I understand that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries reported progress.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 26: Local Government (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That a sum not exceeding £27,853,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1974 for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Local Government, including grants to Local Authorities, grants and other expenses in connection with housing, and miscellaneous schemes and grants including a grant-in-aid.
—(Minister for Local Government.)
He is making great progress elsewhere.
That is what you think.
I have no intention of trying to score political points in my contribution to this debate but a few items have come to my notice which I should like to draw to the attention of the Minister. In any review of the Department of Local Government everybody interested, and especially public representatives, must give priority to the housing of the community. At times we feel frustrated at the delays and we feel frustrated because we cannot achieve the ideal situation.
Looking back 30 years, I feel some satisfication in comparing the position as it is now and as it was then. We have no magic wand to wave and transform slums into nice housing estates. When I became a member of Cork Corporation 30 years ago, there were many slum areas in the city: 150 houses to the acre; every room in every house occupied by a different family. I remember visiting a family and I found that the food was suspended from the ceiling by a string. It could not be left on the table because the rats would eat it. There was also wire around the babies' cots to prevent the rats from eating them.
We could not wave a magic wand and get rid of all the festering sores overnight. They had been there for generations. Money had to be provided. Sites had to be bought. Plans had to be made. Lists of applicants had to be arranged. The corporation are now the landlords of some 10,000 dwellings built in the past 20 years with bathrooms and modern conveniences, and built in recent years with central heating. Families are now living in affluence compared with conditions 30 years ago. Something worthwhile has been done. It is natural that we should be frustrated because things are not happening as quickly as we would desire.
The Minister for Local Government in any Government does his best with the resources at his disposal. It is generally accepted that as many people as possible should purchase and own their own homes. We toyed with this idea in Cork for quite a number of years It was not easy to formulate a scheme. Some years ago we did, and it was sanctioned by the Minister. We offered it to the tenants. A minority accepted it and proceeded to purchase their houses. They were amongst the best citizens we had in the city. They were prepared to make sacrifices to purchase their own homes.
Fortunately for the city, or unfortunately for that minority, a new scheme has now been sent down by the Department. It is a better scheme for the tenants. I would be the first to acknowledge that. There is a further inducement to them to become the owners of their own homes. I welcome that, but the members of the Cork Corporation felt that an injustice was being done to those who had already entered into a contract to buy their own houses on less favourable terms.
It is not their fault that this happened; in fact, it is because of their initiative and good citizenship that they find themselves in this position. They are few in number and the amount of money involved is comparatively little. The Cork Corporation unanimously petitioned the Minister to reconsider the position to see if he could get them in on equal terms to those who are coming in for the first time. If the Minister listens to organisations composed of people who are not elected public representatives he might also consider the unanimous view of members of Cork Corporation in this instance. He would be doing a worthwhile job and it would cost very little.
That is the position in the city area but it is a different matter in the county area. In the county council area we select a district and then advertise in the daily papers for applicants for houses. From that list we select those who are regarded as eligible. The process then starts of providing homes for these people and I am sorry to say it is a very slow process. First, the county council must acquire and service a site, they must advertise for tenders and send them to Dublin——
Not any longer.
I am very glad that is not the case now. I am only mentioning what happened in the past in order to give the Minister full credit. I hope he will do even more to shorten the long delay in housing matters. In the past tenders frequently were returned because the price was too high; we had to readvertise and, as the cost of materials and labour increased so rapidly, it was frequently found that the second tenders were dearer than the ones that were rejected. It was generally accepted that a period of four years elapsed from the date the person was regarded as eligible for a house to the time the house was ready for occupation. It is anyone's guess what happened to the people on the original list; it was rather like the words of the song: "Some had died and some had wandered". We invariably found that the supply of houses was not adequate to meet the demand. I welcome the fact that it is not necessary to send all proposals to Dublin for sanction. In Cork city and county we have highly qualified and well-paid engineers, architects and planners. If they have satisfactorily built 1,000 houses, it does not make sense that they should have to send to Dublin for sanction to build similar houses and it does not add to the prestige of the local authority.
I should like to draw the attention of the Minister to the matter of water supplies in rural areas. We have had much talk about the eradication of bovine tuberculosis and about rural electrification; I accept that both these projects are necessary but it is also vital that every family in the country should have an adequate supply of fresh water. This should be regarded as a national problem and tackled on a national scale. The intentions regarding group water supply schemes were good but there has been a hold-up somewhere and this should be eliminated. The Minister intends doing something about this matter and I glad that this is the case. There should be better liaison with the local authorities; the people from the Department dealing with this matter should be either based in the area concerned or else come to meetings of the local authority where they can consult with local representatives and with engineers and officials of the council.
I was pleased to see that the Minister will continue to provide swimming pools as I have been interested in this matter all my life. It is desirable that we have these facilities not only from the point of view of sport. Swimming is an exercise that can be undertaken by the most fragile child; frequently it is the best exercise for a handicapped child because water massage is the most gentle form of physiotherapy. Many boys and girls who may not be able to participate in field games can become quite proficient at swimming. If a child can swim at the age of eight, nine or ten years when he reaches the age of 14 years usually there will be little wrong with him because swimming develops the chest and lungs and when they are in a healthy state the rest of the body takes care of itself.
In this island many lives are lost because people get into difficulties when swimming and, consequently, lifesaving is of the greatest importance. One of the greatest achievements in the last few years in this connection has been the development of the number of schools that provided swimming facilities and engaged qualified coaches to teach the children. We should not be satisfied until every child gets a certificate for proficiency in swimming and lifesaving. I am not too despondent regarding the cost involved. The collection of garbage costs money but we do not visibly see the return. I am very glad the Minister will continue to provide swimming facilities.
There is a very urgent matter for the Cork area to which I should like to refer. I miss a past colleague of mine when I speak on the merger of the Cork city and county areas under one authority. I have been a member of the corporation for the past 30 years I have been on the county council for the last 12 or 13 years. I am as aware as most people of the necessity for more uniformity in the government of that area. People in the city and county areas are agitated because they consider progress in this matter is being hindered and they know the full potential of the entire area cannot be realised until a decision is made on the matter. I am not going to speak about a takeover by the city or by the county because there is no necessity to do this. What we are talking about is a merger of the entire area under one authority. Some people might say that as Cork county is the largest in the State it is too big for one authority. However, the county of Cork has one manager and three assistant managers. It has three committees—the northern, western and the southern committees, all statutory bodies under a manager. The county manager is head of that pyramid. What is wrong with having a manager at the top with five assistant managers instead of four and bringing Cork city in? We have the one area for the selection of football and hurling teams and so on, but when it comes to local government there is a division. The city cannot extend beyond a certain area, cannot put down sewer pipes and drainage pipes because they do not know what size pipes the county have in mind for the drainage of their area. I have no wish to go into this in detail, but I am sure the Minister and his Department know that there are many ways in which progress is being hindered and frustration caused to citizens of the whole area.
The question will be asked: "What do the people down in west Cork know about the government of the city of Cork?" But what do the people of west Cork know about the government of Youghal or Mallow or north Cork? They have their own committees, and the north Cork committee or any other committee would not be interfered with in any way. Some of my colleagues in the county council raise the bugbear of the rates: the rates would be increased if they joined the city. There is no necessity at all for that. The rates of the three county council areas are all different. The western committee has a different rate to the northern committee and the northern committee has a different rate from the southern committee. If there was a fourth committee, there is no reason why there could not be a different rate there also without interfering with the existing one.
I am sure the Minister is aware that this is a problem that must be solved at Government level. By all means consult the local representatives and the local managers. We have had joint meetings for the first time in over 100 years between the city and county representatives, and it came to absolutely nothing. The joint statement of the two managers who were in favour of the merger did not produce any tangible result. In the meantime, neither authority knows where it is going. We have the city hall a mile away from the county hall, both occupied by qualified and expensive staffs and each making plans as if the other did not exist at all. I am not blaming anybody for that; it is just the way things are developing. As regards Cork harbour and the potential of its hinterland, if this is not attended to, not alone will it be a local loss but a national loss. It is the principal harbour of the country, and it would be a national disaster if the Government or the Minister does not have the power and the initiative to do what is required. I would appeal to the Minister to make it a special charge on his time to look into this matter and make a decision as soon as possible.
On the question of amenity grants, I know boroughs are not entitled to these grants, but Cork city did get grants under some heading or other a few years ago and they were put to very useful purposes. Of course, the budget is gone for this year and I am sure whatever money the Minister has got has been earmarked long ago. However, I would appeal to him to consider making amenity grants available to cities, and particularly the city of Cork, in which I am interested, for such things as the development of the Glen area. The Glen was given to the city as a gift by an industrial firm down there. It is a beautiful place and we look forward to some help towards developing it into a park, a recreational ground, for the huge built-up area which is there now.
The Minister praised the fire brigades in his speech. I also want to pay tribute to them and especially to those part-time firemen who are in towns around the rural areas and who sacrifice so much of their time in training and being on duty when it is necessary. Again—and, perhaps, I am speaking for the merger — I would like to see all those rural part-time firemen being sent into the city of Cork where a modern fire station is being built and where they could be trained, in much the same way as students who go to the technical schools on block release courses. If they could be sent there for a couple of weeks every year it would improve their efficiency and also be a form of thanks to them for the voluntary work they have put into fire fighting.
The matter of litter is also dealt with in the Minister's speech. When we go to other countries and cities in Europe, what strikes us immediately is the difference in the attitude of the people towards others property and especially towards the community's property. The absence of litter in the cities of Europe puts us to shame when we think of the main streets of our cities. The cure for that situation is not to be found in the Minister's Department but in giving more time to civics in the schools. The other cure is that the law should be enforced against people who blatantly throw litter on the streets and there should be severe fines. I have little doubt that if the local authorities asked for more severe penalties, very shortly our streets would be much cleaner and our rate-payers would be paying much less for the collection of refuse.
Like many others, I am disturbed because, while many people abide by the planning Acts and seek permission to do this or to do that and abide by the result, there are others who flout the law, put a structure up, cock their noses at you and dare you to take it down afterwards. That happens in big places as well as in very small places. There again, the local authority should be given increased powers, and in the case of people who are in the process of breaking the law by having a building half up or more than half up, the local authority should be allowed to take an injunction against them.
There is in Cork as in Dublin the problem of traffic, which is choking the business of the city. It is a matter which is causing great concern and it is felt that the Department of Local Government might consider it important enough to allow us to pay some consultants to provide a plan to ease the traffic situation in Cork. I would appeal to the Minister to consider that favourably and as a matter of urgency. We need at least two bridges very badly. Cork is built between two branches of the River Lee and if a big lorry breaks down on one of the quays everything is stopped for an hour or more. Like the drainage scheme, this was mooted 25 years ago and was put off because it was too expensive. Now it is being done when traffic is much heavier, when money is there but does not mean as much. It is costing ten times as much and we are tearing up the city when it should have been done 20 years ago.
I want to draw again the Minister's attention to the matter of the unified authority for the Cork area. Although there will be difficulties and problems, especially as there will be vested interests and long traditions involved, I hope it will be done very shortly. I hope the Minister will give that his very serious attention. The other matter I want to mention is the small minority of Cork tenants who have entered a contract to buy their houses and are at a disadvantage under the new scheme.
I do not know how long the Minister will be in his present position. It will not be my fault if he is there too long, but while he is there I wish him every good luck and I hope he will have a pleasant time.
This Estimate is of real concern to all Deputies. It provides for homes for our people and all the related services which are so important to the people and consequently to us who represent them.
Those of us who are the Minister's colleagues in the Labour Party were particularly glad when we heard that the portfolio for Local Government was being given to Deputy Tully. Deputy Tully is a man of ability and experience, with the strength of character and social conscience necessary to do this job well. I should like to congratulate him on his appointment and also to congratulate his Parliamentary Secretary, who is possessed of the same sterling qualities.
The sense of confidence we felt on the Minister's appointment has been shown after eight months to be very well founded. His first Estimate is before the House and we have found that there are large increases under all the headings of the Estimate. There is a total increase of £12,046,000 over last year. This is a formidable sum. There is an increase of £5,500,000 on housing subsidy. An additional £1½ million goes towards grants on private houses. Another £500,000 goes towards subsidisation of loan charges on water schemes. The Road Grant is up by £3.29 million over last year. In addition an extra £25.15 million non-voted capital has been provided for housing and for the other services related to it. While we cannot visualise a situation in which we will be satisfied that enough is being done in this field, it is gratifying to know that such a major step forward has been made in the first year after the change of Government.
I spoke of the sterling qualities of the new Minister. I believe he will need all of them if he is to meet the tremendous challenge that faces him. The Minister tells us that over the past six years 89,000 or 90,000 houses were completed. This was an average of 15,000 a year. The Minister explained that we needed 35,000 of those houses to replace those lost by obsolescence and demolition, that we needed an extra 32,000 to meet the needs of new family formations and that we ended up with only 4,000 extra houses a year to meet the bad housing situation of which we are all aware. Deputy Healy spoke about that situation. I have not had the experience to which he referred of bad housing in Cork city but I am well aware of the situation that obtains in rural Ireland. I am aware of the bad houses, the unfit houses, the rat-infested houses, the overcrowding and the appalling conditions in which harassed mothers with large families have had to live year after year while local authorities carried out surveys, prepared lay-out plans and sent them to the Department of Local Government for sanction. Quite often the Department found some alteration necessary in the plans. They came back again, were amended, went back to the Department and came back to the local authority in due course.
Many months elapsed between their going to the Department and coming back. Tenders were then invited and sent for sanction. Frequently they were found to be too high and sent back. The scheme was then readvertised. Prices had increased in the interim. Deputy Healy mentioned a period of four years, but it has been my experience that five and six years elapsed from the time a survey was done in an area until the key was handed over to a tenant. The need very often had evaporated in the meantime, but a great deal of human suffering was endured while this inefficient system was allowed to continue.
It is heartening to know that the Minister is determined to speed up the provision of local authority houses. He told us that, while there are 30,000 families seeking local authority houses, the local authorities have only 10,000 dwellings under construction. One third of the need is being met at present. That gives an indication of the magnitude of the problem that faces the Minister.
I have often spoken on this subject in my capacity as a member of a local authority. I was very happy to find that the Minister was determined to ensure that the standard of local authority housing would be the same as that for private dwellings. I have heard him say, inside and outside the House, that it was his intention, during his term as Minister for Local Government, to ensure that it will not be possible for anyone to identify on sight a local authority house from a private house. This is as it should be. We are united with the Minister in seeking to achieve this.
In the past, the building of local authority houses tended to rest mainly in the hands of a small number of contractors. Anybody who has served on a local authority will be aware of that. These contractors are well known to the local authorities. There are contractors who, for one reason or another, will not do local authority work. There are small contractors who might be very anxious to get involved in this work but because of the present set-up they find they are not in a position to do so. The Minister's new programme to increase the building of local authority housing to supplement housing is welcome. The fact that the council could provide materials and payment could be made on account as the work proceeds will make it easier for these small contractors to get involved in local authority work.
It has been very difficult to get tenders for isolated cottages in rural areas. I have known of cases where there was a real need for the erection of an isolated cottage for the purpose of housing the family of an agricultural worker or a postal worker who wishes to remain in the area. This problem will be solved if the Minister's plan to involve small contractors in this sort of work and to help them to break into the work being done by local authorities is successful.
The Minister referred to the provision of adequate serviced land for housing. We are all concerned about this, particularly since the coming into operation of the Planning Acts. There is a very real need for serviced land adjacent to our towns and villages. Local authorities have great difficulty in acquiring this land. I should like to pay a tribute to the land officer for the Cork County Council who has negotiated so successfully the acquisition of land for this purpose. He has only recently had to have recourse to compulsory purchase.
We have a serviced site in Blarney, County Cork. That site was earmarked many years ago. Nine years elapsed and no money was forthcoming for the purchase of that site. Money was never provided and it was finally purchased with moneys which were, to some extent, syphoned off from the fund available for the repair of cottages and local authority houses. It was possible to save from that fund because the number of cottages needing repairs became smaller. This site has many faults which are the concern of the local authority. It is a great comfort to us to know that the Minister in his speech made a reference to the provision of sites adjacent to built-up areas.
The Cork County Council need £150,000 to purchase land already earmarked for housing. We will need more if we are to meet our obligations to house our people. In the Official Report of Tuesday, 20th November, 1973, at column 46, the Minister said that he appreciated that the financing of forward land acquisition had been a major problem for local authorities. That is true. He went on to say that he was prepared, through our local authorities, to include in the capital cost of schemes for loan purchase the full cost of servicing such temporary borrowing. I realise that the Minister cannot allow local authorities access to the Local Loans Fund for everything. This is the best he could do. It is a step in the right direction and should enable us push ahead with the acquisition of serviced sites.
