. I would say that the maximum height of the flats at Keogh Square is six storeys. The reason why Keogh Square has been applauded by the people is because it was a transformation from what was hell. How many times did the late Deputy Seán Dunne describe in detail conditions in Keogh Square? Deputy de Valera should be able to describe very well what was the situation there. I am speaking against flat development.

I go to Ballymun twice monthly and spend a couple of hours there on each occasion. Each time I go there I talk to an average of 25 people and I can say that 80 or 90 per cent of the people whom I meet are seeking transfers from the Ballymun scheme. This is not a very rewarding exercise for any public representative because if he succeeds in getting them transferred to another area, he loses their votes whereas if he fails in this respect he is blamed for not helping them to get transfers. The circumstances in Ballymun are such that the people would prefer to live in any other place where they could possibly find a home and what they are yearning for more than anything else is a garden, even if it is only a small patch. A mother who has three or four youngsters, the oldest of whom may not be more than eight years of age would have a real problem in higher flats even if she only lived on the third or fourth storey because if she allows her children out to play she must watch them all the time because there is no properly developed playground and if she keeps them with her in the flat while she is doing her chores, there is a great strain on her. I find that most of the young women to whom I speak are on nerve tablets because of the anxieties with which they must contend.

The Minister referred in Galway to the quality of the flat development and construction there. I want to put it on record that in so far as the Ballymun scheme is concerned, I have nothing to say about the construction of the buildings. When the scheme was in the course of construction I went there a couple of times and I was impressed by the quality of the buildings. The real problem for people living in these high rise flats is the lack of proper facilities for the children. This monstrosity was provided by the Department for the purpose of obtaining credit for the Minister.

Mr. Cunningham

The Deputy is against all flat development?

Mr. Clinton

Fundamentally, I am against flat development.

Mr. Molloy

The Deputy should talk to the people in Coolock who, when I spoke to them a few weeks ago, appeared to be very happy with the accommodation they were given. This accommodation is similar to the development in Galway and similar to the scheme at St. Michael's Square in Dublin.

Mr. Clinton

The Minister is not married and has not the responsibility of a young family. He has no idea of what it would be like to live in these high rise flats.

Mr. Cunningham

The Galway ones will be four storeys high.

Mr. Clinton

If the Minister had about six children to cope with all day——

Mr. Molloy

Is the Deputy living in a high rise flat?

Mr. Clinton

Many of my constituents are. Before the Minister came in I extended an invitation to him to come with me to Ballymun and make the sort of speech there that he made in Galway.

Mr. Molloy

The Deputy should come with me to Coolock.

Mr. Clinton

The people in Coolock have not yet had enough experience of this type of accommodation. It is all right to go to Rahoon and talk about the wonderful things that are happening in Dublin.

Mr. Molloy

We know now what is Fine Gael policy.

Mr. Enright

Both of them are interrupting Deputy Clinton.

Mr. Clinton

What I am saying about Ballymun is what I hear from the people who are condemned to live there. In this House previously I described these buildings as crows' nests and as being unsuitable homes for people. The main anxiety concerns the non-availability of proper playing facilities for the children. There is nothing exceptional about the speed at which these houses were built by the National Building Agency, but having built the houses and flats they got out and there was no regard for the amenities that should have been provided. The grounds are not developed. It is impossible to get a reply to any questions relating to the matter that are put down here.

The lifts in those flats have, in many cases, been out of order for the past two months with the result that many mothers, some of whom may be ill, have to use the steps to and from the flats. Obviously, the lifts installed were inferior in quality. The present situation is that they cannot get parts for these lifts and for two months the lifts have been out of order in parts of Ballymun. This is something with which the Minister should concern himself.

Mr. Molloy

The Deputy is trying to give the impression that people, say, on the 15th storey, because the lift goes out of order temporarily, have to walk down the steps of 15 storeys and walk up again.

Mr. Clinton

What is the alternative?

Mr. Molloy

The lifts are working on alternate floors. If one lift goes out of order they walk down to the next floor and get the lift there.

Mr. Clinton

How close is the Minister to the situation there? I am telling the Minister what I am told twice a month by the people there. I have an assurance that there are lifts in Ballymun which have been continuously out of order for two months. The Minister should be sufficiently concerned to find out whether this is true or not.

