I move:
That Dáil Éireann is gravely concerned with the continuing decline in the building and construction industry and calls on the Government to take immediate steps to remedy the situation.
The building and construction industry in this country is the barometer by which the economy is judged. It is our most sensitive industry in this respect. If prosperity is on the way, as so many Ministers would like us to believe in this election year, it must show itself in a worthwhile upward movement in the industry. Of course, the facts are contrary to that: far from showing an improvement the industry is going steadily downhill.
We on this side of the House have presented the case for the building and construction industry here on many occasions over the past three years. We have underlined the fact, proven by statistics, that the industry is in a critical condition and that Government policy was contributing in no small way to its decline. We advocated the measures we are convinced are necessary to rehabilitate it. It was no pleasure for us to find that our warnings proved to be true. We now despair of getting any worthwhile or positive reaction from the Government or the Minister on this very important matter. Idleness is rife in the construction industry at a time when the queues of people awaiting houses grow longer and longer and when the roads have deteriorated to a point where they are more reminiscent of the twenties and thirties than of the last quarter of the 20th century.
It is obvious to all concerned that no steps will be taken by the Government to stop the increasingly rapid decline in the industry much less put it on the road to progress. It is equally clear that only a change of Government, which will generate badly-needed confidence in the industry, can result in a positive, constructive approach to its development.
While we await the desired intention of the Taoiseach to call a general election, we must continue in our efforts to convince the Government to accept what everybody else knows to be a fact, that is, that there is a crisis in the industry. If this had been accepted by the Minister and the Government, some progress could have been made because acceptance of it would have generated the necessary drive to overcome the problem. For so long as the Minister refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem in the industry, so long will we await a solution. Meanwhile, employment in the building and construction industry will continue to fall.
The Minister for Finance has accepted that the Coalition financial policy has been a disaster and he has attempted to reverse his policy with the aid of published Fianna Fáil documents. In that situation I cannot see why the Minister for Local Government would not do likewise.
The total number of houses completed in 1976 fell by 4,094 as compared with 1975, a drop of 15 per cent. This fall was reflected in both the public and private sectors of the house building industry. These are cold statistics contained in the Local Government Quarterly Housing Bulletin. Does the Minister accept the figures of his own Department? The fact is that he does not. He says they are too low. I would draw attention to the fact that the Department were producing high figures for house completions in spite of all the signs to the contrary, such as unemployment in the industry and a fall in cement sales. Did we ever hear a suggestion from the Minister that the high figures could be regarded as incorrect? Far from it. The Minister defended those figures and charged anybody who questioned them with questioning the integrity of civil servants. The facts are there and the Minister will not get away with the suggestion that figures are correct only when they suit him.
He has now decided to use a new system of calculation of house completions—the ESB data on their meter installations. Provided such changes are made by the ESB, this system in the long term could be useful; but in the short term it appears to me to be a very opportune change in this election year particularly if we are to use the figures which will be produced for comparative purposes. Formerly a completed house became a completed house when the final portion of the State grant was paid, and such payment was made some time after the house had been completed and occupied, in many instances months and even years later. With the new system a house can be calculated as having been completed when the ESB have connected it. The ESB can have connected before the house has been completed.
I could give examples of houses completed in March, 1977 which could be connected immediately and they would then figure in the quarterly bulletin in the number of houses completed for the quarter ended 31st March, 1977, although a house completed in March, 1975, would not have the final payment of the grant until a year later and would not therefore have figured in the Department's housing statistics. Therefore, any comparisons between housing statistics for the quarter ending March, 1977, and previously would be spurious. I have no doubt the Department will compare them with previous quarterly statistics and will say that the figures for 1976 were incorrect.
While still on the matter of comparisons, might I point out that the downward trend in local authority houses completed continued at an accelerated rate in January, 1977. In January, 1976, 580 houses were built compared with 275 in January, 1977, a fall of 53 per cent. This, of course, was to be expected when we note the consistent fall in the number of local authority houses under construction or at the tender or planning stages from 1975 to date. In January, 1975, 34,739 houses were at those various stages of construction. In January, 1976, the figure was 32,015, a drop of about 8 per cent; and in January, 1977, it was 29,129, a further drop of 9 per cent.
This, in my view, is the really serious aspect of the whole matter because when we have a sharp fall in the construction, tender and planning stages we must accept a considerable drop in the number of completions. The number of local authority houses at the planning stage fell by 2.530 in January, 1977, as compared with January, 1976, that is, 14 per cent.