He also referred to homes for the aged. We are only beginning to grapple with this problem in rural areas. The Minister is right when he says that support services would be more readily available if we fulfilled the basic need of homes for elderly people. Some health boards would, in fact, be willing to provide a warning service in such homes. A few homes for the elderly could be provided in every scheme. In my experience it is often very difficult to get elderly people to move any distance from the areas where they have spent the greater part of their lives. We had that experience in Douglas, County Cork. People at that age are sometimes reluctant to apply for homes for fear of their being moved some distance from the area in which they have lived for many years. Local authorities have been known to let the opportunity pass of buying small dwellings which could have been renovated and given to people in the area who are in need of housing. This whole sphere of homes and ancillary services for the old must engage much of our attention and imagination in the years ahead.
I have mentioned already the long lapse of time that occurs between the acquisition of a site by local authorities and the handing over of keys to tenants. Local authorities seem to accept these delays as being normal but the Minister must do everything possible to ensure that there is a new approach in this regard and in regard to the speeding up of housing in general by local authorities. If any progress is to be made their timetable must be on a different basis in the future from what it has been to date. Perhaps when the Minister is replying he will tell us what he considers to be a reasonable lapse of time between date of acquisition and of the handing over of keys. Local authorities will not change their attitude in this regard unless there is much prodding from the Minister. If he will set the ball rolling, those of us who serve on local authorities will do all in our power to bring pressure to bear on them.
It would be remiss of me not to enumerate the many improvements for which the Minister has been responsible since assuming office. We all welcome heartily the new differential rent scheme. In particular we welcome the decision to disregard such earnings as bonuses and overtime pay in assessing rents under this system. This is a change that many of us have been fighting for for several years because we knew that it was wrong to regard overtime in the same way as basic earnings for rent purposes. Hours worked beyond the normal working day require extra effort and expense and should never have been taken into account for the purpose of the differential rent system. In this regard also the Minister has decided to disregard income tax payments and social welfare contributions so that only the take-home pay is considered. The previous state of affairs was very unfair, to say the least.
The Minister has used the same approach in regard to house purchase schemes. I am aware of many cases in which tenants will be saved expenditure of several hundred pounds as a result of his scheme. The situation heretofore whereby the selling price of a house was related to the market or replacement value without any account being taken of the grants and remission of rates to which private householders were entitled discriminated against tenants of local authority houses. A number of years ago it was decided to give tenants of such houses the option of either purchasing or leasing but I wonder how many local authorities there are who are failing to operate that scheme. It might be no harm to make known those who are involved.
Perhaps the Minister would consider extending the principle of disregarding overtime for the purpose of rent assessment to the area of supplementary grants. This is a matter that I have raised at local authority meetings on many occasions and in respect of which I succeeded in having several resolutions passed, although I cannot say how effective these resolutions are at present. To young people in the process of providing homes for themselves a supplementary grant of £300 or £350 means a lot. In many cases it is a lifeline since it is paid at a time when expenses connected with a new home are enormous. I have seen heartbreak register on the faces of young people on finding that they were disqualified by a hairsbreath from obtaining a grant. Very often this is due to overtime worked during the year prior to the acquisition of a house for the purpose of accumulating the deposit. Some people apply for the grant before the overtime is worked but others who do not know the ropes so well apply afterwards and, consequently, disqualify. I know that the Minister is sympathetic to the problem but there is a tendency among local authorities to be conservative in their assessment.
A circular issued in 1969 asked local authorities to be lenient in regard to windfalls received by applicants in the year prior to application for a supplementary grant. They were exhorted to endeavour to arrive at an average figure for a two or three year period if an applicant did not qualify in the year in which he applied. I have known many cases where the amount of overtime was exceptional in the year in which application was made but where such overtime was taken as an average for a three-year period the applicant was disqualified.
There has been a gradual upgrading of income limits in respect of grants, with the higher figures applying from the earliest dates. The local authority of which I am a member had a number of applications on hand for a considerable length of time. Officials generally were not quite clear whether they should treat them leniently under the regulation or whether they should apply the regulations rigidly as they were applied heretofore. We have a situation in which there is a pile of applications awaiting clarification. At our last meeting, bearing in mind what supplementary grants mean to these young people, we passed a resolution seeking to apply the new limits to all current applications and I ask the Minister now to be very sympathetic to our application because he knows, I think as well as I do, that this would be of tremendous benefit to those concerned.
I sent a circular about that to county managers a few weeks ago.
We did not see that circular. Perhaps the Minister would send a copy to local authority members as well as to county managers in future. I am very glad to know that the Minister's approach is a sympathetic one. It is consistent with his attitude towards these people who are trying to buy their own homes. People should be enabled to buy their own homes because ownership gives people a sense of responsibility and the effects of ownership can be seen in housing schemes, whether they be local authority or private enterprise schemes. People take a pride in their homes when they own them; they group together to improve whatever estate they happen to be living in. They get together in private enterprise housing estates in an effort to remedy defects left after the developers have allegedly finished the estate, with services unprovided, defective houses and general discontent amongst those people who have paid dearly for these houses. I shall refer to this again under planning because it is a rather prevalent situation in new estates.
I was heartened to learn in reply to a Parliamentary Question of the upsurge there has been in loan applications and allocations particularly in my county this year as compared with last year. Cork County Council allocated over £2 million more for housing loans for the first six months of this year as compared with last year. This is a tremendous upsurge. It demonstrates the confidence people have in the Minister and the Government.
I am very pleased with the Minister's decision to raise the restriction on building society loans for secondhand houses from 1st December. This was something that was causing concern. I understood, when the Minister had to impose this restriction, that it would be of the shortest possible duration. The removal of the restriction is very welcome.
Reconstruction grants are an element of our lives as public representatives. They comprise a certain percentage of our work every week. I understand the Minister is reviewing these grants. A review is badly needed in this field. There has been a slight increase but the grants still bear no real relationship to the costs of reconstruction. Costs have soared and there is also a time element involved.
I am quite sincere when I say that we have an excellent personnel in the inspectorate in the Department of Local Government. One hears officials being criticised as unhelpful and discourteous. I have never had that experience. They have always been most helpful and most courteous. They do their work as public officials should do it, advising people where work is not done as it should be done.
The Minister's approach would be to devolve authority for reconstruction grants to local authorities. This is as it should be. Local authorities should be authorities and not just subsidiaries of some central body. If local authorities had more teeth and more responsibility they would be more effective and more businesslike. In the area of reconstruction grants local authorities would be better qualified and more effective than the Department; because of the local nature of the work they could more easily put things right thereby saving time and obviating long delays. I am glad to note that 17,000 more grants were paid out in the first six months of this year as compared with last year, again an indication of progress, that progress so badly needed in the country.
I spoke earlier about the need to eradicate any distinction between local authority and private enterprise houses. Our record in both areas has been pretty bad. I come from a county where there is considerable private enterprise housing development at the moment. Satellite towns are springing up every month. In these towns there is far too high a density of housing. Houses are going up higgledy-piggledy everywhere. There is talk about green belts and Planning Acts. Lip-service is paid to the theory of open spaces and amenities but the sad fact is that there are no open spaces and no amenities.
Hear, hear.
Houses go up wholesale, as many as can be fitted into an acre. I do not know what controls there are. If there are controls, then the Minister should exercise them. If there are no controls then the Minister should take powers to give himself these controls and put a stop to this racket, because it is a racket.
There is, then, a matter to which I referred earlier, the question of unfinished work. The Planning Acts seem to have given speculators control of gold mines. I admit that there is need for planning. There must be planning if we are to make the best of our resources. The Planning Acts were well intentioned but they do not seem to be working out as they were originally intended to work. As I say, they are a gold mine to both land and building speculators. Planning has been a very negative thing in many respects. In the satellite towns houses are going up withing the zoned area. An area is no sooner zoned than all the land is bought up. This is why the Minister's recent restrictions on planning were welcomed so much by local authorities.
Before dealing in detail with the relaxation by the Minister in regard to planning applications I should like to refer, once again, to what goes on inside a zoned area. We have massive development of housing as one approaches towns and villages and every available space being taken up for the erection of houses. One finds detached bungalows, which cost between £10,000 and £12,000 with only a garage between them. I do not know how one could describe dwellings which are separated by a garage as being detached.
We are not a country which is so over-populated that we cannot afford more space than that. Some people have been allowed to grow rich at the expense of those who need homes of their own. There ought to be more control over matters such as this and there ought to be a minimum space between houses. The planning authority should also insist that a minimum space is made available in all housing estates for recreational purposes. Houses are being erected by the thousand without adequate recreational space being provided for children. This great mistake is not recognised for some years because the houses, shortly after they are erected, are usually occupied by young married couples. The need for ample recreational facilities does not become apparent until the children start to grow. We have been talking about this problem for quite some time and we have seen the effect of such schemes in places like Dublin, places like Ballyfermot and Bally-everything else, as portraved on television. Despite all the warnings given as a result of experience gained in such schemes we are continuing to make the same mistake throughout the country.
In my view the developer, the land speculator or the person who stands to gain most from the erection of houses should be asked to contribute to the provision of recreational facilities for an area. It should be obligatory on planners to provide a reasonable amount of land for these facilities. We are aware of the requirements for housing estates and for that reason it should be easy to insist on the planners and developers providing them. A certain proportion of the money made on housing estates should be given towards the provision of amenities for the children of the couples who purchase the houses.
Another matter about which I have strong feelings is where developers leave unfinished houses, roads that are in a deplorable state and services unprovided. The only way house purchasers overcome these problems is by banding together and threatening publicity on the developer unless he provides the basic needs and completes the houses. It is difficult enough for couples purchasing houses to find the money without having to dip into their pockets ten or 12 years after they take up occupation to do work that should have been done by the contractor. Many of the residents' associations in existence have sprung from that need. Very few estates in this country have been properly completed—I accept that there are exceptions—and quite a few builders have proved to be negligent. The Minister should ensure that justice is done to people who purchase houses in big estates.
The Minister's circular on planning was welcomed by local authorities. I had found that people who could not afford to live in big housing estates were refused permission to build in an outlying area. Such people had chosen to build outside of such estates mainly because they were in a position to get the assistance of tradesmen or members of their family to erect a house cheaply. Local authorities, who in the first instance adopted development plans with good intentions, in the end found themselves hidebound and forcing people to go into zoned areas. They found that people were restricted and could not build outside such areas. Because of these restrictions many people had to forego a home.
There should not be a blanket ruling out of septic tanks or a blanket attitude towards ribbon development. There should be a more humane attitude towards people anxious to provide their own homes. We should get our priorities right and our first essential should be to insist that people have homes of their own. We can do that without blighting our countryside. An Taisce, who are doing wonderful work, have expressed concern at the new relaxation of the planning regulations by the Minister but, in my view, they need not be concerned. The Minister has proved that he is fully aware of the problems.
The Minister, as reported at column 63 of the Official Report of 20th November, said he was anxious that planning authorities should not accept the statutory obligation to review their plans as mere routine. He pointed out that some restrictions were necessary but added that we could not allow the beauty of the countryside to be despoiled, the rivers to be polluted, or the efficiency and safety of our road network to be reduced. Neither would the Minister wish to allow development to be carried out in such a manner that health and social problems are likely to result. I think we can rely on the Minister to ensure that this will not happen.
At the same time, the implementation of the plan has been over-rigid in many respects and by many local authorities. I say that as a member of a local authority and as a member of a planning committee who did preliminary work on a development plan and subsequently saw that the implementation of that plan was over-rigidly applied. At many meetings of the planning committee and of the local authority I heard objections about the over-rigid interpretation of the plan adopted. The easing of the restrictions by the Minister will be welcomed by all because what has occurred since the adoption of development plans is not what members of planning committees originally had in mind.
The Minister has displayed great foresight and initiative in this matter and I congratulate him for it. As far as the problem of pollution is concerned I believe we can depend on him to ensure that this will not get out of hand. We are conscious of pollution in areas such as the environs of Cork harbour and we are conscious of pollution from town effluent arising from the big influx of population. We are very grateful for the part played by organisations such as An Taisce. I am sure the Minister will try to strike a happy balance between conservation and progress.
Much has already been said about the removal of the health charges from the local rates. This move was welcomed by many ratepayers. For years we had rate increases of roughly £1 per £1 valuation. It was something new to see the rates coming down this year. We all adhere to our original principle that rates, as such, should not continue forever. We hope that we will see a new approach to local taxation before very long. Rate abatements by local authorities apply automatically to non-contributory old age pensioners and recipients of home assistance, but many rate collectors and many local authorities are adopting a very rigid approach to contributory beneficiaries. It is difficult to provide a solution to this problem. People in receipt of contributory and non-contributory allowances living alone find it impossible to pay rates, even reduced rates. I know the Minister is very much alive to this problem and he will probably find a solution to it in the near future.
Water supply and sewerage schemes are of considerable importance to people who represent rural Ireland. It is disheartening to know that about 30 years ago a plan was adopted to provide, in theory, water in every rural home. After ten years in some areas, they had reached the second year of the plan. The Minister told us that 40 per cent of the houses in rural Ireland still have no water and 45 per cent have no flush toilets. He pins his hopes on group schemes to provide the answer to that problem. Many of these houses are isolated and a long mileage of roads is involved. I suppose it would be unrealistic for the Minister to promise to provide water in every rural home in the foreseeable future by any means other than group schemes.
I concur with those who say that group schemes are by no means perfect. In no other area has the time lag been more of a bone of contention than in the area of group water schemes. If at all possible the time lag should be kept to a minimum. Very often the person who takes responsibility for something is blamed in the end. The same applies to group water schemes. With the best intentions in the world somebody organises a group and then for one reason or another— an inadequate supply of water, or a number of private supplies in the area already, but mostly the source is the problem—the scheme goes on for year after year. The record of group schemes in the past has not been the best. The Minister is aware of that and he is also aware that a different attitude will have to be adopted to them in the future. I believe the ideal would be to give the job to the local authority. The money must also be provided.
Other speakers mentioned the lack of liaison between the Department and the local authorities in the past. I do not think this Minister will persist in refusing permission to an officer of his Department to attend a local authority meeting to bridge a gap that exists between the local authority and the Department in the vital matter of the provision of water supplies. The job could be done better by the local authority who know the needs of the area. We should all commit ourselves to providing water in every rural home. This has been our ideal for a long time. I suppose it was the ideal behind the original plan but I am afraid we fell far short of it as the years progressed. We must renew our resolve to ensure that those people in rural Ireland who pay the same amount of money for the same services get the services. Water is a basic essential. To have it would make life more pleasant for those people. I know many elderly couples who have to carry pails of water miles and miles every day.
People often forget that, under the local authority scheme, the water just comes to their gates and they have to tap it and bring it into the house themselves which involves a certain amount of expense. Under the group schemes the water is installed in their kitchens and it is based on capacity to pay. Those who have least pay less. Very often people are told that they will have water installed in a few months and six years later they still have no water. This is very disheartening.
The local officers dealing with these problems do a very good job. Very often they have to go out at night to meet people who cannot come together any earlier. We should place it on record that they do a very good job. The system is wrong. There is a breakdown in communications between the Department and the local authorities. There is the problem of sources. The system is out-dated and bears no relation to the pace of living today. If people want water, they want it now and not in ten or 15 years time.
I agree with Deputy Healy in his comments regarding the provision of swimming pools. He referred to the beneficial effect of swimming pools on young people, particularly those who may be physically handicapped or have some disability. Although I do not claim the same expertise as the Deputy in this matter, I have personal knowledge of young people with physical defects who have taken up swimming and, as a consequence of that exercise, have made a complete recovery. I realise that housing is the first essential but swimming pools are also important and I am glad the Minister will continue to provide these facilities. Much local effort and money contributions are required and often these are not forthcoming. I am sure the Minister will do everything he can with regard to the provision of pools.
Deputy Healy and other speakers mentioned the fire brigade service and complimented those responsible on their work. This House should pay tribute to the tremendous work these people are doing and I should like to join with those speakers who expressed their appreciation. As we develop industrially and as our harbours develop—I am speaking as a person from Cork, remembering the harbour in that city, Bantry Bay and the oil refineries—we must give thought to the danger of fires on board ships. In the past we were not geared to deal with this kind of danger but it is a matter we must consider now. It is possible that with our limited resources we would not be able to cope with such a situation although I hope I am wrong in this. We must give high priority to fire brigade services both on land and at sea. I am sure the Minister is considering this aspect.
The Road Fund has been increased to £4½ million this year. The provision of roads is expensive and this is an area where we will need to seek aid from the EEC regional development fund. Road development and the provision of water supplies are two very important matters where we may need outside assistance. I am glad to find that some applications for aid have been made already. The demand for improved roads and our limited resources will make it essential for us to seek outside help in the provision of this basic infrastructure. This will be necessary to help our underdeveloped areas and to attract people and industries to the less populated areas. I presume we will make an adequate case for funds from the EEC social fund or the regional development fund to help in the provision of water supplies and of roads.