Mr. Molloy

Is the Deputy trying to say that people have to walk down 15 storeys of stairs? Is that what he is saying?

Mr. Clinton

The Minister is trying to put words into my mouth.

Mr. Molloy

That is what the Deputy said. That is the impression he is trying to give.

Mr. Clinton

I did not particularise about 15 storeys. If they have to come down ten storeys it is far too much for me.

Mr. Molloy

One storey.

Mr. Clinton

The Minister should not make these interventions because they are silly interventions.

Mr. Molloy

The Deputy is trying to mislead the House.

Mr. Clinton

I am trying to be helpful to the Minister.

Mr. Molloy

The Deputy is a great knocker and everybody knows it. He tries to knock everybody.

Mr. Clinton

I am sorry the Minister was not in the House when Deputy Fitzpatrick of his own party was speaking because he seemed to be knocking everything. He was as critical as I am of the environment that this type of local government is producing in the Dublin area. He is very dissatisfied with it. He was extremely critical of it.

Mr. Molloy

Constructive criticism is welcome.

Mr. Clinton

Of course, it is constructive criticism. I am trying to show the Minister that this type of high-rise flat development presents enormous problems for the people concerned. There are no amenities. He got the National Building Agency to go in and build these flats in the middle of fields which had been ploughed by heavy machinery and left there undeveloped. He says it is now the corporation's responsibility to develop these areas and to provide the amenities. There has been a placard on one side for five years about a swimming pool but there is no sign of a swimming pool and I do not know when it will be provided.

This discussion has gone on for a month and is likely to go on for a few more weeks. I went through the Minister's speeches in fair detail and I went through what is known as the Green Book or the White Paper on Local Government Re-Organisation. I made notes on almost every page but left it behind me when I was coming in today. However, I want to comment on it. The Minister seems to be convinced I have no purpose here other than knocking. He will be more convinced when he hears what I have to say about the White Paper. The knocking will not be confined to me. I hope he was in the House when Deputy Paddy Burke was talking about the White Paper. As far as we in County Dublin are concerned it is being described as the black paper. This White Paper is the absolute negation of local government. If we are to have local government for one-third of the population and what will shortly be one-fourth of the population surely that is not local government? That is bureaucratic control. We talk of the inconvenience that arises from having too many local authorities. Why not make it one job? Why have any local authority if you go that far with it? Having had long experience of local government work, my view is that County Dublin, as it stands, is almost too big a local authority area. We are getting too remote from the people who are carrying out development and responsible for the intimate things that concern the people in their everyday life. If the elected representatives have no access to the people responsible there is no local involvement, no participation by the people. In this document we are getting further and further away from local government.

Many of the improvements suggested in this White Paper could be effected without any new legislation. You will get local government on the basis of providing a block grant for the local authorities and let them work out their own salvation. That is the only way you will have local government. You will never have it as long as you have this dual responsibility for plans and for development of all sorts. You must localise it. Otherwise it is not local government. The whole proposition as I see it, and I am mainly concerned with the Dublin district, is to get bigger and bigger. There is no corporation in Dublin now. It is proposed to take in the city, the county and Dún Laoghaire. To think that it is essential to amalgamate these three authorities is so ridiculous that I cannot understand it.

There is a reference in the White Paper to the setting up of the health authorities in 1960. I was opposed to the setting up of the health authority in the Dublin region in 1960 because it involved too great a proportion of the total population of the country. At that time I discussed it with the experts the late President Kennedy sent over here and they said that their optimum number for health purposes at that time was 250,000. One sees the difference between their ideas and ours. They do things pretty big in America. Anyway, on the whole, the system has worked reasonably well. I was in on the discussions which led to the setting up of this. We arrived at an arrangement whereby the services obtained in this group by the three local authorities were paid for in the main on a services rendered basis. It was possible to do this up to about 85 per cent of the total sum required to provide the services. The remaining 15 per cent was allocated on the basis of the product of the penny in the £ in the three areas. It presented no difficulty whatever.

