asked the Minister for Local Government if he is aware of the growing number of families with one child on Dublin Corporation waiting list for whom there is no hope whatsoever of accommodation in the corporation's present building and allocations scheme and that their plight is made all the worse by the fact that furnished accommodation is virtually impossible to obtain; and if he will consider an emergency building programme to accommodate these people.
Written Answers. - Dublin Housing.
287.
I am aware that there is a substantial number of families with one child on Dublin Corporation's approved waiting list, and that there is no immediate rehousing prospect for many of these families.
This problem has been a cause of concern to me for some time, and I have had a special examination made of it by my Department, in conjunction with An Foras Forbartha and the National Building Agency. I am awaiting the submission of a report by An Foras, which I requested as a matter of urgency, on the possibilities of providing dwellings of a shorter lifespan than normal, as part of the local authority programme, to cater for such families. I have also received from the agency designs of dwellings which they have evolved in discussions with manufacturers. These are being examined in my Department and in An Foras.
My concern at the plight of these small families on Dublin Corporation's waiting list and my feeling that some exceptional steps should be taken to rehouse the more urgent of these cases have been made known to the corporation, and they have been asked to consider using the agency's design for a small dwelling with limited life for a programme supplementary to their normal housing programme. They have been informed that I am prepared with the agreement of the Minister for Finance, to make a special additional allocation of capital to get such a project underway.
An experiment using a small number of the shorter-life dwelling at a high density, within a major scheme, is already being developed at Bray with the co-operation of the local housing authority. Dublin Corporation have been informed of the experiment and it has been suggested to them that a similar programme—of incorporating enclaves of special small dwellings in future housing schemes undertaken by the corporation—would make inroads into the needs of small families on their waiting list. They have also been told that any alternative course of action to meet this problem will be gladly considered by me.