I should like to congratulate those responsible for the road safety propaganda on television. It has been realistic and effective. The shock element in the advertisements must be sustained. When the advertisements are repeated too often the message tends to become blurred. Those responsible for the advertisements are to be congratulated because they have shocked us into an acknowledgement of our responsibilities as drivers. The advertisements, together with the breathalyser, have had a reasonably good effect and many people have expressed their appreciation of them.
I am sure the Minister was already fully aware of all the matters I raised and that he will do all he can to remedy them. I am very concerned about the mass development in housing, about the lack of facilities and amenities and the high density of development. I am also concerned about the backlog in housing but I am convinced this will be cleared rapidly by the Minister. I know we can depend on him to ensure that the bad development and planning that were a feature of the past few years will not be allowed to continue. We must ensure that more space is given to each house and that basic amenities and recreational facilities are provided. I congratulate the Minster and wish him many years in office. I am convinced that local government generally will benefit from his term in office.
This Estimate has been discussed for several days. Many of the speakers paid compliments to the Minister and I should like to join them in their tributes. This is an expanding Department and the people in it have shown themselves to be aware of all matters in connection with local government. Every week brings new problems with which they must deal. It is a source of gratification to me as a member of a local authority to see the way the officials in the Department deal with the problems, both at local authority and national level.
I suppose the big subheads in the Minister's Estimate could be said to be—and I think this is the case in most countries at the moment—housing, roads, environmental studies and so on. These are all problems which beset us now and will continue to beset us in the future. People in most countries are inclined to congregate in larger centres of the population and we can easily see the problems that will face local government not merely here but in neighbouring countries as well. Indeed, it is interesting sometimes in regard to these matters to read about some of the difficulties that face other countries at present. The most notable context in which we would consider these matters would be either in relation to Britain or Northern Ireland. Today both areas are faced with much the same problems as we are faced with. In Britain at present housing is a burning question. There the great problems are rising costs in the price of land and in the price of materials and, strangely enough, a scarcity of skilled labour, which was hitherto available in that country. I merely mention this matter in connection with the Estimate to indicate that we are not the only country with rising costs all round. The problem is to know how to prevent costs rising.
One must compare like with like but I want to make a rough comparison. I was over in Britain last Thursday week at a function. I visited the Irish Centre and some building sites. There is a notable absence of Irishmen on the building sites in Britain today. Emigration is down, no doubt, to a trickle, but the younger people who are emigrating today are no longer inclined to go in the direction of building sites. This is another element which is causing concern in the larger cities, especially London. Not merely are they faced, as we are, with rising land prices and rising costs of materials but also with a partial scarcity of labour which can be a great disadvantage in house-building. No matter what money is available, if the manpower is not there, properly trained, one cannot make the best use of the land or the materials available.
We are concerned here at present to house people and to house them in such a situation and surroundings that they can live a normal reasonable life. The closer we come to the city the more difficult this sort of project becomes. When the price of land in country towns rises to over £2,000 an acre, one will readily see the difficulty of developing land, servicing it and converting it for housing. It is my opinion as a member of a local authority that if we are not able to keep the private sector serviced, and finance is not made available to do so through normal channels, we shall not be able to make the inroads we would hope to make on housing. No matter what public authorities may do, the private sector must be ahead of the public authority programme. This can only be done by planning so that authorities in every provincial town and village will be in a position to purchase land or, if not purchase it, acquire it at a price which will in the end be deemed to make it a workable proposition. By that I mean that if a house becomes so dear that one cannot afford to live in it then it is not a good proposition.
I was struck by the fact that last October 12 months the British Government brought in what was known as the National Finance Housing Bill. This was designed to encourage people with a certain income who are living in public authority houses to move to the private sector and build their own houses. At that stage money rose in price and became so dear that those people who would be deemed to have salaries which would enable them to build a house considered that their salaries would not run to such a proposition and they thus have remained on the lists of the local authorities. The result is that the local authorities housing lists have doubled and are on the way to trebling. This seems to me to be a bleak enough prospect for the promoters of the National Finance Housing Bill. It is a strange fact that while the numbers in Britain bear no relation to the numbers here in any aspect of development, at the same time it sometimes happens that the same trends become apparent here. Unless local authorities move quickly in the matter of building up a land bank in every provincial town and village we shall find ourselves in the same position as obtains in Britain. People will be seeking entry to the public authority housing lists and will not be inclined to go in the direction of private building. This would be a very bad trend. I hope we will be able to stem it.
With the best will in the world it seems the housing authorities in Britain have not been able to stem it so far. Most of the middle classes there are joining the public authorities housing lists. I hope that does not happen in our case and that our lists will not grow too long. Our efforts are very humble as compared with those of our larger neighbour. We must persist in our effort to encourage local authorities to acquire the necessary land bank in each area. Otherwise we will run into a blockade as has happened in England.
May I refer again briefly to an article in The Sunday Times of November 25th? It is headed: “Why the Middle Classes Are Joining the Council Housing Queue.” It says that higher building costs, higher interest charges, higher deposits for house purchasers and fewer privately rented homes at a time when more young people want to be more mobile have meant for the first time that people in the £2,500/£3,500 income bracket have put their names on councils' waiting lists. Newcastle is given as an example and the article goes on to describe the type of applicant on the housing list there, the range of income, the number of children and other statistics. We need to be careful, no matter what progress we make in the public sector, to avoid the pitfall of rising costs. If we price ourselves out of housing we will price ourselves on to the public sector and we will put the public sector in such a position that it will not be able to carry on the housing programme. I do not want to be a Job's comforter because I am sure the Minister knows those facts better than I do and I am sure An Foras Forbartha, which is a very communicative unit, is aware of all those trends. There is a little snippet in this newspaper too about the North. Despite the disturbances there up to last year they seemed to be making reasonable progress but now due to many factors they have fallen behind targets. The Northern housing executive is concerned about it. Recently it has come in for criticism, some of it, like all criticism, unfair and some of it wide of the mark. Recently the executive chairman took the opportunity of presenting the facts. They tend to show that rising costs are eroding the housing effort there.
I read the Minister's introductory speech once in a hurried way and made an attempt to read it a second time. He has covered all sides of his programme and the fact that he is seeking £33 million odd indicates its size. I hope that we, as members of local authorities, will play our part in the housing drive and back up the effort towards more housing. There are a number of ways in which one could consider the housing drive. There is a good deal of heart-burning about traditional methods. I know, as a member of a local authority, that unfortunately the larger builders in our area have gone out of public authority housing. There are reasons for that. They could get work of a more profitable kind. We found it difficult to build houses at the desired speed.
In my opinion, there is too wide a gap between the time an applicant puts his name on the housing list and a house is built for him. In this context we considered various ways and means of reducing this gap. We considered three ways: the traditional method of tender from the public for contracts, direct labour and industrial house building. We decided to use in a pilot way, a combination of all three to see how it will work out. We hope, in two or three years' time, to have a good idea as to which method will be the most satisfactory.
The personnel engaged in the construction industry should co-operate fully in the proposed training scheme. If there is a lack of skilled workers in the London area, sooner or later we shall find a similar lack here. We should be able to stream a number of children leaving vocational school in the direction of the construction industry and a retraining scheme under AnCO. This body is best equipped to handle this. We saw various methods of training used by AnCO on our recent visit to the centre at Ballyfermot. If we want the best type of construction we must have fully trained officers.
I urge full co-operation between the construction industry, the Department and AnCO to give a lead in this training. It would be too bad if, at this stage in our housing drive, we were to fall down on this. The housing industry is enormous. It involves approximately 85,000 people. One could say there were more if one took into account those engaged in ancillary services, such as water, electricity, et cetera.
The main trouble to date has been, ubfortunately, the lack of long-term plans. I have no doubt that the Minister will do his best, as his predecessor did. The construction industry has a short-term programme and because demand was high and costs were not, we got on reasonably well. We are about to cross the threshold from relatively reasonable to enormously high costs for building. Despite the best efforts of the Government or the Minister this can assume proportions which would seriously impede our housing drive. We should be alive to this fact and stress the necessity for voluntary effort here.
Voluntary organisations and credit unions play a part in this but they could do better. As I have said on other Estimates we were never very good at co-operating. Some people can give more of their time in a voluntary way to help their neighbours because they work shorter hours. In this way much could be done to short-circuit the rising costs by community or voluntary effort. The Minister said that he would be glad to help voluntary organisations. Much money is spent on tobacco and alcohol. We give so much of our spare time to amusement, but in what amounts to a housing emergency we should all be prepared to devote a little more time to help house our neighbours. This is not intended to be a mere platitude. When a Government endeavour to give a lead in any sphere there are always people who are happy to leave the whole issue on their plate. In this regard young people who are earning reasonable wages, especially such people as technicians, should be prepared to give more time voluntarily in an effort to help their neighbours.
In this speech the Minister tells us that progress has been made and he makes projections for the future. I am glad that the Minister was able to present us with a good report but we should exercise caution in relation to a housing programme for the future. In this context those engaged in the construction industry should co-operate with the Minister and with An Foras Forbartha in keeping housing on an even keel. There is no point in local authorities talking about housing if they have not the superstructure necessary to accommodate housing. There is much ground to be made up in this regard. For instance, in most towns the superstructure in respect of sewerage and sanitation is not good. The reason for this is that our capital resources are limited but we must ensure the availability of these services in any housing drive or, indeed, in any area where industry is proposed. If this superstructure is made available in time it will pay dividends in the long term because it would enable us to avoid the worst pitfalls that other countries have experienced in their attempts to house their people.
I have always been of the opinion that each local authority should have the services of a landscaper available to them. I am not suggesting that each body should have these services on a full-time basis but there could be co-operation in this field among neighbouring local authorities. The availability of these services would help to eliminate housing schemes that look like enormous barracks. This is an aspect of housing that should engage the attention of all the agencies concerned—An Foras Forbartha, the Planning Division of the Department, and so on.
We must endeavour, too, to avoid pollution and in this regard superstructure is very important. Up to now there has been much piecemeal development by urban councils in respect of buildings and extensions. I am concentrating on towns because these are the danger areas, the areas where one finds all the ills that afflict the affluent society. The greatest contribution we could make in this regard would be to provide a decent superstructure for proposed buildings. All of this requires a lot of money but it is very necessary and should be provided even at the expense of foregoing some houses in the short term. Each local authority should make every effort possible to acquire and improve land. They must endeavour to improve sanitary services and the treatment of sewage comes under this heading. Housing and industry come within the realm of conservation in so far as the avoidance of pollution is concerned. We must be able to expand in the future in the knowledge that the necessary amenities will be available. We must not allow a situation to continue whereby children have nowhere to play but on the public street. There must be proper playgrounds. In our desire to build houses we did not give sufficient attention to a proper superstructure for housing and industry. It was not until the advent of polluted lakes and air and reading of what has happened in other countries that we came up against this problem.
The Minister referred to building societies and to the fact that these have been more or less regenerated. For a while it looked as if the flow of money was going to by-pass these societies. Should that happen it would be a very bad day for us. It would also be a bad day for us if any section of the community were to set out to interfere with the ramifications of building societies. Indeed, I think it is an offence to do so. If I go out and break a window deliberately I commit an offence. If I withhold my repayments to a building society, having entered into a contract with the society, I also commit an offence. Not only do I commit an offence but, worse still, my action militates against those who are looking for houses, the newly weds and the young married men and women. Large numbers of these are on our waiting lists and anything that impedes the housing of these people is a disservice to the community. It is not a praiseworthy action and it is certainly not an action entitled to any sympathy.
We live in a free country. Let us preserve that freedom. It is up to the elected representatives in this House not to be ashamed or afraid to speak out against wrongdoers. Those seeking houses should not be impeded in their search by someone who is already housed advising them not to be in such a hurry. It is tantamount to their saying: "We are housed but we do not want to see you housed." I am glad the Minister is looking into the law in relation to building societies. I believe it needs amendment.
Building societies have been a very active source in the promotion of housing. Last year they lent £40 million towards housing. They are circumscribed in so far as the money they receive is lent out again for the purpose of housing others. Theirs is a worthy objective. They are not like insurance companies who lend their money to the highest bidder. I am glad the Minister has circularised insurance companies. They collect a great deal of money here and yet their contribution to the housing drive has decreased and that in the face of rising costs everywhere. I am glad the duty of housing the people was pointed out to them. If we took the attitude that we had not social obligations to our neighbours we might get rich quickly but we would have little of which to be proud. Insurance companies should not need any urging to reinvest some of the money they collect here in housing.
A country is no good without people. We could find ourselves with a number of tall buildings in our cities with nobody in them. When one goes on the Continent one likes to visit the older parts of cities and towns to examine the architecture and get some idea of the living standards of the past. We can only learn of these things if we preserve them. The insurance companies should examine their consciences and decide to invest more money in the provision of private enterprise housing, thus helping in the drive to house our people.
The Minister says we have a very large stock of old housing which is not in as good shape as similar habitations in other European countries. I differ slightly from the Minister in this though he probably has better information at his disposal than I have. I have been abroad and I think our old houses compare favourably. The lay-out may not, perhaps, be as good but the construction is reasonably sound. With costs rising as they are it should be possible to make do and mend where many of these old houses are concerned. The Minister said the situation is being examined. I hope we will be able to give a better incentive to people repairing those houses. I know it is easy to say that but I believe that at present it would be well worth doing. If we could preserve an existing house and extend it we would be doing a good turn and I believe we would be in a position to house an extra family.
The Minister's Department has always worked very well. If we mean to improve our existing housing stock and regenerate our output on the land by having an early succession arrangement we will have to offer houses to farmers who are not anxious to surrender their holding to a younger man because they have not adequate accommodation for themselves. It is possible that the brunt of this will fall on the Department of Local Government, the Department which, in my view, would be best suited for dealing with this problem. This is a matter which was talked about some years ago but it was not encouraged and no headway was made. It is a pressing problem and if we are to make our way in Europe we must be prepared to assist young farmers. We need young men to work the farms and we can only get them by offering incentives such as providing proper houses for the old people.
With reference to group water schemes the Minister told us of his intention to help the spread of such schemes in rural areas. He told us that it was his intention to see that there was a proper water supply in every household. This is a very laudable objective. I understand that 40 per cent of the houses in the country do not have a proper water supply and 45 per cent are without proper sewerage facilities. Everything possible should be done to remedy this position. In the country areas it is desirable that the people should have a good water supply if they are to be encouraged to remain there and invest in farming. Sewerage is also very important.
I should like to state that any request I made to the Minister's Department for advice or information in relation to water or sewerage schemes was readily forthcoming. I accept that it is difficult to organise group schemes and for this reason I welcome the decision of the Minister to transfer to or devolve power on local authorities to deal with such matters. This has already been done in a pilot scheme which, in my view, is the best way of finding out any faults. I would like to see local authorities given power to provide help for people who form group schemes. Group schemes are very worthy enterprises and anybody would be proud to be associated with them. Their accomplishments are wonderful.
The Deputy's county is one of those I have devolved and I am sure of his co-operation in this regard.
We will co-operate to the fullest. We have a number of schemes in operation and we believe that competition will now enter into this. When a parish completes a group scheme we feel certain that the neighbouring parish will be anxious to emulate it. This is competition but competition is the life of trade. In this way we hope to make greater progress in the future.
I welcome the Minister's announcement in relation to planning. There is no doubt but that this is one area of activity of the Department of Local Government which needs to be looked at. A big number of appeals are with the Minister's Department and I feel that some system should be implemented whereby the serious appeals are dealt with more expeditiously. It is my experience that a number of the appeals which reach the Minister are marginal and could be dealt with in a different manner. Some way should be found to circumvent the existing procedure so that serious appeals can proceed in a more rational way. When the Minister is considering his new Planning Bill I feel sure that, with his experience in this regard, he will be able to evolve a better system.
I mentioned pollution in connection with housing and industry. The Minister dealt with it very exhaustively. He talked of it in terms of the environmental character of the country. When one wakes up one morning and finds a beautiful lake polluted and all the fish dead on the bank, the real problem of pollution is brought home to one. This has happened in three or four counties. Not too long ago—I just want to refer to this; I do not want to bore the House —I received a letter from the Lough Sheelin Trout Protection Association. I had made some representations to the Minister. I forget whether it was to the present Minister or to his predecessor.
What is agitating such associations is the fact that so many Departments seems to be dealing with this problem. I suggest that pollution is a problem for the Department of Local Government. Perhaps it would be adding one more task to their present tasks, but they are the Department best qualified to deal with pollution. While the Department of Lands may have a function in this respect, sole responsibility for anti-pollution measures should be handed over to the Minister for Local Government. We will never get anywhere while so many Departments have a hand in this problem. I am not saying that the intentions might not be good. They might be the best but, under the control of one Department, decisions could be implemented much more speedily and effective eradication measures could be taken.