The same situation can be arrived at in Dublin city, Dublin county and Dún Laoghaire. There is no difficulty. There is sufficient liaison there not to hamper development. The White Paper says that development just cannot take place because there is over-lapping. No matter where you stop there will be over-lapping. No matter where you draw the boundary there will be services that must be continued beyond the boundary. We have arrived at a point—in fact we have gone nearly too far—where we have one engineer in charge of the sanitary services in Dublin city, Dublin county and Dún Laoghaire and we have another engineer responsible for roads in the three areas. There is no problem relative to roads or sanitary services. We have a common planning manager and if we had the staff there would be absolutely no problem but we have not staff; we are very badly staffed because staff cannot be got due to the foolishness of extending planning legislation to cover the whole country where it is not needed. Immense planning problems arise in consequence. No difficulty or inefficiency arises from having three local authorities here instead of one as recommended in the White Paper which was sent out on the basis of flying a kite with discussions to take place afterwards.

There is no indication in the White Paper as to how the services would be paid for or as to how areas would be represented or what would be the electoral areas. We are asked to comment on it in the local authorities. It is not possible to make intelligent comment on a document that is so short of information. These consultations should have taken place prior to the White Paper and people with real experience of administration of local service should have been brought into the picture beforehand. Their vast experience over years should have been brought to bear on the matter. During the discussion on local government we have seen the immense reservoir of information and experience that lies in Members of the House who have served for a long time on local authorities. The Minister would do well to study carefully—I am sure he is doing so—the contributions made by some of the Members in this debate. These were lengthy contributions but they were valuable.

In my local authority I voted that we should express no opinion on a White Paper that proposed to amalgamate the three large local authorities in the Dublin region. The main proposition in this paper is that they be amalgamated without any consultation. I would oppose this without any further discussion. This is out: we will not have it. Deputy Burke, who is a member of the Fianna Fáil Party, has opposed it and the Minister may take it that it will be opposed in the county, in the city and in the borough of Dún Laoghaire. He will get nowhere with this proposition. If he tries to impose it, he will make a very serious mistake.

The planning legislation was introduced in 1963. There was a very long discussion on it and many of us on this side expressed the view that it was not possible to provide the number of planners required to produce plans for the whole country and do the day-to-day checking that was necessary in regard to planning permissions and the carrying out of schemes according to the planning regulations. The Minister agreed that we had not sufficient planners and said he would only bring in the Act on a regional basis. Subsequently, there was some other decision in the Department and the whole country was included resulting in the chaos we have now been enduring for a long time. In Dublin we have the situation where our planners are so overworked and frustrated by being unable to cope with the volume of work coming to them that we cannot keep planners and we cannot get them anywhere. Immense difficulties arise as a result. Even at this late stage I think that in counties where there is not much planning to be done there should be a slowdown in planning and a concentration on regions where there is an enormous work load in the planning field. Also, there is obvious need for pretty drastic amendment of the Planning Act where it has been seen to be so defective.

We have a situation arising every day in the Dublin region in which there is unauthorised development about which we can do nothing. The normal procedure is that a structure is built without planning permission. The local authority objects. An application for planning permission is then sent to the local authority and is turned down. Then there is an appeal to the Minister. By this time there is a family living in the house or several families living in mobile homes or caravans on a large site. They are established, and by the time the Minister comes to consider the appeal the children are going to school in the area and the fathers are at work there. To remedy what has happened is an enormous problem with the result that the unauthorised structures are not in practice demolished. And so it goes on.

On several occasions we in Dublin county have asked for a revision of the legislation to enable us effectively to move in and say to a developer as soon as he puts a spade in the ground: "Stop now." But that is not possible. The Minister should accept as fairly constructive comment that there is urgent need so to amend the legislation as to make it possible for local authorities to say on the day the unauthorised builder starts: "That is the end." Once the homes are established——

Mr. Molloy

The Deputy should know that I have already stated publicly that I intend doing this.

Mr. Clinton

I am glad to know it will be done, but it should certainly be done as a matter of urgency because it is a very serious defect in the planning legislation. Nobody is happy with the situation in which the Minister must decide all planning appeals. Let the Minister be as impartial as is possible, he is still suspect because he is a politician and the sooner this is off his plate the better.