Whatever the Minister may say about incorrect figures in relation to completions in 1976, the fact remains that the trend throughout the local authority housing programme shows the same decline, and the same trend runs through the private sector if one judges from statements made by those in a position to know. It is very difficult to get meaningful figures from the Department of Local Government in regard to trends in the private sector of the industry. I have tried to get them on a number of occasions without success. This is an indifferent way to run a Department. It is necessary that statistics of this kind should be available to us so that we can have a clearer view of the exact situation. It has appeared to me at times that there is a section in the Department whose main function is to produce figures with such a series of variations that unless one was to spend a considerable time trying to decipher them one would find it impossible to make head or tail of them.
If we look at cement sales on the home market we will find the same gloomy picture as in the house completion figures. Cement sales in 1976 were slightly up as compared with 1975 but we must remember that the sales in 1975 were low, and we find a return to declining sales in the last quarter of 1976 as compared with 1975, and a particularly severe fall in January, 1977 as compared with January, 1976. In reply to a question which I put to the Taoiseach today asking for total sales of cement on the home market and the percentage fall in January and February of 1976 and January and February, 1977, I was told that the total sales of cement in the former period were 211,600 tons. The sales for the latter period were given as 186,800 tons, the drop being 12 per cent. I do not have to point out that this is a very serious matter in the context of the consequences for employment in the industry. I would point out also that sales of cement to farmers increased considerably in 1976 and although this, of course, is a good thing in itself, it did not help to build many extra domestic dwellings because the cement would have been used for other farming purposes. Neither did it increase the number of building workers in employment.
The public capital programme for housing in 1977 was not increased by a penny in the budget allocation. It shows a fall at current prices of £13.4 million, or 11 per cent on the money made available for housing in the public capital programme for 1975. If one were to take the relative amounts at constant prices, taking inflation into account, the fall became a catastrophic one of £39.9 million, or 35 per cent. Is it any wonder we have a crisis in the construction and building industry? Yet, despite all the statistical evidence available to the Government and the Minister, they have refused to acknowledge that there is any crisis or problem in the industry.
Before I leave the public capital programme I should like to point out that the percentage of the public capital programme devoted to the building and construction industry has fallen since 1975 when the percentage was 38.6. In 1976 it was 33.5 and in 1977 21.9, and it took an election year to prise a little more money from the Exchequer for the building and construction programme. Even with the extra money made available in the budget, the percentage this year is still below the 1976 level in productive terms. Let me again underline the fact that there was a considerable drop in real terms in the money made available for building and construction in the 1977 budget as compared with 1975. In estimating the situation I took relatively low inflation rates, 18 per cent for 1976 and 14 per cent in 1977. I know now that these rates are very much too low. In reality, the percentage fall was much greater.
The Central Bank in its winter report for 1976 stated that investment in the industry fell, but what I consider to be of enormous importance is that the Government in 1976 deliberately chose to underspend by many millions of pounds the amounts allocated in the public capital programme for that year. And of course all of the matters I have referred to—the drop in the amount of money in the public capital programme for housing, the failure of the Government to provide anything extra in the budget, the fall in investment in the industry—have resulted not only in a severe drop in the number of houses being constructed but have had a catastrophic effect on employment in the industry. In reply to a recent question to the Taoiseach asking for the average number employed in the industry in 1974, 1975 and 1976, the figures I got, to April in each year, were 72,000, 66,000 and 60,000, a fall of 12,000 since 1974, and the trend is continuing.
The real gravity lies in the fact that the industry, properly financed and injected with much needed confidence, is the one industry that could contribute and quickly generate a considerable number of jobs and help in a positive way to ease the frighteningly high unemployment. Since 1974, the public capital programme and the lack of adequate provision in budgets show that from a practical point of view this Government have nothing to offer.
I have stated on many occasions that it is futile and thoroughly misleading to quote comparative amounts of money spent in the industry without having due regard for the horrific inflation problem from which we are suffering, the highest in the EEC. In 1972-73. Fianna Fáil built approximately 22,000 dwellings for £52 million, and last year the Government built the same number for £112 million. Of course, the number of pounds spent is not the basic matter but rather what the pounds produce in terms of buildings and general construction. I have no doubt the Minister will tell us that the Coalition spent £X million compared with £Y million spent by Fianna Fáil, but this has no relevance unless it can be shown that the extra money provided more houses and more jobs. The opposite is the truth.
I have shown numbers in relation to houses built and I should like now to tell the House that the number employed in the industry fell dramatically, even though the money was more than doubled. The gross output of the construction industry for 1974, 1975 and the estimated figure for 1976 was: 1974, £458 million; 1975, £527 million; and 1976, £627 million. On paper this appears to be a worthwhile increase but if one takes the gross output at constant prices there is a very different picture, the figures being, for the years mentioned, £196 million; £188 million and £189 million, a fall of 4 per cent between 1974 and 1976 in real terms. They are all official statistics, not mine. The building and construction industry itself is convinced that the fall is in reality much greater, that the overall drop in construction work has been about 10 per cent. The Central Bank report published in January showed a drop of 6.3 per cent in volume in house building. I would point out again that cement sales on the home market in 1976 were considerably lower than in 1974 despite the fact that 1974 was a bad year for the building societies.