The Department of Local Government extend into every aspect of local activity and therefore they would know this problem. There is always a tug-of-war now that we are in an age of forced production, if you like. There is the danger of artificial manures or piggeries or septic tanks polluting our lakes. This is a ghastly and serious matter. We should take note of it. We should not wait until we hear of all the marine life in a lake being destroyed. It is then too late to start talking about taking anti-pollution measures. I have no late news on this, but I suggest that the Government might consider making this problem the sole responsibility of the Department of Local Government. We might then get ahead faster. It is a very serious matter because water pollution will strike at the roots of all our efforts.
The Minister also dealt with dumping, which has become a problem too. I am glad that a survey of local authority areas is being carried out to see that suitable dumping sites are made available. No matter what dumps we provide we will always find some smart fellow dumping refuse at night not far from his neighbour's door. This is a terribly mean act but it is done. People go out from the country towns at night and dump on the side of the road into drains, and so on. This is a bit of a hobby horse with me at local authority level. I do not propose to ride that hobby horse here on the floor of the House. I hope we will not have to have coercive measures to deal with this problem. It is said that 40 tons of litter are removed from the streets of Dublin every morning. God knows how many tons of litter are removed from the streets of country towns. By 12 o'clock in the day one would be up to one's knees in litter.
Somebody mentioned that we should talk about this matter in the schools but I think we have loaded the school curriculum sufficiently. If we do not talk about it on the hearthstone it is no use. If we cannot get it across to those on the hearthstone that they should instruct the young about waste paper, and so on, we will make no inroads into this horrible and nasty problem. Snippets on radio programmes and in the papers could do good. This would be a form of advertising against pollution. I notice that the purveyors and promoters of detergents do a good deal of advertising. They buy space on TV and in the papers, but there is never a word about the effect of detergents. When they are used they go down into the sewers. Perhaps the Minister would suggest to the people who make a good deal of money out of detergents and soap powders that they might mention anti-pollution measures in the same breath as they mention the worth of their products. In this way we might get people talking about the subject, which would be no harm.
I was also taken with the information in the Minister's statement regarding ocean pollution and the threat to marine life, and the measures which are taken in the north-east Atlantic area to deal with them. We welcome those measures. It is not until some disaster occurs, like an oil tanker going on fire, or running on a rock and leaking oil, that we realise the ill-effect which this type of pollution has on the coast of any country.
I have been involved in schemes to provide swimming pools but I think the provision of these pools is more appropriate to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education who has a function in matters dealing with sport. All swimming pools should have the services of a coach. The Minister paid tribute to the Irish Water Safety Association and I can testify to their work but we will never have the best swimmers until we have proper coaching. Coaches may be available at swimming pools in Dublin but this is not the case in country areas. One of the reasons we have not been able to produce first-class swimmers is the lack of coaching. A good coach is worth his weight in gold.
I am glad to see increased provision for amenity schemes because they serve a useful purpose in the community. Now that we have a shorter working week people have more leisure and they should be given help in spending this time to the best advantage. By participating in games people spend more time out of doors where they can enjoy the fresh air and this is to be commended.
The Minister has had good progress to report although I thought he might have been a little more charitable to his predecessor in regard to the housing drive and other matters. I hope we will be able to make long-term forecasting with regard to housing so that, for instance, we will be able to know how many houses we will need in two years time. At the moment we are not able to do that because we have more than enough to do in trying to cope with the existing lists. However, perhaps we may be able to produce accurate forecasts of housing needs at a later stage. I hope that the cost of money will fall to bring it into line with wage packets so that when a person builds a house he will be able to live in it in reasonable comfort.
The debate on the Estimate for the Department of Local Government is one that is welcomed by members of local authorities. While it does not always follow that a doctor will make a good Minister for Health, having regard to the many activities that take place at local authority level members of these organisations feel qualified to speak on some matters in relation to the Department of Local Government.
I should like to congratulate the Minister on the success he has achieved in a relatively short time. The breath of fresh air which seemed to emanate from his Department when he took over as Minister has grown into quite a gale and the progress is so fast it is difficult to keep pace with it. If a competition were held for red tape cutting, the Minister for Local Government would win by a street. The amount of red tape he has eliminated since he became Minister has made members of local authorities quite happy and they now feel they have a greater say in running their affairs. For far too long it was the practice to send to the Department plans for housing, sanitary services, swimming pools and so on and there was the monotonous procedure of sending them back to the local authority for further processing and later of forwarding them to the Department for another examination. This became so frustrating that at times it needed a question in this House to produce results—although it was not always successful. That seems to have changed and the position is much improved. However, it would be unrealistic not to understand that the man who pays the piper must have some say in calling the tune.
The Minister's action in preserving local authorities is to be commended. His predecessor's ideas might have sounded nice and perhaps they had some things that could be commended but the overall picture was fraught with the utmost danger. Had they been put into operation it would have been the thin end of the wedge in the abolition of local authorities and the introduction of regional authorities. I cannot see anything to recommend regional authorities when we look at the situation in regard to the regional health bodies. Although we would still have local councils we would be subordinate to the larger body and this would be disastrous. Changes may certainly be needed in the local government structure as it is. If these changes are needed, let the Minister put them before the House and before the local councils and let them be considered on their merits.
There is one aspect of the local authorities which, in the 20 years I have been a member of one, has always puzzled me as to why nothing was done about it. Knowing that I shall never be in a position to benefit from what I am about to suggest, I am able to advocate it without fear of being accused of seeking political benefit: local authorities should have power to give some allowance to the chairman of the local authority. One must take into account the demands on the chairman of a county council nowadays, the numerous functions he has to perform, which are both time-consuming and extremely costly. I have advocated in my own council at the annual general meeting each year that an allowance should be made to the chairman, provided he was not a member of the Oireachtas; after all, we get an allowance for our activities.
Notice taken that 20 Members were not present: House counted and 20 Members being present,
The chairman of the county council gets no allowance for the many functions he has to perform. The mere pittance which Deputies and Senators receive gets us by. The Minister should have a long hard look at this and allow the councils to make this provision.
It seems to me that the matter to which the Deputy refers may well require legislation. If that be so it would not be in order.
I stand corrected, but if it needs legislation, I hope the Minister will bring it in. In recent years we have had springing up in all directions community councils, residence associations, tidy towns committees and so on. All too often there may be in these associations a tendency to turn into pressure groups. They all have the same end in view, the betterment of their locality, but, unfortunately, they do not have to find the money for the many laudable schemes they want to put into operation, and they usually want those things done overnight. If they could work in conjunction with the local authorities a tremendous amount of good could be achieved. There is not the amount of co-operation between all those associations and the local authorities that one would like to see. If they had the responsibility of finding the money for the schemes they want to put into operation their demands might not be so great. However, if they co-operated a little more, the amount of money available to go around might be better spent in many instances.
That leads me to the matter of rates itself. For years we were advocating that something, be done to relieve the ratepayers. Year after year the rates were soaring. I can recall in my early days on the council that if the rate went up by twopence or threepence there was an immediate outcry: "Where is it going to end?" However, in the last few years it was not going up by twopence or threepence, in old money, but by nearly £1 each year. At that stage the people threw up their hands in despair and said: "They will keep taking it until there is nothing left and then there will have to be a stop."
The change that came about this year as a result of the start of the removal of the health charges from the rates brought a reduction in very many counties. There was a very small increase in my constituency; nevertheless, it was very good to know that the increase which would have taken place was avoided by the action of the Government in removing the increase in the health charges from the rates. We look forward to three years from now when there will be no health charges on the rates.
One charge on the rates could be avoided with a little bit of effort, thought and care. I refer to the charge in respect of litter. It is appalling the amount of litter one sees on the streets of our cities and towns. A few years ago I read in a newspaper an account of an incident which took place in the town of Cheltenham in England. A man sitting in a motor car flicked an empty cigarette packet out of the window. A public spirited lady walked across, picked up the packet and handed it to him. He said: "That is empty. I do not want it." She said: "Neither does Cheltenham." I wonder how many public spirited people would be found in this country who would do just that. It has been suggested that a good stiff fine for throwing litter about would bring about the desired result. I do not know where we would find litter wardens to enforce this.
The Minister for Justice has a Garda patrol who are doing a tremendous job. They are doing it simply because they are in areas where they are not known. In most cases they are not living in the areas in which they operate. It does not matter who they meet, the law is to be enforced and that is that. But how can we achieve that in the case of somebody throwing an empty cigarette packet on the road? It is not possible. While making the complaint, I am not coming up with the answer. It will be an extremely difficult problem to remedy because nobody will take the slightest notice of it until it is brought home to them the amount of money which each local authority has to spend on sweeping streets, collecting litter and disposing of it. The Tidy Towns committees, which have done such trojan work in beautifying our towns and villages, find litter one of their biggest problems. I have seen the members of those committees go out night and morning and collect litter from the streets and roads but those people are all too few. I hope somebody will come up with some bright idea to solve this problem.
One of the Minister's greatest achievements so far has been the dramatic increase in the housing drive. I think he is heading for a record. In my county we have at present 551 houses being built by the county council. Were it not for the change of Government we would have 128 less. That number of extra people at the end of this year can thank the National Coalition Government for their homes. The Minister sent a directive to the county councils that, where possible, schemes were to be extended. Where we had land available and contracts in operation we were able to do that in the case of 128 extra houses.
Between private building sites in progress, tenders accepted, tenders received and tenders invited, our total for this year will be almost 800 houses. That in one county is fair going. We have 18 other areas being investigated with a view to getting building going in them as soon as possible. The people will be most grateful to the Minister for his new approach, for allowing the local authority to go ahead with schemes when the plans are ready.
Despite all this the waiting list is huge and we are finding it extremely difficult to build isolated cottages. Not everybody wishes to live in a town or village. Agricultural workers especially prefer to live near their work, but we find it next to impossible to get builders to build isolated houses. I suppose it is because of the cost of moving building materials from one site to another. We have no trouble in getting a contractor to build 100 houses but no contractor is interested in one house. People continue to wait, living in caravans, in the hope that while the site is available the council will be able to build a house for them. Imagine what living in a caravan in this type of weather must be like, with condensation, overcrowding and all the other problems involved.
We would like to see many more private building sites. One of the problems in regard to private building in my county is the additional cost of having electric power brought to the house. This is outside the Minister's jurisdiction. Perhaps he would have a word with his colleague, the Minister for Transport and Power, to see if something could be done to reduce this burden. It is unfair when a person who has saved and scraped to get a house built is then confronted with an additional bill for £500 or £600 to have electricity brought to his house.
There is difficulty, and it may get worse, in houses which are solely dependent on central heating. Local authorities should be extremely careful in the design of their houses. When driving around the country I have seen many housing estates without a single chimney. Last week when there were power cuts one could imagine the hardship of getting up in the morning and finding there was no electricity or heating of any sort, and no place to light a fire to boil the kettle. While I hope that the oil crisis—"crisis" is the word—will soon be relieved, the prophets of gloom forecast that the oil reserves of the world will be exhausted in a relatively short time. Before then, the scientists and the people with power and brains will find something to replace oil. Nevertheless, the problem is there and there is no point in locking the stable when the horse is gone. Let us make sure that in every local authority house there will be at least one chimney. The Minister can be as "mod" as he likes but let him leave one fireplace in every house.
Beautiful private and local authority housing schemes have been ruined by the lack of recreational facilities. Deputy Carter referred to this. The importance of planning and development cannot be over-emphasised. The 10 per cent which the developer must retain as an open space when he starts a scheme is too small for a recreational centre. Even if one had an enormous scheme and pooled the 10 per cent, one would not have a decent sized recreational centre. Such a centre would enhance an estate. It would be an ideal place where toddlers could play under the watchful eyes of their mothers. When it comes to playing football or taking active exercise there is no provision for this in most estates.
In Kildare we made gigantic blunders when we allowed estates to be built without ensuring that there were recreational facilities. How can we avoid having juvenile delinquents—to use an expression we do not hear much nowadays—if we have not facilities for young people to use up their energies? The lack of facilities for young people, living in the newly built blocks of flats and housing estates breeds vandalism. I implore the Minister to make sure that in future where any large-scale development is taking place he will have sufficient lands made available for recreational purposes, not just the 10 per cent open space to be supplied by the builder from the land on which he is building. Other speakers referred to the high density of building. I will refer to this later.
Because of the pressures from Dublin for housing we, in Kildare, find that developments have taken place so rapidly that the provision of water and sewerage services has not kept pace. As a result, every river and stream in the county has, to some extent, been polluted. The position is so serious that we are asking the Minister to sanction as quickly as possible two regional sewerage disposal works. It is of vital importance to the county that they be sanctioned at the earliest possible date. Even if sanction were to be given immediately, it would probably be towards the end of 1975-76 before any real effect would be noticed. That is a serious situation to be in because the stage could be reached when a notice would appear at county boundaries indicating that one was entering a no-go area.
The water situation is bad, but it is improving to some extent. Like the man who was surrounded by water but who died of thirst we, in Kildare, are surrounded by a huge viaduct bringing water to Dublin but we have not sufficient supplies for our own needs. I hope that before the Estimate for next year is debated here I shall be able to report a solution to our problem in respect of water supplies. However, any such solution would not eliminate the need for considerable expansion in the group schemes. I know that the Minister is very sympathetic in this regard and that he will help the promoters of the group schemes in every way possible.
Apart from Dublin there is no county in Ireland which has as many arterial roads as County Kildare. As I mentioned earlier, there is great pressure on us from outside in respect of house building and industrial expansion, but all of this leaves our road system incapable of carrying the heavy volume of traffic it is expected to carry. I suppose it would require every penny of the Estimate we are discussing to solve this problem, but we are entitled to a larger slice of the cake than we are getting. We are grateful to the Minister for having allocated a large sum of money for the purpose of main road and county road maintenance and county road grant but he did not spell out how the money was to be apportioned. We could have spent the lot on maintenance of county roads, but we decided to split up the money in such a way that a miserable £6,500 was allocated for this purpose.
At a county council meeting yesterday I inquired as to the position in respect of two-and-a-half to three miles of roadway near where I live and I was told that to bring this stretch of road up to the required standard would cost £4,000. That would be a lot of money out of an allocation of £6,500. Any Deputy who travels through Naas on his way to Dublin will realise the amount of roadwork that is necessary in that area. In one year from now it will be almost impossible for anyone to park a car in that town. Consequently, there will not be an iota of business transacted there. I expect that, at the minimum, it will be between three and five years before a roadway is constructed so as to bypass the town. I shudder to think of what will be the position in the meantime.
In his speech the Minister advocated the provision of car parking space. Such development should be encouraged. In this context it is gratifying to read in today's newspapers that a private body, the PMPA, intend providing car parks on the outskirts of the city where motorists can leave their vehicles and avail of free travel for the remainder of their journeys. This is a development that our national transport authority should have thought of many years ago. The traffic in the city is enormous. Half the time people are driving around looking for parking space and in so doing they create traffic jams. If the PMPA's venture is successful the same idea should be adopted by CIE. It would be far better to spend money in this way than to spend it on advertisements which show many cars in a traffic jam and a bus with only two or three people in it. I hope the public will give the PMPA the support they deserve.
I would place the blame for the increasing number of accidents on the road on the inadequacy of our road system. Many accidents are attributed to the drunken or careless driver, but in many cases the defects in our county roads are to blame. Indeed, it is surprising that there are not more accidents when one considers the condition of some of the roads.
The system of road signing, too, leaves much to be desired. A standard system of signing would be very helpful. In my county we pioneered the system of blue reflectors at junctions and on road margins. During the past couple of weeks Dublin County Council have introduced the very effective reflector system on the intersections on the dual carriageway, although someone did point out to me that they looked like the rear lights of a car as one was approaching them rather than reflectors. I really could not agree with that. But, as one goes on, one finds three different kinds of reflector. Could there not be some standardised system so that reflectors would be the same all the way through from Dublin to Cork instead of one county having one colour and another county having another colour? I suppose the main thing is to have the signals there but it would help people, especially in bad weather, if the signs in the distance were the same all over and meant the same thing.
Deputy Flanagan asked the Minister how many passed the driving test at the first attempt. I doubt that many do. It would be interesting to have the statistics. Where a person takes out a driving licence for three years and, being unaccustomed to renewing it yearly, allows it to lapse and suddenly finds he has to undergo a driving test, would it be possible in such a case to do away with the necessity for this driving test? I think there are very few people of my age group who, if they had to do a driving test in the morning, would find themselves in the happy position of being able to continue driving a car. I wonder what percentage of us would pass. I believe very few of us would. I have in mind one individual in my county. He has been a public servant for donkey's years and he has given tremendous service to the people. Through an oversight he let his licence run out. I believe he should be facilitated; he should not be asked to undergo a test. The likelihood of his passing such a test is somewhat remote. That might apply to a great many of us. Personally I would not like to have to face a driving test in the morning. I doubt if I would ever drive a car again because I doubt that I would pass. Thanks be to God, I have a driving licence and I hope I will continue driving safely for a great many years yet.