Mr. Molloy

The Minister is not very happy about that situation either.

Mr. Clinton

This is reinforced by the fact that, possibly more because of overwork than anything else, a decision is made in a certain area to turn down a planning proposal, particularly when made by some body which is fairly weak, perhaps an individual. Some months elapse, or perhaps a year, and a similar proposal comes up from some fairly strong organisation and planning permission is granted on an appeal. This happens. I do not say it happens through political influence; probably it happens more often through an overload of work on the Minister and he cannot, and could not possibly even with the aid of this Parliamentary Secretary, read in detail the submissions made on planning appeals. This workload is quite impossible and the sooner the Minister can shed it the better.

I referred to the land bank question previously in the House. Up to a point this is a good idea because it enables local authorities to solve their housing needs expeditiously when money becomes available. If they have the sites with services, it is easy to go ahead and get houses built quickly. This can be overdone and I think, to some extent, it has been overdone. Competition has been set up between private developers and local authorities that has not helped and instead of reducing it has put up the price of land. It is as unfair one way as the other. Whoever is first in to buy land should be allowed to do so. It is wrong when a developer has purchased land that the corporation or county council should move in and buy this land on which he has spent money, and in many cases for which he has submitted plans. This slows down the provision of houses and the Minister should condemn this practice.

I realise that fairly strong powers must be given to local authorities to meet the land speculators and I would be the last person in this House to say land speculators should be accommodated. However, a man who is buying land on which he intends to build houses within a year should be helped. He should not be hampered by the local authority coming in and telling him that they want the land and will buy it from him. This kind of competition should be eliminated. Were it not for private developers and builders we would have two-thirds less houses because less than a third of the houses are provided by local authorities. The number of houses provided by local authorities has diminished enormously during the years, from 50 per cent to 28 per cent. We must realise that we are dependent on private builders.

I do not know how the price of land can be reduced unless one is in the position of buying land wholesale and being the only purchaser. If all the development land purchased by local authorities or by the State had to pass through their hands the price could be controlled, but control in any other way cannot be exercised without taking measures that are tantamount to confiscation. The way in which land prices can be kept at their proper level is to extend services to a sufficient area to ensure that there is no scarcity of land for development.

It is nonsense to say that this is providing cheap land. Developed sites cost £1,550; there are perhaps eight or ten houses to the acre and nobody could describe this as cheap land. The corporation are charging this amount for building sites. Even where they are giving blocs of land to small builders, it is costing either £6,500 or £7,000 per acre, having regard to the levy which is added for the services the local authority have provided. This is not cheap land by any standard.

The land bank has enabled the local authorities to provide their own housing requirements, if and when they have the money to do this. However, it has not given any help to private house builders, either big or small. The view I hear expressed by small builders is that it is difficult to get land from the corporation. Their application is considered over a protracted period and they cannot make plans ahead. When they get the land the price is at least as high as, or even higher than, what they would have paid if they were free agents, unhampered by the local authority. This is a matter of some concern.

I should like to refer to the roads situation in my own area. The allocation from the Road Fund in the present year in County Dublin has been reduced by £270,000 and this is an enormous reduction in the amount of money provided for road development and upkeep generally. In this area there is a tremendous need to improve the road network, particularly on the main arteries leading into and out of the city. Reference was made to the fact that An Foras Forbartha had carried out a major job in deciding what were main roads, county roads and so on. There has been no change in County Dublin since 1925 and in my time in the county council only 18 miles of road have been brought into the category where the State take responsibility for their maintenance.

If one measures the volume and weight of traffic that is carried on every road in County Dublin, one could say that they are all main roads and should be classed as such from the point of view of contributions made by the Department of Local Government. In Dublin city and in the Dún Laoghaire corporation area there is in operation a scheme of urban road improvement grants but this does not apply to County Dublin. As the Minister is aware, a situation could exist where one side of the street is the responsibility of the corporation and the other side is the responsibility of the county council. This is a completely inequitable situation having regard to the fact that the incoming and outgoing traffic is on county roads. I appeal to the Minister to reconsider the situation in relation to the allocation for roads in County Dublin. In addition, we need staff and they are not easily secured.