In an industry which in everybody's view, except obviously the Government's, is capable of a really worthwhile development the present situation is disastrous. Many statements by the Government, by the Taoiseach and by the Minister for Local Government at the openings of housing schemes and elsewhere that the State is providing so many millions for building construction work and building societies, banks and insurance companies are providing so many more millions have very little merit if as a result of all these efforts we have now a situation where there were 4,000 fewer houses built in 1976 as compared with 1975 and almost 25,000 building and construction workers unemployed.
The Government have on a number of occasions boasted about the number of local authority houses that have been built. But what has not been alluded to is the fact that, because the Minister for Local Government has persistently refused to increase the SDA maximum loan level and the qualifying income limit for such a loan and because he has removed the right to State grants from a very large percentage of those who had previously been entitled to them, he has thereby pushed large numbers of people who would normally have built their own houses on to local authority housing lists, far more people indeed than he can accommodate in the extra houses that are claimed to be built, so that the last state of these people in relation to their housing needs is worse than their first.
There was a fall of over 1,500 local authority houses in 1976 compared with 1975 and that has exacerbated the whole situation. I said before, and I propose to continue saying it, that the building and construction industry, if properly financed and directed, could provide a substantial increase in employment in a short space of time without any detrimental effect on our balance of payments. Most of the materials used are home produced and the construction industry is the ideal industry to help counteract the effects of the recession, a recession for which the Government have a considerable responsibility. If one is to judge by the fact that there is not one extra penny in the budget for housing then it is true to say that the Government show very little concern for the 25,000 building workers who are unemployed not to speak of the thousands of others who became redundant in ancillary industries. A 100 per cent increase in unemployment among building workers in the space of two short years is totally unacceptable. The only reason these people lost their employment was because of the incompetence of the Government in relation to the provision of proper financial resources for house building and other construction work. The percentage of the total labour force in the construction industry now out of work has risen by 18.8 per cent to 22.1 per cent.
It is deplorable at a time when we have well over 115,000 people unemployed to find so many people unable to get homes of their own. The industry could do a great deal to reduce this horrifying unemployment figure. Any suggestions put forward by us to remedy this shocking situation are met with one answer only and, paradoxically, that answer takes the form of a question: we are invariably asked whether we are aware that there is a financial crisis. The answer is of course we are aware of it but we are also aware that even a tiny percentage of the total amount of money now needed after four years of Coalition Government to service the national debt would be sufficient to put this industry on its feet. We are also aware that whatever this Government may do we, in Fianna Fáil, are not willing to stand aside while thousands of our unemployed could be placed in employment. I reject entirely the philosophy of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach who said on one occasion here, when I stated what we proposed to do, that what I was proposing would not grow on a blade of grass. In so far as we are concerned we recognise a very serious unemployment problem and we believe in taking the necessary steps to resolve it.
What can we do then to help to revive this ailing industry? The first step in my view is to adopt the Fianna Fáil policy announced last September and inject £30 million extra into the construction industry. This would provide an estimated 5,000 extra jobs in this hard pressed industry. I see no reason why this Government, who are clearly bereft of any worthwhile ideas, should not adopt this proposal having already stolen a large part of our policy and incorporated it in the now moribund Green Paper. A study of our financial proposals pinpoints where the money will come from. The confidence which a change of Government would, of course, engender would undoubtedly see a flow of home-based money being made available.
Let me repeat the demand that the SDA loans and the qualifying income limit be raised to realistic levels. The substitutes provided by the Minister have shown themselves to be ineffective. This demand which was initiated by us has now got the backing of local authorities, trade unions and employer bodies and even of the Labour Party at one of their annual conventions. This scheme was the backbone of the private sector of the house building industry and it has been virtually wiped out by the deliberate action of the Minister and the Government. Whole categories of people whose nominal incomes have increased above the limit while their living standards have been reduced are no longer eligible. Large numbers of families are being forced on to the ever-lengthening local authority housing lists where many will remain for years before getting houses.
There is scarcely any need for me to recapitulate the situation in relation to SDA loans. It has been done very often here but with no effect on the Minister or on the Government. Briefly, the maximum SDA loan is £4,500 and the qualifying income limit is £3,350. The situation has remained so since May, 1973, when the average price of an SDA loan house was £5,900. Remember, at that time everybody was entitled to a State grant and very many to supplementary grants as well which meant the borrower had to save only a relatively small amount to put himself in the position to build or buy his own house. Today the loan and the qualifying limit remain the same. There is no grant of any kind available and the average price of the SDA loan house is now approximately £9,000.