I am told the number of untaxed cars on the road is unbelievable. The possibility is that these cars are untaxed because they cannot get insurance cover. It is frightening to think that there are people, be the number large or small, driving cars with no insurance cover. We all hope there will be no need for petrol rationing but, should the need arise, could we not do what Britain proposes to do, namely, issue the petrol coupons through the local taxation office? If the applicant for coupons cannot produce his tax disc and his log book he will get no coupons. In that way it would be easy to find out who has his car taxed and who has not. People will not like having to lay up their cars because they have no petrol and they will have to lay them up if they are not taxed and not insured.
It is frightening to think that someone with a driving licence can drive a taxed car belonging to someone else which is not insured. Could there not be a system whereby every holder of a driving licence would also hold insurance cover? The onus would then not be placed completely on the owner of the car to insure the car? It would spread the burden and make the position safer for everybody. It would certainly reduce the cost of car insurance.
The Minister issued a circular recently to local authorities about planning and invited planning officers, county managers and county engineers to a meeting in the near future. Everyone welcomes the change in the attitude towards planning. Planning has been very rigid in the rural areas. Our county plan is supposed to last for five years though the Minister has advised that the plan can be revised oftener if necessary. There is the difficulty that we just have not got the personnel even if we wish to change the plan. The amount of work entailed in the operation just does not make the exercise feasible.
Where appeals to the Minister are concerned I believe Kildare must be very nearly at the top of the league table. The pressures from outside are tremendous. One would need a holy-shamrock in both hands to get a building site in Kildare because sites are so scarce. They are almost unattainable. It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I welcome the Minister's decision to ease the planning regula- It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I welcome the Minister's decision to ease the planning regulations in relation to in-filling. It has happened that where there was sufficient room on a plot to build a house permission was refused because of the regulations governing the provision of a septic tank. I am glad these regulations will not be so rigidly adhered to and that such work will be allowed.
There is an in-built risk in this. Septic tanks can go out of order and when one does it is a terrible nuisance. However, there are many good ways of cleaning them nowadays and because of the benefits that will accrue to people anxious to obtain sites this is a risk worth taking. It is a risk which will have to be taken if the amount of building in the pipeline, and if the number of applicants for building sites, are to be dealt with.
In my county there is the problem of areas of high amenity being strictly preserved. The Minister has dealt with these areas in his circular to local authorities on planning. He dealt with the hilly areas in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare. What I am terrified of is that there is a bargaining position here; one gives a little and one takes a little. For giving the relaxation in planning in other areas the Minister may be pressurised by somebody into saying there should be no further development in what is called in Kildare, the Kildare uplands. That would be a disaster. Our planning officer, in fairness to him, is trying to preserve anything that is good for the county. He is doing as good a job as any man can under terrible pressure.
The Minister in a circular sent out on 12th November says that firm control may be necessary in an area such as the hill and mountain country of counties Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare which provides a vital source of recreation to the growing population of Dublin. It is grand to have a recreational area for the growing population of anywhere and it is grand to have a recreational area for our own population. However, I should like to remind the Minister that this is not mountain land as one understands hilly, mountain land to be. It is good farming land a lot of which is being intensively and successfully farmed.
If this statement is adhered to the people will not be able to build houses on their own land. At the revision of the county plan I requested the planning officer to have another look at this matter and, in order to prove that my point was not political, I brought members of the other parties to examine it. I also brought along the county manager. They all agreed that I had a very good case. The result was that we set up a committee to consult with the planning officers, and the engineers, when a planning application came from this area. With a little commonsense and reasoning a lot has been achieved as a result and houses have been built in this area. For five years I was telling people who approached me about planning permission in this huge area that they could not build there because it was an area of high amenity and because under the county plan it was almost preserved.
These people could not understand that because at the bottom of the hill, in County Wicklow, houses were springing up like mushrooms at the edge of Poulaphouca Lake. One of the reasons for not allowing houses in this area was the danger septic tanks might cause to the water in the lake at Poulaphouca, a lake which is supplying the water for Dublin. People who sought permission to build houses even three miles from the lake were refused but on the County Wicklow side people were permitted to build almost on the lake shore.
It was impossible to explain the reason for this to people. I am afraid that, if the paragraph I have referred to in the Minister's circular is adhered to, we will be back to square one and there will be no more development there. That, to my mind, would be a terrible tragedy and one I hope will never occur. One of the greatest gifts given to us was the right of ownership. While ownership carried responsibility and one cannot dot houses everywhere and spoil amenities, at the same time the regulation in this regard should not be too rigidly enforced to the detriment of people living in areas like those I have already referred to.
Something similar can be said in regard to the restrictions on building houses in villages. Villages were not to be developed except where necessary, but again the pressures from outside are there. It is hoped to have plans ready for villages in the near future and that development will begin in an orderly fashion. The last thing we want to see is a concrete jungle springing up anywhere in the county. We have one of them already, but we do not want any more. I am anxious to see our villages expanding but I want this done in an orderly fashion to the benefit of the villages themselves so that they will be pleasant for people to live in.
Another matter I should like to refer to is the question of the fire brigade services, the cinderella of the local authority services. We could not praise them too highly for the service they give. It is only when we require the fire brigade, as we might require the priest, or the doctor, or the vet, that we realise what they are doing. There is one man in a district I know who will not take a Sunday off in case the fire brigade is called.
The word "dedication" can be used very loosely but, if there is a dedicated body of men, it is the personnel of the fire brigades in the city and the country areas. They should be given every help and every facility and their equipment should be the most modern possible. If they save one life they are doing a tremendous job. They have also saved property. We are in their debt and no amount of money would repay them. Their demands are very modest and the service they provide is of the highest quality. We are very grateful to them.
I will conclude on a rather melancholy and morbid note. I feel very strongly about the conditions of our country's cemeteries. It may be argued that the cemeteries are not the responsibility of the Department of Local Government. I do not know, but Kildare County Council are responsible for a great many of them. While my own family grave is nothing to boast about, the condition of the cemeteries is largely our own fault.
The Deputy need not worry about that for a long time. He is looking well.
At the same time, I should like to think that they will be in good condition and nice and tidy whenever that time comes. The tears shed in cemeteries would fill a lake but they are very soon forgotten. Nothing is done with the graves afterwards in most cases, though not all. In my county a local guild of Muintire na Tíre, I think—I am not too sure, but it was some local body— went into an old cemetery where huge headstones had fallen down, the grass had never been cut, and there were mounds of clay everywhere, and levelled it and replaced the headstones. They made a lovely job of it. Every year it is mowed and kept in perfect order.
I should love to be buried in it.
You almost would like to be buried in it, but not immediately. It is beside a church. Without making a joke of it, if at all possible local organisations should be assisted to deal with this problem. It would be very costly on the local authority to do a job on the cemeteries. Voluntary organisations should get some contribution from the Minister so that we could be proud of the place where we have laid our loved ones to rest. Having regard to the amount of work involved, it will not be done voluntarily.
I will conclude on that rather melancholy note. I hope that when the Minister is introducing his Estimate next year he will have a year of great progress to report. I know he is a very busy man but I would ask him to visit the local authorities as soon as he can find time. Most of us who speak on this Estimate are members of local authorities and there are many members of local authorities who would like to meet him. They might have views on various aspects of local government to express to him. They are extremely intelligent and able men and women. If he could find time to visit the councils he would be most welcome and he would gain a great deal of information.
At the outset, I should like to congratulate the Minister on getting off to a good start in tackling the housing problem. This is only what we would have expected because he found the field well ploughed. The sites were there and the programme was there and, if we were in Government, the same progress, if not more, would have been made. I mention that because speakers on the opposite side said they made an effort to erect houses at a rate never before reached. So far as I know a start was made on about 32,000 houses in the latter part of last year. This work was already in train and it was easy enough for the Minister to reach the target of 25,000 which he set himself. In my own county there was a very high rate of housing in train. At a meeting in Tralee yesterday we found that all those houses are well under way and many of them were under way before 1st March of this year. It is to the Minister's credit that in doing his job he has utilised the guidelines where he found them and has moved at the fast pace at which he is moving.
We need houses for our people particularly in the western areas. Down in my area we need a very large number of houses because many of our people have the necessary expertise and ability to develop our industry. Many of them who have been in England for years are anxious to come home now because they can get a wage comparable with and in many cases better than what they can get in Britain. They cannot come back because houses are not available. The Minister mentioned the expenditure of an extra £12 million. That is a very sizeable sum but, taking the overall pattern in the cost of building and the increased cost of building materials, it works out, as far as I can estimate it, at about on a par with the sum provided in the previous budget. If we have to give loans in addition to grants, they will be much more substantial thus reducing the number of loans that can be given to meet demand.
When remarks are made about the tardiness of Fianna Fáil Governments in the past, one must remember that in the past ten years we had many difficulties with which to contend. One of the most important was to bring our cattle herds to the disease-free state that exists today. This absorbed much of our energy and much of the money that could have been spent in other areas; we also had to build roads and hospitals, to provide money for our health services and to do many other things. One of the most important things, and this has been proved in the speeches made in Monaghan, was the terrific effort to build up our nation, to provide industries and employment and to ensure adequate housing for our people.
On the radio last night I heard some speakers mention that we have now the highest growth rate ever known here and that we have the highest ever number of people in employment. The people are fully aware that this situation was not reached overnight. The path had to be prepared and we have now reached the stage where the Minister can proceed at a fast pace in providing houses.
Any attempt to denigrate the effort that has been made in the past is an attempt to denigrate the efforts of one of our greatest leaders, the late Seán Lemass, who made possible our present state of prosperity. He was a great Irishman but perhaps he is better known for his efforts in Europe, England and elsewhere than in his own country. He guided the destiny of our people and by his efforts he helped the country to achieve its present position. The people are intelligent enough to know that what has been achieved has been the result of many years' work. It was not achieved by the wave of a wand, nor was it attained overnight, it took steady years of work and now we have got over the hill. This fact needs stating in view of the remarks in this House about the tardiness in house building by Fianna Fáil. We are now reaping the benefit of the hard work of the past and it is up to the Minister to continue with this effort.
The fact that the Government saw fit to take £27 million from the cattle subsidy scheme is a clear indication of what was done in the past and is a tribute to the wise guidance that helped us to reach this stage. I hope the Minister can keep up progress with regard to house building. It should be possible in the not very distant future to reach a target of 35,000 or 40,000 houses.
In view of the immense efforts of the past five years it should be possible to increase our exports. Many of the industries that have been developing in the last four or five years are reaching full capacity and this is resulting in increased exports.
The Minister is doing a good job but I want to make it clear that the path has been prepared for him. It is up to him to continue with the good work and it is to his credit that he has taken advantage of the preparatory work. He should give thought to bringing back from England many of the people who could help us in our building drive. In my county we are short of the necessary technicians to keep up the building rate and I am sure this situation applies throughout the country. These people have the technical ability and knowledge that is needed here and we should encourage them to return.
There is a necessity to watch carefully present building development. At the moment many people who build their own houses—and frequently they apply for loans—construct teak fronts for their houses. This material is expensive and must be imported. It is necessary for us to borrow in order to finance the loans and I think it should be a condition for granting a loan that the person should not get money to erect this kind of frontage. In many cases the timber fades and looks rather dilapidated after a short while because it is not suitable for exterior purposes in this country unless it is continually varnished and painted and this is an expensive business. Our brick factories manufacture colourful bricks which have a much better appearance and a more lasting effect. I would ask the Minister to turn his eye in this direction. There is a very good factory down in Kilkenny——
Castlecomer. I put the factory there myself.
The Deputy did a very good job of work, because they are producing a very good brick which is in extensive use in my own county. Then there are the concrete bricks people who turn out the coloured salmon brick, and there is another plant down in Cork producing another type of brick. As I say, it is very colourful and blends in well with the Irish countryside. They also give a lasting colour in contrast to the faded colour one finds in so many timber structures. The latter is also an expensive way of building and imposes imports on us that are costly and unnecessary. The Minister would be well advised to do something about this, especially in regard to houses over which he has control.
One of our most pressing problems, which was the subject of questions by me this afternoon, is that of water. It is amazing that in a country with so much water we should have to raise points like this. My own area of Killorglin is dependent on the mid-Kerry scheme. For the past three weeks we have been, at most times, without water. The Killorglin-Milltown schemes are linked up. I admit that it was the ESB problem that created the difficulty from the Milltown side because there is a pumping plant there, but both schemes are totally inadequate to meet the demands of today. They were never designed to meet the countrywide pipelines which are now laid to give water to farmers for cooling and so on. The industries of Killorglin are also thrown in, one of which is using anything up to 60,000 gallons of water a day and has two new buildings coming into operation, one inside six months and the other inside 12 months, and each will be using much the same amount of water. They are boring for water there at the moment, but whether they will get it is another matter. This mid-Kerry scheme is needed very badly.
There is a vast area in Castlemaine; Killarney, Farranfore and Castleisland have to be supplied. We have one of the widest rivers in Europe coming down off Carrantwohill, which in flood periods runs wild over the countryside. If that can be put into pipes we shall be doing a very good job for the people who have suffered so much over the years from flooding. I asked the Minister today to give me a date in connection with this scheme; I know it was not quite fair, but it is urgently necessary that he get the Kerry County Council to pursue this matter. I understand the contractor has difficulty in getting the necessary land. In a case like this, so long as the contractors are reasonably near each other in price, the first one to get the bond should be the one to get the contract.
The first man is all right. He will get his bond.
Yes, I would like to see him having it quickly to start and be ready——
Within a week or so.
That is good news. A very good job has been done in Kerry through the group water schemes. We have possibly one of the biggest schemes in the country in the Carrowlake area in which 500 houses are linked up. It is a very economical scheme. All the participants had to pay £25 each, and the water connections were put into their houses for that sum. We are lucky to have plenty of water in that area if we can only get it travelling in the right direction. There are a number of smaller schemes there as well, and I would ask the Minister to try and get the necessary approval out as fast as he can.
It is a very good system and is the quickest and best way of getting water distributed widely and quickly. The group people do not get just one contractor but one for each leg of it and they manage to have the job done much faster than would be done under a contract as in the case of the mid-Kerry scheme. Of course, the mid-Kerry scheme is not a general scheme. We are providing only the trunk lines to various reservoirs, and we intend to get all the people in each district to operate in groups after that. That is the system that was intended and I presume it still is. Many of the groups are linked up for that, and I shall be asking the Minister later to give the necessary approval as quickly as possible, so that we could have those working side by side with the contractors when they start in the very near future. It is no good having water in main pipes if we cannot send it out to the people who want it.
One of the most serious problems in Kerry which has had to be left aside in the past was the sewerage system for smaller villages. A number of villages have old systems which are completely out of date and do not serve the purpose at all. I have in mind one in Castlemaine, part of which runs through an open drain with concrete at the bottom. This is a growing, well-kept village, but it has not got a proper sewerage system. This is only one of the many villages that require attention. The bigger areas are serviced to some extent, although many of them will need to be re-modelled to take the increased building and to service the growing towns in the area. The indications are that the Minister is putting aside fairly substantial sums for this. The necessity will be there to have more and more money channelled into those schemes, and we must try to keep our building programme going side by side with them.
Kerry would appear to be left out of the major road building programme. I pointed out here that the road between Killarney and Killorglin and the Ring of Kerry had the greatest amount of traffic of any part of Kerry. It is not even a secondary road. It is listed further down and consequently does not qualify for any major grant or for any grant at all. According to the recording instruments it carries at particular times of the year the greatest amount of traffic in Kerry; still it is not a secondary road. In a question recently I asked the Minister to have it brought up to at least this standard, which would enable us to have the necessary improvements carried out that are needed. There are three extensive factories in Killorglin, and there are very large numbers of Killorglin people who find work in the Killarney factories.
There is a considerable number of heavy vehicles using this road which has some dangerous bends. Long Euro-trucks travel from there to Cahirciveen and even go down to Ballinskelligs. This road must be brought to a condition where it will qualify for grants to enable us, over the next five years, to do the necessary improvements. We need this in the case of all the Ring of Kerry roads but we are, with other grants, able to do a little on the western side. The roads in the immediate vicinity of Killorglin need widening urgently. Those roads were not built for ordinary motor traffic, never mind the heavy lorries using them now.