Reference was made to housing for the aged instead of providing institutional care for these people. Only 50 houses were provided for the aged in the past year and, as a result, their housing accommodation is unsuitable and inadequate. Many of our hospitals and institutions are crowded out with old people who could, and should, be accommodated in their own homes. They should be provided with an extension to their existing houses if this is possible, or they should be accommodated in houses situated in their locality where services would be provided. I know that old people are treated very well in institutions but they do not belong in them and they have no interest in remaining in the institutions. No matter how well they are cared for, in these institutions they are like people just waiting to die. It is much more expensive to accommodate old people in institutions or hospitals and serious consideration should be given to the provision of suitable housing.

We have been listening for years to statements that something must be done about the rates. The rates are going up and up all the time. As Deputy Fitzpatrick said, under the present system no consideration is given to an individual's capacity to pay rates. If a woman's husband dies she may find herself with a fairly big house with a high valuation. The rate on that premises is the same as it was when she was in the full enjoyment of her husband's income. The whole rating system is all wrong. The householder has to pay far too large a percentage of the money required for the various services to which money from the rates is allocated in the normal way.

The Minister referred to the encouragement of co-operatives in the building of houses. There are many difficulties here. All of us would like to see the fullest measure of co-operation being given to people who want to provide themselves with their own house at the lowest possible cost. Many people undertake this who know nothing whatever about the job—and it is quite a job—of building their own house. In other cases there are people in co-operatives who are engaged in building as tradesmen or as workers in the building industry of one type or another. They are assured of success.

We have had the experience in County Dublin of giving sites to people who are full of good intentions about providing themselves with their own house, but two or three years pass and no house appears. We have also had the unfortunate experience that where we provided a site and organised somebody to build houses for these people, in order to provide them quickly, we lost the site subsidy because, in those circumstances, the Minister is not prepared to pay the site subsidy. This should be reconsidered because it is a more expeditious way of getting houses built. If you have a group of people in a co-operative and if you look for the lowest possible price from somebody with experience, very often you can provide them at a lower cost than if they tried to provide them individually.

The possibility of the credit unions playing a part mainly, perhaps, in the provision of capital for houses was mentioned. In the areas in which credit unions have been functioning they have provided a first-class and a necessary service. If their operations in the field of housing, if they come into it, are so successful as they are in the other types of credit they provide, they should get the fullest co-operation and encouragement.

The Minister dwelt at some length on his efforts to bring down the cost of housing and get low cost houses built by various ways and means. He must be given credit for the fact that he has done a considerable amount of work in this area. He has encouraged local authorities to interest themselves in the various possibilities for bringing down the price of houses. I went to England with a group some time ago to look at no fines concrete houses and I came away very favourably impressed by what I saw. A very small group of men poured the entire house in a couple of days. Plastering was eliminated and the substitute for plastering was dry lining which was quickly put into position. These houses were built to very accurate dimensions. All the measurements were known in advance. The services came into place very quickly. Houses were provided quite quickly and quite cheaply in my view. I think they could be provided even more cheaply in this country. This type of construction should be given a chance here. It is not an experiment because it has been carried on very successfully for quite a number of years in some parts of England by a number of contractors. Some of these people have come over here and cooperated with Irish contractors. This is a worthwhile activity and I hope it will produce results.

The one thing I fear, generally speaking, is that the quality of local authority houses is diminishing rather than improving. I know that an inadequate house is better than living in a caravan, a shed, or in overcrowded accommodation with relatives. Instead of improviding, I think the quality of the houses has been diminishing, mainly because of the reduction in the floor area and in the cubic capacity. Because of the inadequacy of the housing accommodation that is being provided many other problems are arising such as health problems and the problem I referred to previously of older people not being wanted because the accommodation is not there for them. I know it is a problem to decide whether to have more houses of poor quality or less houses of adequate quality.

The upper limit of income has been increased in recent times to the tune of £200 and there has been an increase of £10 in the valuation limit. This will be a help but the increases were not sufficient because of the rate of inflation and the reduction in the value of money. We had reached a point in Dublin county where practically nobody was availing of the local authority loans because they were so inadequate. The gap between the maximum of £3,000 and the actual cost of houses in the Dublin region was so enormous that people were not able to bridge it. They had to take less favourable terms in that respect from building societies and insurance companies in order to reach a point where the gap between what they were getting by way of loan and grant and what the house cost was not too great. These increases are some improvement. This whole matter of the provision of houses is a question of making money available in greater amounts than it has been made available in recent times.