There is no need to dwell further on the matter except to say that understandably the drop in the number of loan applications has been catastrophic. We had an excuse from the Minister for Finance. He gave a rather peculiar reason as to why the number of applications for loans had dropped. The basic fact is that these SDA loans were intended for people in the lower income group to give them an opportunity of building or purchasing their own homes. This opportunity has now been taken from them by the Government. My party believe in encouraging young people of initiative to develop and make progress in whatever field. Indeed, the greatest damage done by the Coalition Government is the stultifying of initiative and the destruction of the confidence of the people and particularly of the young in the future of the country. When we return to Government shortly we will increase the loan limits and we will raise the qualifying income limit to realistic levels thereby giving our young people once again the opportunity to build or buy their own homes and, at the same time, give a much needed boost to the hard-pressed building industry.
I mentioned before that we propose to invest a further £30 million in the building and construction industry, to raise the SDA loans and qualifying limits to realistic levels, to remove rates from dwelling houses and to make worthwhile grants available to first purchasers. I believe that these proposals of ours will create the confidence and the drive and initiative to once again put this great industry on its feet and to provide homes for our people and much needed employment for, as I mentioned before, the very many unemployed building workers who are now lengthening the queues outside the employment exchanges.
The most recent blow inflicted by the Minister on the construction industry was the curtailment of grants for housing reconstruction. Reconstruction grants are now available only to those whose valuation is under £10 in rural areas, under £15 in urban areas and under £20 in city areas, where heretofore everybody was entitled to a reconstruction grant and a supplementary reconstruction grant. This effectively cuts down on the number of people employed, particularly in the smaller construction companies.
There is another aspect of this matter which should create concern. Some years ago An Foras Forbartha submitted a report to the Minister on our housing stock which the Minister, in reply to a Dáil question by me, stated was not as complete as he would like it and had it returned to An Foras Forbartha for further consideration. In reply to a more recent question by me, the Minister stated that he had not yet received the further report but that he hoped to have it by October. At the moment we can only judge what our housing stock is like by a comparison with the situation in Northern Ireland. If we are to judge by the statistics on housing stock in Northern Ireland and if we reckon that there must be a close similarity between their stock and ours, then a relatively high proportion of our housing stock must be in a bad way and if it is not seen to immediately will have deteriorated past the point of no return.
This is a very serious situation indeed and does not suggest that the present is a time when we should cut back on reconstruction grants. The reverse is true. Far from cutting back on grants we should be making grants available which would help bring existing houses in need of reconstruction up to modern standards. This is something to which we shall give serious consideration.
For many years we took our roads for granted. There were relatively few complaints. More and more roads were being improved and more and more dust-free roads were being made available. The roads were being properly maintained and the financial provision was fairly adequate. Today there are few areas in relation to which so many complaints, and justifiable complaints at that, are being made. Roads have deteriorated to such an extent that, as I said earlier, they are more reminiscent of the twenties and thirties than they are of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Even major roads show potholes, while many of our major roads have deteriorated to a very grave extent.
In this day and age, when road transport has become a vital sector of our economic development, this situation is deplorable. It must be quickly rectified if we are to get our economy going again and if we are to provide for the motorist the facilities which are his due and for which he is paying dearly. The basic cause of the serious deterioration in our roads is the lack of Government concern and the poor financial assistance for road building and road maintenance. At a time when the Government claim to be removing health charges and housing subsidies from the rates—something which they have since, in part, reneged on—they were at the same time increasing the proportion of expenditure on roads with money derived from rates and reducing the percentage being made available by the State. In real terms over the past four years the State's contribution dropped by 27 per cent. In 1960 the total road mileage was 51,463 and by 1973 the figure had increased to 55,306, which was an increase of 3,843 miles or 3.8 per cent. I have not been able to get statistics for 1974 to 1976, but it is obvious there was an increase then too.
Over the last ten years the vehicle population has increased by 44 per cent and fuel consumption has increased by 73 per cent, all of which would indicate that roads are required to carry more traffic more frequently; this causes road deterioration, and a high degree of maintenance is necessary. However, between 1973 and 1976 1,000 road workers have been made redundant at a time when the figure should have been increased. Not only that, but because the flow of road building material was reduced there were many more redundancies in ancillary employment such as quarrying. Again this is an area where employment could be created quickly.
Grants to local authorities amounted to £21 million in 1974, £20 million in 1975 and £20 million in 1976. If one were to take these amounts in real terms they would show a dramatic fall in the amount of money being made available by the State for road work. This year of course, an election year, an increase was granted, but in real terms the amount given would not equal the 1975 grant and, in fact, in 1976 it would have been necessary, instead of making £20 million available, to make £34 million available if the same amount of work was to be done as was done in 1976 with the £21 million.