We also need extra money for the roads on the sides of our mountains which tourists continuously use during the summer. They climb into the remote parts of Kerry, using any type of road. We would be able to accomdate many more tourists and benefit the people living on mountainsides and help to keep those people there if we had extra money to enable us to give them dust-free surfaces to bring in more tourists and tourists' money. Kerry is the showpiece of Ireland and tourists try to cover every inch of our territory. This is how we want it and this is how the nation wants it. We want to make them happy, to make them feel at home and to bring more and more of them in. We must have roads, sewerage, water. Many guesthouses are reasonably equipped at present, but if we are to make progress in the tourist world we must have more money. If we are to get money from Europe for western development this is the type of purpose it will best serve. We also need to have streams and little rivers, which are causing havoc in the valleys, cleaned up and sunken so as to drain the lands in question. The Minister might also consider granting money from his Department for certain streams and for lowering or underpinning bridges. When there is heavy rainfall considerable amounts of water get on to the roads and damage them.
The Planning Act, which caused so much trouble in some areas, did not cause trouble in Kerry. We persuaded our officials to adopt a sane approach to planning. Where we thought there might be difficulty, the local members went to the engineers and got them to go out to the sites. When a planning officer went to a site he would tell the applicant that if the house could be moved 20 or 30 yards permission would be granted. In that way we got over many of our difficulties. We in Kerry have been fairly strict. We have specified the areas in which building can take place and the areas in which it cannot take place. We insisted on this from the beginning and the people got used to it. We do not have the problems we might otherwise have had. It gets under our skin down there when we find organisations from Dublin writing to the newspapers about our county being despoiled. Some of the atrocities built along the streets of Dublin are completely out of place in a city which was beautiful in its own way. Those glass-fronted, black-framed buildings are foreign to this city. Permission should not have been granted for those buildings. People in Dublin tell us in Kerry what we should do but they should look over their own shoulders and try to direct the type of building that should be permitted here in Dublin.
I was amazed recently when travelling from Clifden towards the Mayo border, somewhere near Leenane I think, to see a modern church on the side of the road which I thought was completely out of place in the area. It may be a nice church in its own way but it certainly looks an oddity in those surroundings.
The Deputy is challenging an architect.
He will get Deputy Geoghegan a belt of a crozier if he is not careful.
I am prepared to challenge the architect.
It is half way between Leenane and Kylemore at a place called Creeagh.
Why did the Deputy not go in and say his prayers?
I did. I rarely pass a church without saying a prayer. That church is out of place in that beautiful setting.
That is the Deputy's opinion.
It is. I moved on to Donegal. In Donegal close to where the Crolly dolls are made there is another church with four wings. It is completely out of place in a nice village.
The Deputy must have been doing the Stations.
I was. On looking down from the top of the hill I got the impression that it was a circus tent. It was colourful with four wings in the shape of a cross, of course. It was a nice church but, if I might use the term, sticking out like a sore thumb. I am sure I will get many letters in the papers about these comments.
People in Dublin criticise Kerry but we have nothing like that. An architect wants to build to his own design and that is all right if he can get away with it. I have given two examples of churches which are completely out of place with their surroundings. I thought it amazing that the planning authority and the clergy concerned gave the necessary permission. When I looked at the beautiful village and surrounding areas I thought a church built in the ordinary design would fit in much better and project the spirit and artistry of our people.
What does the Deputy mean by "ordinary design"?
The normal Celtic design.
The Deputy is not a swinger.
I am too old for that. If anybody gets a chance to see these two churches he will realise the point I am trying to make. They are ultra modern. Maybe when the villagers get around to it they will change the villages to the same type of design. The very tall building in Kilkee is like a lonely sentinel. It will be many years before the rest of the county will be built up and the terrain levelled off.
Other speakers mentioned the pollution of our rivers. Air pollution is most important. This was brought home forcibly to me when a big industry came to Killorglin. After 12 months I found out that the reason they came was that we were completely free of air pollution. This chemical firm makes pharmaceutical materials. It is important to them that the air be free of any type of pollution. By 1978 their exports will be beyond £10 million. This is a very substantial sum. This brings home to us the importance of keeping as much of our country as we can free of pollution. Many people are anxious to come here to settle and build homes, even though our way of life is different. It looks as if in the next few years the only place left in Europe which will be reasonably free of pollution will be Ireland. We must do our best to keep it that way.
We can learn from the experience of England, France and particularly Germany. The River Liffey is polluted. If one walks along its banks at certain times the stench is unbelievable. It should be possible to halt this pollution. It does not make a very good impression on tourists walking across O'Connell Bridge. The only thing is that the tourists may not even notice it as they are accustomed to worse. There is still time to do something about this and the sooner the better.
Local authority refuse dumps are sited very near main roads. They are horrible sights and often rat-infested. It is possible to get sites away from the roads. The Minister should make an order in this direction. In Kerry every road is a tourist road. Areas near bogs could be used as refuse dumps. Every person who puts out refuse should be obliged to burn all papers, cartons and plastic bottles and have a normal ash discharge for disposal; then we would not have unsightly plastic bottles and containers thrown on acres of ground adjacent to a tourist road. Every area wants refuse collected. If the housewife concerned spent just five minutes burning waste, she would not have enough to fill a dust-bin in a fortnight. The Minister would be doing a good day's work if he issued a direction to local authorities that those sites should never be near a roadway of any kind but should be only in such places as quarries and bogs.
In my area the engineers' dispute has resulted in the stoppage of work on local improvements schemes. I appeal to the Minister to endeavour to have this dispute settled or else to instruct the local authorities to go ahead with the work on hand. The engineers concerned are receiving their salaries but the overseers and the workmen have not been receiving any money since September last. The overseers are responsible for the execution of the work but an engineer's signature is necessary before the pay out of money is sanctioned. The men who have been laid off as a result of the dispute are facing Christmas with the prospect of no money. The dispute is not of their making. To indicate how ridiculous the situation is I would point out that the only areas affected are Killorglin and Tralee. Work is continuing without interruption in Cahirciveen, Kenmare and North Kerry. I hope it is within the power of the Minister to take action now so that the moneys allocated to us can be expended and that the workers may return to work.
There is much development in all areas in Kerry. We have reached the stage where emigration is at a standstill and the time is not far off when we will have full employment. It will not be very long, either, until we have reached a stage of development that will require us to seek to bring many of our people back from Britain to work at home. Unfortunately, the rail service in the area is holding up projected development. This is a matter that must be given attention without further delay.
Another speaker has referred to the question of cemeteries. By and large, cemeteries in Kerry are well kept, but there is a great need for proper parking space in the vicinity of graveyards. The entrance to the cemetery at Killorglin is on the main road from Tralee. There is a continuous flow of traffic on that road and there is not a day on which there are not two or three funerals to the graveyard. This results in a total blockage of the roads for at least an hour. The situation is the same in other areas.
Perhaps I should have another look at the map for that area because if the population is dying at that rate I may be providing for too many Deputies there.
We have succeeded in developing areas at churches but we have not had enough money available to extend the development to the graveyards. Therefore we would be grateful if the Minister could allocate some money for this purpose. I expect the day will come when people will no longer attend funerals but only yesterday I was present at the removal of the remains from Killorglin hospital of a great Kerry footballer. There must have been at least 4,500 cars in the cortege. I am not saying that this huge number of cars are to be seen at every funeral but it is very seldom that there are less than 50 cars at a funeral. Very often one sees cars parked three abreast outside graveyards. I hope the Minister will be able to provide some help towards solving the problem.
When he assumed office the Minister found that the groundwork had been prepared by the previous Administration for the provision of the necessary housing for our people. He found that the nation's energy had been developed to the state where it was capable of yielding the money necessary for this purpose. The Minister can be assured of our support in any effort he makes to extend the housing programme. He began with the advantage, too, of an unprecedented volume of exports and with a big improvement in the employment situation.
Having listened to the Deputy traverse the highways and byways of south and west Kerry, talking about the cemeteries in those areas and having listened to accounts of flying visits to Clifden and to Donegal, is it not time that one asked oneself what this Estimate is all about? Most Deputies are members of local authorities and we come up here to air our grievances about byways and highways, and roads and paths, and streams and rivers, all work we should be doing at home if we were going about our job in our local authority. Now I am not referring to any particular Deputy in this but, since the Minister made his opening statement, I have been listening to this. If I wanted to talk about my experiences and the needs we have in Limerick and the achievements, it is not for three hours I would be speaking here but for three days and three nights.
God help us.
We come here to discuss an Estimate which is probably the most important Estimate that comes before us with, perhaps, the exception of Health. We must ask ourselves the question then as to why this is such an important Estimate. It is important because we are so closely related to it as public representatives and as local representatives on the different bodies to which we are attached. We are closely connected with the people and so we have to treat this Estimate with all the seriousness it deserves. If all 144 of us were to come in here and talk about our own individual grievances in our own particular localities this Estimate would go on until this day 12 months. I do not intend to talk about individual grievances. I want to deal broadly with the subject of local government as I see it and as I would like to see it. I come here to give the Minister the benefit of my experience as a result of my being so long in public life. Far be it from me to give the Minister advice because he has come up the hard way like myself and a few more of us. He was not pitchforked into a job about which he knew nothing.
It is very good of the Deputy to say so.
I shall be saying a good deal more. Let the Deputy not worry. With one possible exception, the late T.J. Murphy, this is the best Minister for Local Government this country has seen so far. Let there be no mistake about that. If I had anything else to say I would be the first to say it, but we have now a man who knows his job, a man who is prepared to listen to ideas, a man who has no trace good, bad or indifferent of the arrogance of his predecessor.
That is a very arrogant thing to say.
When arrogance meets arrogance who wins?
That is the question.
Whoever declares the war of arrogance will come out second best. Let that go out now to all the members of that party over there.
What does local government mean? There are many questions to be asked and many problems to be solved. What exactly is the present position of local government? Do many of us know where we stand or where we stood in the past where local government is concerned? Is local government doing its job, the job it was set up to do away back in 1838 under the Poor Law Act? Are we, as local government representatives, playing a true role in what local government should mean? Is there a future for local government in the light of the way things have been going?
Until lately we local government representatives had no idea where we stood, where we were going or where our responsibilities began and ended. I am all for local government. I am all for meeting people. I am all for learning from people. I am all for small communities and small local bodies, unlike the Minister's predecessor who tried to wipe out most of the urban councils and bring in an alleged scheme of rationalisation foisted upon us by the Yankee Doodle Dandy McKenzie, who said our structures should be re-organised, as if he knew anything about them. According to the Sunday Independent his report cost the country £36,000.
What is being done about it? Absolutely nothing, thank God. I am quite certain part of it would have been implemented had we not had a change of Government and had we not had the Minister we have today who believes, as I do, in the small community and the small local body, the voluntary body, the members of which are always prepared to help with their energy and their experience. When the Poor Law Act was passed in 1838 the idea was to give to these local bodies a certain standard of local government, a certain standard of importance which, in actual fact, meant nothing. This is the system we inherited from 1838 together with the Public Health Act of 1878, with little bits and pieces and scraps of improvement here and there down the line. This is what we inherited and this is what we have operated under right up to the present time.
I want to deal now with what local government means to me and to public representatives. It is not the bits and scraps of old codswallop but the big fundamental principle involved out of which comes good local government. If we want to carry on as we have been doing since 1878, let us do that, but let us realise that is the the position and then we will make up our own minds as to whether it is good or bad and give our decision.
My experience of the Minister in his short time in the Custom House is that he is open to suggestions. Above all, he has the experience. For that reason I should like to repeat that local government, as it stands in this country, still lurks under the shadow of British rule. Nobody should doubt that. It is a continuation. The only difference is that we have the Dublin mandarins in the Custom House dictating to us what we should do and how we should do it. They forget that we have already discussed these matters in great detail, with grave responsibility and in close contact with our engineers and consultants.
We have sent up schemes time out of mind which were turned down. Were it not for the tenacity and boldness of some of us we would have been frustrated long ago by the dictates from the Custom House. From my experience I believe much more progress would have been made in this country, and I am not talking about building houses but I am talking about building homes, if it was not for the attitude of the officials in the Custom House. When we submit plans for approval we know what suits our area. We are aware of the fact that what might suit one county, or city, would not necessarily suit another. However, the boys in the Custom House send our plans back and tell us to change this and that.
The Chair would prefer that a Deputy would not reflect on public officials in the Custom House or anywhere else. The Deputy may make his complaint to the Minister who is head of the Department.
I am speaking to the Minister, through the Chair.
That is in order, but let us not reflect on people outside the House who cannot defend themselves.
I am not reflecting on any individual personally. I am reflecting on the system which is a completely different thing, in my view.
If the Deputy keeps to the system it is quite in order.
When will Central Government step one side and allow the local authority take over whatever job is needed in a particular locality. The system which now prevails castigates us or any other local representatives because we are questioned and hamstrung and we cannot get our views out into the open. We cannot make the progress we want to make because we are hamstrung by Central Government. I see no reason why this should be. It is about time we ceased looking behind us and looking over our shoulders. Those days are gone. They all went last February and March.
There is a new era before us and this is what the local government representatives want to do. I ask the Minister to let us do this and get on with the job. We are sent in to represent our own particular areas. We are not faceless men, and if we do not do our job correctly the ballot box is always there. If we fail in our responsibility the people, who mean nothing else to me only people—it is not houses or churches that Deputy O'Connor was talking about—will decide at election time whether we are fit to represent them. We should not have the faceless people making their demands and instructing us to do certain things when we all know that they have made a mess of schemes through their own indolence and lack of foresight even though the local representatives sent up what was required for their area.
The local representatives know what is required and they are the people who should be listened to and whose advice should be taken. Thank God we now have a Minister who is prepared to do that. That was not so in the time of his predecessor. We were all to be wiped out; most of the small authorities were for the high road.
I do not think Limerick was in question.
I did not say Limerick was in question. I was talking about the small rural local authorities. The Minister, for the Deputy's information, brought us to Nenagh and we told him what we wanted. I was as vocal as anybody else at that meeting, but I might as well have been talking to the wall. However, he knew where he stood when we were finished with him. If the Deputy wants any more about that I will give him all, chapter and verse.
It is my predecessor the Deputy is referring to.
Definitely.
I understood it was the present Minister the Deputy was referring to.
They are as different as chalk and cheese.
Fortunately.
Good man. This documentation up and down to Dublin and this delay is frustrating a lot of local representatives. It means a waste of time and money. The tragedy of it all is that some unfortunate people are depending on the decisions. We are trying to make decisions but we are frustrated and cannot make them.
We sent up water schemes of all kinds complete with documentation but what happened? Why should these schemes have to go to Dublin for approval? Why cannot these decisions be made at home. Let us get on with the work. We should be given the amount of money required and told to do the best possible. If the schemes are not carried out the people on polling day will put us out.
Can the Deputy get the money now?
We have the money, but we have not the authority.
The Deputy will get the authority also.
We have not got the authority yet and that is why I am impressing this on the Minister. We have, unlike the Deputy's party when in power, the money now, or if the Deputy's party had it they did not make use of it.
Was it from the national loan?
We got it, we have it, and we are going to give it to the people.
It will only last half the time.
Who are the best judges of the staffs needed in local authorities? We have good officials, good county managers, county secretaries and engineers, all doing excellent work because they have daily personal contact with public representatives. This is not so in the case of Central Government. We know what can be done locally and what is wished to be done locally by the county manager, or city manager, or engineer, or secretary, or staff officer, or housing officer. If it can be done it can be done instantly, but the documentation has to go up, sanction has to be sought, the job has to be advertised, and tenders have to be sought. There is all this waste of time when the job could be done by the local authority. This is of fundamental importance as far as I am concerned.
Let us learn the lesson with regard to regionalisation as it was envisaged. Let us realise what the health boards have done. Let us make a comparison with local government. Let us learn from the mistakes made by the health boards. Let us get back to the small unit of authority. We will get more work done. We should ask ourselves what is required for local government. We must clear our minds on the type and the size of the authority we want to govern a local area. It is most essential to decide their functions and the service they can perform. How are they to be financed? How best can they function with the minimum of central control? Local authorities should be allowed to make their own decisions. This is of fundamental importance in the local government set-up. We will make more progress and we will give a better service. What more can we do to help our people?
I have already dealt with the previous Minister's White Paper on local authorities. That has gone by the board never again to be resurrected or to see the light of day. Let us make a comparison between the local authorities in this country and in other countries. We have roughly 100 local authorities. On my figures in France there are 38,000 and in Germany there are 24,000. If the previous Minister had his way we would have a damn sight less; perhaps 30 or 40. This is what they were at. No wonder there was a change.
Regionalisation is a costly experiment. It is too costly for us and it will not survive. Bureaucracy has been defined as power exercised in a formal inflexible manner by persons remote from the operations relating to it. Could any better description be given of the manner in which the Department of Local Government used to operate? My experience tells me that the answer is no, and my experience goes back a long time.
We must realise that in 1973 we are not dealing with a docile people prepared to settle without question for what their big daddy in Dublin tells them they must do. We have housing estates. We have community centres. We have local development bodies. Their aim is to project themselves to uplift their standards and to help in their own way, in their own time, as best they can, the community in which they live. We should take more cognisance of these people and we should give them a greater voice in the affairs of local government.