As I said, I have a pile of notes with which I was very familiar when I went through the Minister's speech in detail, but it would take me some time to go through them now. I want to emphasise a point I made earlier. The whole set up of local government is wrong because we have this dual responsibility between the Department and the local authorities, and various organisations are being brought in to help out, such as the National Building Agency and various other agencies, and do the work of local authorities. This would not be necessary if we could say in advance to local authorities: "We will give you a block grant for your requirements over the next five years. This is our budget. Work according to that budget and forget about us. We will take a look in now and again to see if you are maintaining reasonable standards and making the best possible use of the money you are getting." Give up this waste of scarce professional material, this waste of professional people in the Department of Local Government and in local authorities who spend far too much time to-ing and fro-ing.

I would advise the Minister again to forget that this White Paper was ever produced. It will not be accepted. Take this question of town commissioners. I agree that it is quite ridiculous to have town commissioners in small towns because they have no money and no power to raise money to do anything really effective. It is all wrong to have ineffective bodies. The local advisory committees the Minister proposes to set up will also be powerless and they will go out of existence as quickly as they come into existence because no one wants to be part of an organisation that can be blamed for the inadequacies in an area and the failure to develop an area when they have neither the power nor the money to do anything really effective.

Some speakers have adverted to the need to involve local people in an effective way and the need to provide them with the sort of local advice required at local level. In no place is this needed more than it is in areas like Ballymun in which there are so many short-comings and so much discontent because of a complete lack of amenities generally. There should be somebody on the spot to advise people as to what they can do or what their prospects are. As I said earlier, the people want to get out of it, but they cannot get out of it because accommodation will not be provided for them elsewhere. Even if they work at the other side of the city they must remain in Ballymun. Transfer is out because they are afraid of their lives in Dublin Corporation that, if they provide transfers for some, they will have a flood of applications. The people do not want to live in flat development or in an area in which no amenities are provided. These things are promised, but they are never provided.

We all know that extensive development will take place in Blanchardstown, Tallaght and Clondalkin. Tallaght is rapidly developing. It has been described as a "concrete jungle". I do not like the expression, but I admit it has its appositeness. Houses are appearing all over the place but the amenities that should be provided simultaneously with the houses just are not there. It is not sufficient to say that there are plans. Recreational facilities should be provided simultaneously with housing development. I have had a great deal of trouble in the Tallaght area because I am chairman of the planning committee in County Dublin and the people in Tallaght have no indication of any kind as to what amenities will be provided for them. There is no point in telling them provision has been made. A decision has been made to buy about 40 acres but negotiations have not started. Amenity lands will amount in all to some 1,410 acres but one might as well be throwing chaff against the wind as telling the people these amenities will be provided. Local advisory bureaux could advise people on these things. Once anxieties start it is hard to stifle criticism in the Press and elsewhere. People think that, unless they get the assistance of the news media, houses will be provided but nothing else. There should be local bureaux in all these development areas and these should be manned from 5 o'clock until 9 or 10 at night to give advice; people should know where they stand.

There was a large meeting in Ballyfermot recently and an important and experienced public official chaired the meeting. He told the meeting what the future held for Ballyfermot generally and what amenities it was intended to provide. He was literally shouted out of the place. The people said they had been listening to that sort of thing for too long; the power was there on the streets of Ballyfermot and they were going to exercise it. This is a developing attitude. It is developing rapidly because there is not sufficient local involvement and participation. Those affected should know where they stand and they should know what the future holds for them. That is the only way in which to ally anxieties, the only way in which to get some sort of harmony and content into local government.

Mr. Molloy

In other words, they should have a community council.