I wonder what would have happened to the late Canon Hayes had he given to the American people the idea of parish councils like Muintir na Tire. He would have been lauded as the greatest person who ever trod on American soil. Unfortunately he did not get the hearing here that he should have got at the time. Now we all realise what a parish council means; now we all realise what a local body means; in other words, what local government means. It was a tragedy for this country the day Canon Hayes left us.
There is too much centralisation of authority. We must get nearer to the people. All the housing grants come from Dublin. If we were told in advance what we were getting we could plan and budget for what we wanted to do. This did not happen until the Minister took over. Prior to that we were hamstrung and we had to go begging and borrowing and threatening before we were listened to.
I read recently that there is a pilot scheme in County Meath at the moment and I understand that it is an outstanding success. Let us all have the chance of piloting our own housing schemes. I am sure the Minister was not disappointed when he saw what we did for the old people in Limerick. People are coming from all over the Republic to inspect what we achieved in Limerick in the provision of homes for old people. I am sure the Minister was greatly and agreeably surprised the day he came down to perform that opening which we local representatives planned, and nobody else.
Why can we not have land registry officers located in the different cities around the country? Every legal person knows of the difficulty in trying to get anything from that group. We can do all these things locally. Social welfare matters should be investigated and decided locally. I am sure the Minister will take heed of what I have said. We could have dealt with our agricultural problems locally if we had been allowed to do so but we were not.
Your factory would have gone but for me and the Deputy knows that. The Deputy should take care that it does not go under the present management.
If the Deputy is as sure of getting into heaven as we are of having that factory he will be all right. Local authorities should be allowed to decide on matters such as parking areas and speed limits but that is not the situation at the moment. We have to go to the Garda authorities, to the Department of Local Government and to officials of the city or county council. These three bodies decide whether the speed limit will be 30 m.p.h. or 40 m.p.h. and they decide where people can park cars and caravans. In the name of justice, prosperity and advancement, why can the public representatives not make these decisions?
Public representatives might be biased.
All is yellow to the jaundiced eye and the Deputy can speak for himself. In order to finance their schemes local authorities should get some percentage of VAT and petrol tax—I admit we get our share of the road tax. We have had a problem with regard to building societies. I suggest to the Minister that outside societies should be allowed to come here and invest their money. We have allowed hire purchase firms to come here. Now that we are in Europe we should allow these societies to come in. At the moment they are not allowed by law into the country. Other lending companies are allowed in, so why not building societies? The first building society was the Royal Ireland Insurance Company 40 years ago.
Insurance companies are established to give a service to the people. We should not confuse insurance and assurance companies. Assurance companies take money from the people, but they do not invest it for them. It is reinvested for the companies' own good, to make more profit for themselves. These companies are building blocks of offices. I know of an Irish company that invested £4½ million in the last six months in a building in London. All that money was collected from the people and it is their money. It should be invested in the best way possible, namely, by providing homes for the people. I hope the Minister will take note of this because as far as I am concerned it is a cancer that must be removed.
Insurance companies can do as they like; they can pick and choose. It is not a case of losing on the merry-go-round and making it up on the swings; they want to win on both. I know of men who have held driving licences for 40 years without accident, but they were cut off at short notice and were told the companies could not insure them. That would not be tolerated in any Christian country. Taximen have been deprived of their livelihood because they cannot get insurance or else the cost is prohibitive. These are the problems that must be tackled. This is what local government is about.
I think it was Deputy Blaney who introduced driving tests when he was Minister for Local Government. I should like to know how many people have succeeded in getting their test at the first attempt. I do not know of any person. They are failed for every fiddle-faddle. They have to provide their own car or lorry to do the test and, so far as Limerick is concerned, there is a delay of ten weeks before they can take the second test. I know of men who have jobs waiting for them when they get their test but they are obliged to wait for ten weeks——
The Deputy is unfair. I know of several people in Galway city who have passed the test at the first attempt.
It does not happen in my area. Another matter the Minister might consider are the overgrown hedges along the roadsides. In addition to being a hazard, they obscure some beautiful views. Each local authority should be obliged to ensure that hedges are trimmed to a reasonable level so that people may have a clear view. These are minor matters but they mean a lot.
I hope the tidy towns competition will be stepped up as much as possible. This is a very creditable idea, whoever thought of it. It is only when you are travelling through the country that you see what local effort can do. When you get local effort and local enthusiasm, you get something worth having. If it is directed from a distance without that personal concern and that personal touch, the whole scheme collapses, and that has been proved to me, beyond yea or nay, in regard to the tidy towns competition. It is all voluntary effort and look at what has been achieved. Let us do the same in local government. Let us be given exactly the same facilities and the same powers and, as the Minister knows well, there will be a big change from what we had to suffer in the past under his predecessor. We had a general election some time around the end of February, and the Cabinet was appointed on the 13th or 14th of March.
At five minutes past three on the 14th March.
That will do. Between the 28th February, or whatever date it was, and five past three on the 14th March, the Minister for Local Government had a pain in his wrist from signing planning permission for some. There was one in Limerick, not in my constituency but in my county. Planning permission was sought for one of these broiler houses which smelt two miles away. Permission was refused by the county council. The appeal was lodged. Everybody turned it down, as it should have been turned down. I put down a Question here on the 6th June last, and I was told by the Minister, Deputy Tully;
The application for planning permission for this development was received by the planning authority on the 16th March, 1972. The planning authority decided to refuse the application for permission. The appeal against the planning authorities' decision was received on 25th May, 1972. A decision to grant permission was made on 8th March, 1973.
No one else on earth would have done it, but I wonder who plans the planners?
I am sure it was not on a national primary road.
No. It was very near the town of Abbeyfeale. That should be enough for the Minister.
Does the Deputy consider that a significant factor?
I shall leave that to the Deputy's——
Large imagination.
Yes. His imagination is large enough. He is around long enough. I want to know who plans the planners.
I imagine somebody from Abbeyfeale would be a better judge than the Deputy.
It is not in my constituency and even if it were I would not have the audacity to express myself here as being the purest of the pure from those Opposition benches now. When the same people were over here they did queer things. I am not referring to the Deputy, but he knows and so do I the depredations that were perpetrated by Fianna Fáil where planning was concerned. The whole question of planning and planning permission has to be given grave thought. I had a case, and the Minister knows about it, far away from my constituency which for some unknown reason was held up for five years until the Minister came into office. I know the reason. If he had put his hand deep down into his pocket and subscribed, he would have got planning permission. He did not do it. Let there be no mistake about this; that is what went on under Fianna Fáil.
That is a grave charge the Deputy has made.
Whatever charges I make in this House, I will make then outside it also.
On a point of order. I think that if Deputy Coughlan makes a charge of that nature he should either substantiate it or withdraw it. He has suggested that planning permission could be got from the previous Government, evidently from the Minister's political party. If he has evidence of that he should produce it, and if he has not he should withdraw the charge.
The Deputy did not advert to any personality. The charge he made was a global political charge.
On a point of order, did he not say "the previous Government"?
That is a political charge. If the Deputy had made a charge against an individual or a personality, the Chair would certainly have intervened.
I think he should either withdraw it or substantiate it.
The Deputy is not the chairman to be thinking of these things, and he never will be either.
I can always ask a friendly question of a friendly Ceann Comhairle.
Finally, I want to wish the Minister well. He knows what I think about him. He knows, and the country knows, which is most important of all, what can be done by an active, energetic Minister who is prepared to work, who is prepared to listen and, what is more, who is prepared to preserve the democratic rights of public representatives, whether they be local or national, and who will not seek to wipe out the small local bodies which his predecessor intended to do in the White Paper which he issued.
I would like to begin by referring again to the charge that has just been made by Deputy Coughlan, which I understand to be that planning permissions were available under the Minister's predecessor on the payment of a subscription to that Minister's political party. As I said already, intervening on a point of order, this charge should either be substantiated or withdrawn.
The Chair gave a ruling on that matter.
I still want to express my own opinion that this is an unworthy charge and that when it is judged upon what has been said here and judged upon the failure of the Deputy either to substantiate or to withdraw it, the real value of the charge will be apparent to anybody who is objective. I know very well that during our term of office charges of this kind were the stock-in-trade of the then Opposition, the parties who now make the National Coalition, as they call themselves. However, we must remember that character-assassination of all kinds was the stock-in-trade of those two political parties, and there is no one more fitted than I——
I hope Deputy Gibbons is not accusing me of character assassination.
I would hasten to add that the main attack on people's good names came not so much from the Labour Party, with a couple of exceptions, but from the Fine Gael Party. In my own case the Leader of the Fine Gael Party, now Taoiseach, spent a long time in this House trying to establish a lie.
We are dealing with the Estimate for Local Government now. The Deputy ought not to refer to past events concerning another Department.
I am coming to it, but I want to deal with this political point. A charge has been made and you accepted it, Sir, as being in order. I am saying that charges of this kind are the stock-in-trade of the present Government, especially of the Fine Gael Party, that they have devoted a great deal of their time in the past three or four years to character assassination, to the deliberate mutilation of people's good names and characters, for political purposes. They knew they were doing it and even said they knew they were doing it. Once that fact is pondered on the merit of what they say and the merit of the contemptible slanders they bandied about over all these years can be properly assessed.
This is a discussion on the Estimate for Local Government, a discussion to which I have listened for several hours now. I would be the first to admit that many of my colleagues on all sides of the House are far better informed on local government matters than I am, but there are certain observations I would like to make.
Listening to the debate as it proceeded I was glad and encouraged to notice a preoccupation, a new preoccupation I would think, on the part of Deputies with the importance of planning generally, with particular emphasis on town planning. There is a new awareness evident among Deputies of the great importance to us of the preservation of our environment. Different Deputies have different approaches to town planning. I consider that in a community such as ours, where there is only one really large city, Dublin, being followed now by rapid development in places like Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford, but where the typical town is a very small community, one should consider, first, whether one happens to be Minister for Local Government or one is involved in local government in some other way, what the function of a town is.
If you do not mind, Sir, I will take as a typical enough case your own town of Clonmel or my own town of Kilkenny, both of which are ancient and beautiful towns.
Is it not a city?
Ours is a city. I did not want to niggle about that. Ours is a very ancient city. I do not know Clonmel all that well, I would not know it half as well as the Ceann Comhairle does, but I know that at one end of the main street there is a building called The Main Guard, designed, if I am not mistaken, by Gandon. It is a building of great character and beauty. At the other end of that almost enclosed street there is what is known as the West Gate. The West Gate is not, in fact, a genuine town wall. It was built in the last century by the Donaghamores I think. It has character and it gives grace and proportion to the street within it. There are other notable and handsome buildings in the town of Clonmel, but the point I want to develop is that I do not think that in our present system of planning due recognition is given to the particular value to Clonmel people, to Tipperary people, to Irish people, of those beautiful and impressive buildings.
Deputy Eileen Desmond spoke earlier this evening about the oppressive drabness of huge housing estates like Ballyfermot or other large housing estates in Dublin city and there are other equally drab, though not as large, housing estates in every town of any considerable size in the country. I believe it is necessary for people living in towns to have available to them objects of beauty such as the buildings I have been mentioning and a great many other amenities as well. From the historical point of view, first of all, and from the aesthetic point of view also, not only should special efforts be made to preserve buildings of that kind but they should be accentuated by the showing off of the individual assets a town has.
When I am coming to the Dáil I come through Castlecomer, Ballylinan, Athy and Naas. Athy is a typical market town. In that town— and it is not in any way exceptional for beauty—there are some notable buildings. In particular there is a very modern and very beautiful church. It is the Dominican Church. I think it is the finest thing to be seen in Athy by far. It is an object of great beauty in itself. Quite recently the view of that church from the Bridge over the Barrow was obscured by a very ugly commercial building and if one wants to see that church now one must go down a lane.
On the bank of the river there is the old castle known as White's Castle. I think it is occupied at present. I do not know that the local authority, the Office of Public Works or anybody else takes any particular interest in its maintenance, its improvement or in displaying it to the people of Kildare and to the people generally. Also in the town of Athy there is the market house. I think this house was built by the Dukes of Leinster some time during the 18th century. In my eyes it is a handsome, well-proportioned and beautiful building and I would live in dread of the time when it might be put to some unsuitable use or even demolished or changed altogether.
I deliberately skipped the city of Kilkenny. I say with the pride of a native son that it is a most beautiful city in Ireland. I will demonstrate that when I enumerate the many buildings of great value which are in various states of preservation. Fortunately the biggest, Kilkenny Castle, is now State property and is being developed for the use of the people of the city and the country. St. Canice's Cathedral is beautifully maintained by the Church of Ireland Community.
However, we have an example of the most appalling planning. In the centre of the city there is a large and thriving ale brewing business, Smithwicks. We were very pleased when we discovered some years ago that a major expansion of this industry would take place. The older brewery buildings were unobtrusively placed on the banks of the Nore and did not obscure the views from one side of the river to the other. In the development which took place over recent years an enormous unsightly ugly building erected within feet of the ruins of St. Francis's Abbey. I do not want anybody to run away with the notion that I or anybody associated with me opposed the development of the ale brewery in Kilkenny. This development could have taken place and extra jobs could have been provided without seriously impairing the beauty of the centre of the city as this undoubtedly did. St. Francis's Abbey is in State care. There are stacks of beer barrels stored within feet of it. This is a great shame. When a large company, such as Irish Ale Brewers, undertake an expansion of this kind they owe to the people, the natives of the city, some compensation for the undeniable impairment of this ancient building, which is one of the treasures in our collection of national monuments.
There are many similar towns with interesting and beautiful buildings. The Minister has a responsibility here in the general context of planning. We have all seen examples, such as the one I have been talking about, of an ancient and beautiful place being damaged by the erection of some ghastly petrol station close by.
I agree with the Deputy. Perhaps he might say whether he agrees with what is proposed for Dublin city offices.
The big building? I do not know a great deal about it, but from the pictures I have seen I would prefer to see something more in conformity with the general tone of the Trinity College area.
I am talking about the city offices near Christ Church.
In the old city? That is a difficult one. I must confess that the open condition from Christ Church Cathedral down to the river as it stands at the present time is most impressive. If one looks at the other side, there is a desert of derelict and semi-derelict places. If one then goes around the periphery of Dublin and sees the crazy development which has taken place there one realises there is something seriously wrong with town planning.
I could not agree more.
What the Minister says by way of good-natured interjection emphasises my point about Christ Church Cathedral. Its own inherent beauty is incomparably enhanced by the removal of buildings which were not of the same quality and obscured the view. In other cities and towns, small and large, places of beauty and interest should be emphasised and shown off because they are the special features of the city. It is not just a nonsensical, aesthetic idea. There is a psychological need in every man and woman to have access to things of beauty. If they do not have this access they will suffer for it.
Quite right.
We were talking earlier about the growth of cities and towns which has taken place in our own time, since the 1930s. The Minister and I are beginning to shove on a little bit, but there is still a good kick left in both of us. We both remember the great spurt which came into housing in the bad times of the 1930s.
One result I frowned upon and worried about was the establishment, in places like Kilkenny, Thurles and Clonmel, of what are known officially as areas for the housing of the working classes—working class areas. The implications of this were enormous and appalling. It was implied by this nomenclature that there must be a ghetto to house people who work for their living. Another equally obnoxious implication was that people, who would be known to some as the better class people, would live in better, more select, more expensive areas. There is the formation even in small cities of better class and working class areas and areas where poor people live with the worst houses and the smallest rents. We are always "jazzing" about being a Christian nation, a Catholic nation and every other kind of a virtuous nation. I wonder what has gone wrong when our cities are developing like this?
Rural communities are different. People of substantial wealth can live cheek by jowl with people who have no wealth at all. Neither seems to be injured by this proximity. A serious effort should be made in town planning to ensure that people live in towns but not ghettos, or areas which are strictly dormitory areas. This is not living in the strictest sense of the word. People live, work and trade in the towns.
It is desirable in town planning that industry be concentrated outside the limits of the town if possible because of the relative ease with which problems of pollution can then be dealt with. It is important that this be done, too, so as to relieve the traffic congestion that results inevitably when large industrial undertakings are sited in any town or city. This is particularly true of an old city like Kilkenny, for instance.
We must admit that we are producing a result which bears the stamp of a kind of apartheid in the evolution of our towns and cities. In my time I have witnessed the meaningless destruction of some handsome and ancient buildings. We must think seriously in this regard.
During the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Lands I mentioned the provision of trees in towns and villages. I mention the matter now again in relation to town planning. There should be green spaces of varying sizes in all housing schemes. I mean spaces in which it would be possible to grow trees and flowers. In this context I might give an example of something that happened in my own city of Kilkenny. When I was young there was a place there known as St. John's Green. It was not particularly handsome but it had a large patch of grass in the centre. However, the local authority converted it into a parking space and, while it serves that purpose, it is now a large slab of concrete. The conversion of that green was a retrograde step and I only mention it in an effort to illustrate what happens.