Mr. Clinton

They should, but it should not be a powerless community council. There are very strong community organisations. This is particularly true of Ballyfermot. When I represented the area they had a tenants' association. I suggested it was unwise to have just a tenants' association because that was confined to just one class. Admittedly, that class constituted the greatest number, but I exhorted them to involve all the people in the area, the business people and the professional people; they did that and they now have a very fine association. That association should be involved up to the hilt; they should have power and authority locally. They should be responsible for their own area. In that way one would get respect for the area and for the amenities provided in it. You will never get that in the present set-up.

Local government is becoming more and more bureaucratic and the proposals in the Green Book lie heavily in that direction. We are getting farther and farther away from the people and it will be a sorry day for this country when the people are ignored. I hope the Minister will have a long look at this so that we shall never see it in that form again.

Mr. Molloy

The White Paper suggests the establishment of community councils.

Major de Valera

I want to raise a few specific points on this Estimate. Before I do so I want to comment on some of the remarks Deputy Clinton made at the beginning of his speech about the way in which we are discharging our functions in this House in relation to local government. This is something we should raise on the Estimate for the Houses of the Oireachtas. There has been a deterioration in the ability of this House to handle its affairs during the last few years but that is our own fault. There is a tendency to blame the administration and to blame bureaucracy—I detected in Deputy Clinton's speech some reference to bureaucratic control—and that may be so, but if it is so, the fault lies not with bureaucracy but with this House which is not doing its job. It is time we stopped talking about bureaucratic control. If this House is becoming the rubber stamp of administration that is the fault of the House itself. The Civil Service and public servants are trying to do their job and if there is an imbalance that is not their fault; it is ours. I do not think I would be in order to pursue the matter further; as I have said it is a matter more appropriate to the Estimate for the Houses of the Oireachtas, but there has been a deterioration in our ability to handle business since we made the change from the voted account and changed other procedures.

If criticism of people who have made orders or who have been responsible for the administration is implied in some of the things that I am going to say I want it put on record that I am conscious of where the responsibility lies and where there is an imbalance. Having said that I should like to refer to one or two matters which affect the city of Dublin. I do not want to do this in a controversial spirit but rather in the spirit of realising that the problems exist. There are problems and it must be said they are not easily solved.

The first thing I want to deal with is traffic. A number of problems have arisen in regard to local government and traffic regulations at which we should have another look. Over the past few years regulations, speed limits and road signs have proliferated on any and every occasion. I wonder if the people who brought in these regulations considered sufficiently the possibility of their enforcement. I know that the enforcement of these regulations is not a matter for this Minister and I refer to it merely because it must be a factor in deciding whether regulations or limits are brought in or made. It is reasonable to say that enforcement is a factor which should come into the consideration of whether a certain regulation should be made, whether it would be kept, whether it should not be made or whether it should be withdrawn. It is only from that point of view that I want to touch on enforcement, although I know it is not this Minister's responsibility.

There is a "No Right Turn" sign at the corner of Cuffe Street and Wexford Street and Redmond's Hill. I pass that way very frequently and I am not exaggerating when I say that on practically every occasion I see a car turning right in defiance of that sign and nothing seems to happen. I have even seen vehicles belonging to the State, and by that I mean post office vans and buses, turning right at that corner. The sign is clear but part of the trouble may be that the arrow is on the wrong side. Be that as it may that is what is happening at that corner.

I have seen, and I am sure most people have seen, a good deal of light crashing, but that is not really relevant to the point I am making now, because the lights must be there. Speed limits in certain respects are desirable but one sometimes has the feeling that a speed limit is decided upon and nothing further is done about enforcing it. There is a 30 mile per hour speed limit in the city of Dublin which is ignored every day not only by individual drivers but by the whole flow of traffic. Is it right to have such a speed limit if it is not going to be enforced?

Several years ago there was a serious accident on the Naas Road. The then Minister immediately brought in a 60 mph speed limit blanketing the whole country and it is still there. To what extent is it enforced and how desirable is it? This raises two questions and I raise them as if I were a member of a committee trying to decide the thing rather than trying to blame or not blame anybody for it. The first question one has to ask is: is that speed limit necessary at all? What good is it doing if it is not enforced? It may be doing a certain amount of good if it is not enforced, but if it is, is it necessary to put the sanction of the law behind it and bring the law into contempt by non-enforcement? The fact is that in relation to speed limits there has been the total demoralisation of the motoring public and this goes for many of the other regulations as well largely because, and although it does not relate to this Minister in all fairness it must be said, the task went beyond the scope of the available police force to deal with it. Parking attendants have been brought in to deal with one aspect, but with the exception of a few motor cycle guards there are not sufficient guards to enforce the law.

I am asking whether these matters should be looked into because it is very demoralising to have law and legal regulations by common consent largely ignored. It is also unjust because it means that occasionally a person is pulled up or prosecuted for an offence that practically all the rest of the motoring community are committing and that man, in effect, is discriminated against. It is a very dangerous thing indeed if one admits a principle where law can be selectively enforced. The law should be the same and the enforcment of it should be the same for all citizens regardless of any other consideration. This principle is, not willingly but, in fact and implicitly, infringed in our whole traffic situation. We have the speed limits, we have the regulations, we have all these things and they are very much more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

One must admit that putting up signs and notices of speed limits and so on is helpful; it is at least a reminder to the responsible motorist. I have no objection to that, and in fact that would be a very good thing, but it should not be brought into the category of a criminal law unless that criminal law can be enforced and enforced fairly for all citizens. What is happening now is that you may have a spot speed trap or something like that and it is the unlucky one who gets caught where it is patently obvious to the whole community that the law is being broken every minute of the day. Perhaps a little assistance to the Garda Síochána or the provision of a stronger section in traffic control would help. Prevention is much better than conviction in matters of this nature.

It is a very disturbing thing to hear far too many people saying that public servants are developing into a privileged class. One hears it particularly in regard to local government. This is a very bad thing. It is something that I believe is by and large totally unfounded. We are doing things wrongly and allowing this kind of impression to go abroad. I am not going to shelve the responsibility outside ourselves here, if such a situation is developing. In the matter of parking, it is talked about that in certain areas, for instance, the areas around this building and around Government Buildings, there are free parking areas, where there are no parking meters, that there is no observance of rules about double parking or anything like this. The fact is that it is not a question of public servants at all. There is a good deal of disquiet occasioned by this kind of talk.

The Minister should specifically deal with the problem of parking for the Government offices. Well and good if some area has to be appropriated for it, there is a case to be made for providing it. In other places in the city there are parking spaces available and many firms have acquired parking space and charge a small amount to the people who use it. There are various ways of doing this. It would not be a bad idea at all if, as far as parking space is available to public servants, this thing were faced up to and arranged so as to put an end to the type of talk that is becoming far too prevalent outside. There is far too much murmuring about it. It would be best put right by the appropriation of the necessary areas for the purpose as a perfectly public and regular thing.

This brings me, in a sense, to the Christ Church area and the rebuilding that is proposed for that area for local administrative purposes. Again, the administration must have the facilities for administration and adequate buildings and facilities should be provided but I would join my colleague, Deputy Fitzpatrick, in a plea in regard to Christ Church Cathedral and the display of that building and the preservation of what was the original or ancient city of Dublin in so far as it has survived, particularly the cathedral, a couple of the churches, and the Tailor's Hall. There is a very fine view to be had from the direction of the quays between Ormond Quay and the Four Courts, just above Merchants' Quay, to the left. One wonders whether that is not worth preserving and whether there are not great possibilities here. Even if it were at the cost of revising plans and the expenditure of money in exploiting what is there, it would be worth it. There are many beautiful buildings abroad that are not any more beautiful than Christ Church would be, given the proper setting. This is something that might be considered before there is a final commitment.

On the other side of the river there is space becoming available in the area of High Street generally. A daring and imaginative approach to that area, even at the cost of a certain amount of money, would well repay this city in the long run. It would open up the old city of Dublin, which itself has certain long historic sites, such as Christ Church itself, St. Patrick's, St. Nicholas's, the Tailor's Hall the Brazen Head, the Marshalsea, which is going. There are things there to be preserved and they would be best preserved, best exploited, if the environment were developed to suit the monuments I am talking about, in other words, if the settings for the jewels were adequate. Both as a tourist attraction and as an amenity for the city, our own pride or any score you like, that would be a rewarding thing and there would be a good pay-off. It should be easy to get provision for administrative accommodation parking or for anything else that is required elsewhere.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.