Such towns and villages as Castlecomer, Abbeyleix, Durrow, Freshford, Johnstown and others are lucky in that each has very fine trees of various kinds. For example there are lime trees in Castlecomer, chestnut trees in Freshford and elms in Abbeyleix. The lime trees in Castlecomer were planted many years ago by the Wandsworths. It is worth noting and admitting that most trees of this kind were planted by whoever occupied the local big house. In any case, it is lucky for use that the trees were planted, that they are now there for our enjoyment. While local authorities may have general responsibility for the maintenance of these trees I am not happy that their terms of reference in that regard are strong or vigorous enough. I do not know what provision is made for the introduction of young trees to be planted from time to time so as to replace older ones that have decayed and may have had to be removed. Rows of trees, areas of grass and beds of flowers are as necessary to a housing scheme as are the walls, windows and slates of the houses. In the absence of the former one encounters all kinds of social problems. I am not saying that their availability is the complete answer to such problems, but they help civilise the environment.
Other Deputies have referred to the great necessity for places in which children can play. Such places must be maintained properly by local authorities. In recent years some very nice housing schemes have been developed throughout the country but no provision has been made for the keeping tidy of the grass or for the protection of any trees that may be left after the development of the schemes by profit making, speculative people. I have seen beautiful trees being removed wantonly by bulldozers. I would like the Minister to consider this question of the provision of trees in towns and villages. Very often one notices that the trees are mutilated during the process of trimming and pruning because of lack of experience of the county council workers who are sent out to do this work. I suggest that local authorities provide themselves with expert assistance. I am sure that such assistance would be forthcoming readily from the Forestry Division of the Department of Lands and that it might even be possible to have a small section in that Department for the provision of trees in housing schemes.
I presume the Deputy means mature trees which cannot be damaged very easily.
Yes. Nowadays it is feasible to instal substantial trees in any place in which one wishes to grow them. I have no wish to be unrealistic and to say that enormous trees could be transported around the country but it is possible to move trees of a substantial size.
When speaking of towns one thinks of Wexford and of the little old streets there which are full of tradition and history but which were not made for flat-topped articulated vehicles that one sees on the roads nowadays. Those streets were designed in more civilised days when people walked about their business. There is much to be said for the by-passing of a town such as Wexford. I know I am in dangerous political territory because the merchants there will not want to hear of this, although the more intelligent ones are beginning to get the message and to realise the advantage of having a traffic free area. People will go to a town to do their business in any case. Big articulated trucks block streets such as Rose Inn street in Kilkenny, for example. Some thought should be given to by-passing big towns so that there can be a rapid movement of goods and so that the people can do their business in comfort.
In many towns and cities the erection of electric power lines, of telegraph lines and the poles that support them seems to me to be done quite indiscriminately. It seems to me that the Electricity Supply Board— I suppose they are under certain constraints—put up electric poles and wires any place that suits them. I believe we should now follow the example of countries like Holland and get some of these services underground. I know that would cost more but, in line with the preservation of the appearance of our towns and cities, we should consider even a partial putting underground of these services, whether they be electricity, telephone or telegraph services. As they are they are very unsightly and, at times, probably dangerous since wires sometimes hang too low. This is something that should be considered by the Minister's Department.
In the matter of planning, I wonder what kind of restrictions are put on shopkeepers, merchants and others, who may have their places of business in an old street of good quality houses and who suddenly decide to put up plastic neon signs and ugly modern shop front furnishings. As is the case very commonly throughout Europe there should be imposition of a standard up to which one must come; that ought to be considered in this matter of shop signs and shop fronts. The unbridled use of plastic and other ugly things should be looked into.
Again, in the matter of planning, I do not think we can congratulate ourselves at all about the way in which our cities and towns have developed — as was said earlier, seeming to rot in the middle and burgeoning out on the outskirts. In any town of any size, driving through the country, you will find rows of privately built houses ribboning out along the country roads in what seems to be a totally uncontrolled way. There does not seem to be any insistence on standards of any kind. Some of the individual houses would look well enough given a proper setting or possibly by themselves but, when they are surrounded by 18 or 20 other houses each making desperate efforts to be different from the others, you have growing around you something that builds up into an unattractive and unsightly whole. Our planning is deficient in this regard. I say that without seeking to impose blame on any particular individual. I think we are learning as we go along. We ought to learn and I think it has begun to become apparent in this debate that we are now beginning to be aware of the great merit the towns and cities of the country have, the great beauty they have and the great obligation there is on us, while the going is good, to preserve them.
Before I leave the general question of town and city planning, I should like to mention a type of housing development taking place within ten to 15 miles of the city of Waterford. The part I know best is, of course, in my own constituency. There has been a great development of industrial employment in the city of Waterford in the last decade and a great many people from south Kilkenny, south Tipperary, Wexford and Waterford work in that area now. There is also greatly increased employment in New Ross, Carrick-on-Suir and Portlaw. Young men, farmers' sons, are getting jobs in these places. Some of them come from farms which would not give a man a living. They may be farms of 20 to 25 acres. These young men get a job in Waterford Glass or somewhere else and, having done so, they build a house on the family homestead. Most of them come from rural backgrounds, from families who have been living in the area for generations. This is the preservation of a rural community by the members of that community gaining access to industrial wages without themselves becoming city dwellers. If it were not possible for them to establish themselves on their paternal acres the chances are they would put their names on the housing list of Waterford City or County Council, or Kilkenny County Council, and find themselves living in a housing scheme of the kind we have been criticising a bit, but criticising hopefully in a constructive way. I think this evolution is well worth thinking about a great deal.
The Deputy is the snuggest man in the country.
That may be so. I think the Minister would agree with me that this is the best possible way for an industrial worker to live and bring up his children. It is a healthy, normal environment, superior to any other, and since this is the case—I am glad the Minister accepts this point of view—I would suggest that development of this kind should be encouraged. We all know that very small farms cannot now and will not in the future give a man a sufficient living, but if he can supplement his living with an industrial wage then he can be a very independent person indeed. I recommend to the Minister that, wherever possible, industrial workers should get special assistance to prevent the burgeoning of city housing schemes and to keep the population resident in their normal and natural rural hinterland. This is a good development and one the Minister should encourage.
Deputy Coughlan mentioned the invisibility of the country to the motor car passenger. He was right in his comments in relation to this matter and I agree with all he had to say in this regard. Maybe the farmers should cut their hedges. The county council make me cut my hedges annually. The ganger calls to me at Christmas and asks me about the cutting of them. However, this system does not work well because everybody does not cut their hedge. We are blinding ourselves and the people who visit us from abroad. They are not able to see the country simply because of the failure of the farmers to cut the damn hedges. In my view the Minister would be applauded by everybody if he announced that the farmers who did not cut their hedges would be put in jail.
I will not do that but I will say to the local authorities that they should get the farmers to cut these damn hedges. The former President, Mr. de Valera, impressed on me recently the importance of getting farmers to do that.
They should go one way or the other.
The local authorities should cut these hedges.
I am sure the Deputy does not have any problem in regard to the cutting of hedges in Connemara because they would not grow there.
Signposting is very bad in my county and in the country in general. In certain parts of my county that I have been visiting for 16 years, although I know the roads quite well, occasionally I am foxed. If I, a native of the area, can be misled what hope has a visitor of reaching his destination. The Minister should do all possible to improve the signposting in rural areas.
The county council pays for the poles but nobody does anything about the signs.
Is that how it goes?
It looks like that.
The disposal of waste in cities and towns, especially sewage, has interested people in recent times. Interest has been aroused, particularly since the effluent from towns, like Mullingar, has been blamed as the cause of poisoning fish life in many lakes. The lakes of Killarney receive the untreated sewage of the town of Killarney. There are umpteen examples. In the city of Kilkenny there is an institution which is euphemistically known as a septic tank discharging into the Nore. I am not certain, but I suspect that that septic tank was not properly designed and is not properly maintained.
I have heard of cities in Britain and elsewhere providing themselves with sufficient methane gas from their sewage treatment plants to run the heating of the city.
Coventry.
This subject when approached just as when people discuss marriage or engagements, is inclined to be giggled about. However it is a very serious matter and it can be a very serious threat to health but it can also be a good source of power, as Deputy de Valera has stated. The Minister would do well to discuss with the officials of his Department the setting up of a small group of people to investigate the general possibilities of the profitable use of sewage handling and disposal.
It is already being done.
I am delighted to hear that and I will be more delighted when the Minister comes into the House to tell us that the provision of methane gas for the city of Dublin or some other city is now possible and that the discharge into the Liffey of half of the filth of Dublin is to be discontinued. Time is running out in these matters and, for this reason, I am glad that the Minister is having this question investigated.
For many years many people have been talking about the development of the west, saving the west et cetera. Some valiant efforts were made but I believe nothing worthwhile will be done about the west until a major highway is driven to Athlone and divided there with one arm going to Galway city and the other to Sligo. If we are interested in the development of the west of Ireland we need a first class highway to the east. While the navigable waters in the harbours and ports of the west are wonderful the port facilities do not exist. If we could move large quantities of goods quickly in and out of the west of Ireland, the province of Connacht generally, we would have done our best for western development. We may have access to new sources of money for this job which will undoubtedly cost a great deal. The Minister would have the support of everybody in this House, and in the country, if, instead of us talking in terms of saving the west, we did something positive like I have suggested. Talk is no good and this suggestion is worth considering.
I should now like to refer to the terrible fatalities on our roads. We are always breaking the record for fatal road accidents and the mutilation of people in road accidents. Terrible and all as the deaths and mutilations are, year after year we manage to kill and mutilate a great deal more people on our roads. While there are many contributory causes I believe our road system is rapidly becoming out of date. One thing that should be closely looked at is our road widths. Many of our roads have a good amount of freeway on each side which is now covered over by grass or mounds of earth. If the roads were widened where they can be widened it would help to save lives. I acknowledge that this is a difficult job and that we have more miles per head of population, probably, than anyone else in Europe and that our resources to do these things that we identify are very limited. Where there is an intolerable loss of life, an intolerable mutilation of people, special measures are warranted and will be supported by the people. It is one thing to exasperate a person by making him wait 12 months for a house. It is quite a different matter when a person is killed because the road is crooked or visibility is bad. The whole question of road design needs looking at. The kind of vehicles we have got now cruise normally at about 60 mph. That is the normal pace of motoring traffic on the roads at present. Things like road visibility and the capacity of drivers to overtake one another in safety need to be looked at.
I want to mention also the perpetual need there is—and it is more acute now than ever, when everybody has become more or less mechanised—for attention to be given to the little rural roads, the little service roads that go to people's yards and houses and cottages. I should like the Minister to say, when he is replying, whether it would be possible to see if the people who live on these little rural roads, farmers' lanes and roads of that kind, could be given a road service at least equal to that of their neighbours.
Some Deputy mentioned group water schemes and expressed a doubt as to whether this was really the right way to do the job. I know some groups who are working very well but I regret to tell the Minister that I know others and the people who are serviced by those groups seem to be selected on one basis or another. I will not say on what basis. Every Deputy knows that when a movement of this kind starts in a locality, all kinds of local things rear their heads and, for no explainable reason, people may find themselves excluded from a group water supply scheme which they might have availed of. They may also find that another possible grouping was made impossible by the creation of the first. Deputy Coughlan was talking earlier about the marvellous merit of local enterprise and that kind of thing. In many ways what he said was true enough but sometimes it needs to be supervised, I regret to say, because humans are made like that.
If the local authority had charge of it, it might improve the matter.
Is that the way it is now?
It is proposed to do that.
I am glad to hear that. That would probably be the solution to the problem. As it is, it is a process of selection and the execution is not always what it might be. I regret to say that when I was starting I did not wish the Minister well. This is an omission which I now hasten to correct. The Minister has a very onerous job. He is a man of great experience and I feel he is a man who can fill the post he now has with some considerable competence until the day —and it is coming very soon—when we will replace him.
I hope I will live that long. I will be a very old man.
I listened with some interest to Deputy Gibbons's contribution to this debate and particularly to his remarks on planning. It was refreshing to hear what I would regard as a very necessary element in planning, namely, the rural person's viewpoint. People like Deputy Gibbons and myself who live in the country have a feeling that, where planning is involved, there is an overall urbanised view and that this tends to produce a certain artificiality and unreality in planning. I suppose the views from our highways are matters that you could regard as part of the entire planning picture.
Deputy Gibbons encouraged the Minister to get on to the local authorities and other sources to get the farmers to cut their hedges. I am afraid I would not be of that school of thought. I would take the view that the cutting of hedges is necessary only where there is a traffic hazard or to ease a view around a bend or some part of the roadway. What might be lost sight of is that one of the most valuable assets a farmer can have is shelter. Those of us who have been involved in the assessment of compensation following on a CPO, particularly if we were acting for claimants, are very much aware of the value of shelter and what it means in financial terms when assessed by experts and by farmers. It is a very important element in injurious affection and disturbance in farming operations. I might remind Deputy Gibbons of a spot on the Carlow to Leighlinbridge road where there was a large road widening scheme and something like a quarter to half a mile of road frontage. That inquiry lasted for about nine days and I would say that at least 55 per cent of the time of the inquiry was concerned with the evaluation of shelter.
If the hedge had been cut every year that would not have arisen.
That would not answer the question because levels were involved and early lambing was involved, and east winds were involved. I am sure Deputy Gibbons sees the significance of those matters.
Yes.
And the legal end was involved, too, I am sure.
That was a subsequent step when it had to be valued and priced.
Deputy Gibbons made a dangerous suggestion that by-pass roads should be provided for Wexford. If I advocated by-pass roads for the town of Wexford, or even silently condoned them, there are certain parts of the town I could stay away from at the next general election if I were standing as a candidate. It would be the quickest way of committing political suicide. Deputy Gibbons referred to the attractiveness of the narrow streets of Wexford. There is much history attached to the town and the narrow streets were designed for a purpose—as Wexford was a seaport town the streets were planned for the purpose of security. It is far easier to defend a town from the invader if the streets are narrow. Even way back in history people took account of planning considerations. The pity is that with narrow streets it is not possible to see the full beauty of the historic buildings in the town. One can come in and leave the town without knowing they are there.
Of all urban areas the city of Kilkenny is one of the most remarkable. It is only in recent times that the citizens have appreciated the value of their antiquities and the beauty of their city. I am not from Kilkenny but, as a professional man, I have practised in that and other areas for the last 20 years. I can sympathise with what Deputy Gibbons said concerning a certain industrial development but that might be largely due to the local citizens not waking up to the implications of such a development.
If I might be slightly political for a moment, one message clearly comes through in this estimate, namely that there has been an overall lack of forward planning in many activities covered by the Department of Local Government. I am afraid the blame for that must lie with the previous Government because matters of policy are matters for decision by the Minister and the Cabinet. Matters of local government are not necessarily dealt with on a yearly basis. Many of the activities of the Department must be programmed with a future vision: it is necessary to look ahead a considerable distance. This has become evident since the Planning Act in the early 1960s and it has made everyone very conscious of the fact that planning comes into every aspect of local government, whether it is the simple matter of laying a sewer pipe, the width of a road or the nature of a bend.
When driving in the Monaghan area recently I was conscious of the fact that one road to Monaghan seemed to be a much safer road than another. The simple reason was that there was better vision on one road than on the other. I am not going to say what roads were involved, but from the point of view of the driver there was a clear distinction between one road and the other——
One was probably the main road while the other was the county road.
Both roads carried a tremendous volume of traffic but the only difference was that there was better vision on one road than on the other. It has been evident during this debate that the major problem in the Department is in regard to housing. It has always been a political point, but there is a realisation now that there has been a build-up of a chronic backlog in housing. This has been due in some cases to the failure of the Government of the day to provide sufficient finance.
The Minister has said that from the point of view of housing the problem in Wexford is a little more serious than in other areas. In my capacity as a Deputy I asked certain questions of officials who are involved with housing and I got the clear impression that the local authority might have been a little to blame in not looking ahead sufficiently. It seems the reason was that the necessary amount of money was not forthcoming from the Government to enable the local authority to meet their commitments. I think it is a fair compliment to the Minister that these people told me that he had taken a different point of view from that taken heretofore and that they had to get on with the job. They realised they were somewhat behind and that it would take some time to catch up. It was a nice compliment to the Minister and I am grateful for what he is doing and will do in the future in regard to the housing situation in Wexford, because it is bad. Any Deputy who pays attention to his constituency work gets a fair idea of the demands and pressures. Tremendous pressure was exerted on me to try to do something about the housing situation in Wexford. However, one cannot do the impossible and I am afraid the Minister will have a difficult struggle to try to rectify matters so far as Wexford is concerned.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 28th November, 1973.