I move amendment No. 1:
To delete all words after Dáil Éireann and substitute the following:
"notes that the Minister for Economic Planning and Development is undertaking a review of the 1972 Statement by the Government on Regional Policy, that this review will include an examination of the strategy adopted in relation to major urban areas in that Statement, and that Dáil Éireann approves of the action taken by the Government to establish an Inner City Group to develop a programme of action by the various Departments and public agencies operating in the Dublin inner city area and to make an additional £1 million available in 1979 to accelerate progress in dealing with inner city problems."
I will begin by saying that I welcome Deputy Mitchell's constructive approach when he moved the motion and for his suggestion that he might even accept my amendment. I fear that some of the wording of the original motion is rather emotive. It might be simpler to proceed, on this occasion at any rate, on the normal parliamentary convention of a Government moving its amendment. I take the basic point that Deputies on both sides of the House are concerned about the manner in which development takes place or about the lack of development in certain urban areas and the need to adapt our institutional arrangements and to adapt policies which are appropriate to the circumstances of the 1980s rather than simply echo the practices of former decades and, indeed, centuries.
The reason I begin by making reference to regional policy is because it is important, if we are talking about developing a relevant contemporary approach, that issues like this should not be tackled piecemeal. While I recognise the importance of ensuring appropriate developments for Dublin, I do not believe this can be achieved if you simply look at Dublin in isolation. You must look at Dublin in its national context. It is a capital city; it has a very substantial proportion of our total population. It would be wrong to allow any group—whether it be the greater Dublin authority or the existing Dublin bodies, or a Government Department or other agency—to develop a programme of action for Dublin, simply by reference to what exists or what is identified as being within the boundaries of the Dublin area itself. On the contrary, if we are to set about this in a satisfactory manner, we must begin by looking at the problem in national terms and asking what are the likely trends in our overall population growth and in the characteristics of that population, and then facing up to the very important and very difficult question of the geographical distribution of that population—in other words, where those people are going to live and work.
There have been for long periods of time established patterns of movement. We have had a pronounced tendency to internal migration from the countryside into the cities and towns, Dublin being the most pronounced example of that internal migration. If we are thinking seriously about the future development of the nation and of the satisfactory urban structure within that overall context, we must face up to the question of whether each area is allowed to grow spontaneously and build to accommodate whatever population emerges within its boundaries, or whether there should be a deliberate policy designed to encourage or influence either, in some instances, movement to a particular area or, in other instances, to slow down or prevent movement to particular areas.
It is fair to say that for several decades there have been occasional references and discussions and emphases on the importance of development of a positive regional policy which would have, as one of its aims, a sufficient pattern of growth in centres outside Dublin. This would achieve a better balance of urban development in the country as a whole, rather than a top heavy structure in which there is just one large urban conglomeration in Dublin and relatively small and underdeveloped urban structures in other parts of the country.
There have been some earlier attempts at tackling this problem and some positive results have been achieved, but the last policy statement in this area was the 1972 statement on regional policy. The first task that must be undertaken is to update that policy statement, to bring it into line with existing population characteristics and to seek to anticipate and to identify the probable development which is required into the 1980s. That, in my view, will enable us to define the most appropriate context for the future development of Dublin.
I have to emphasise that it is not simply a question of thinking in terms of numbers, of ways of ensuring that more job opportunities and more housing and so forth are available in other centres throughout the country so that there is no longer the need for internal migration into Dublin from the rest of the country. It is also a question of looking at the other roles that a capital city plays in the life of the nation. Deputy Mitchell referred to particular types of buildings not having been provided since independence. It is not only a question of buildings; it is a question of whether it is the focal point for certain forms of cultural and social activities. In some instances, it may be the only centre of such activities, in which, typically, a capital city has a predominant role, in a number of cultural and social spheres. These roles and characteristics need to be identified and some relevant policy stance adopted if we are to embark on any worthwhile pattern for future development.
It is enough, in the limited time at my disposal, to emphasise the importance of that point. I stress it because it was one that did not arise in Deputy Mitchell's remarks and, however important and however difficult the issues arising in Dublin or any other urban centre may be, I must emphasise that they cannot be tackled satisfactorily in isolation from what is required for the country as a whole. Given that we can approach the matter in that national context, that we can achieve some adequate statement of the appropriate regional balance, regional distribution, of future development, then we can focus on the particular issues that would arise in any Dublin area.
That brings us to the second part of the motion before us, which was dealt with in part of my amendment, namely, the emphasis on Dublin itself, which is the most clear-cut example of urban development and redevelopment problems that arise. Although the actual size of these problems may be greater in the Dublin area, they are by no means confined to Dublin. Similar problems about the use of space in urban areas, about the prolonged existence of derelict sites to which reference was made, arise in other centres throughout the country. What is needed is a comprehensive approach in tackling these questions.
Another point I should like to make, not by way of apology but by way of trying to put the issue in perspective, is that this type of problem of the growth, decay and change of urban areas, especially the inner core or central city areas, is by no means a uniquely Irish problem. On the contrary, it is a universal phenomenon in the western world that there are spontaneous patterns of development which have operated over the centuries and these produce natural movements. We are touching on some very complex issues of how people live their lives and, indeed, the nature of the freedom they can enjoy in a democracy when we start delving into these questions and asking: "Are people free to live, work, trade or carry on various social and cultural activities in particular physical locations?" What we see today is the fact that whereas in the past there were sound reasons why people and economic activity should have concentrated into small, tightly knit areas, such as we now call inner-city areas, they no longer operate today. We have seen a different pattern of development in recent decades reflecting the different characteristics of the 20th century, especially the second half of it.
When mass transport was, in effect, not available and before the advent of buses, motor cars and so on, it made sense for housing, factories, shops and other activities to be tightly knit into geographical areas. In recent decades we have seen the speed and relative cheapness of transport making it possible for people to develop a more mixed pattern of location. The suburban form is a typical one which enables people to go on working in an inner city area where they are not particularly concerned about the external environment because it is primarily regarded as simply the location in which to carry on their occupation and, on the other hand, enables them to locate their homes in suburbia where they have some of the features of the countryside, the green spaces and safe play areas for children, the healthier environment away from the factory fumes and so on. That was the underlying rationale for the growth of suburbia. It is not a pattern to be attacked or despised. I am not necessarily endorsing monotonous or unimaginative development or what can be described as—using Deputy Mitchell's words —featureless rabbit warrens of housing. It should be remembered that for the first time in history they gave thousands of people the opportunity to have a decent amount of housing space with a decent patch for their own flower beds and reasonably safe areas for their children to grow up in and play in. That should be contrasted with the very cramped and over-crowded inner city environments from which many of them had come. One has only to look at the old photographs of Dublin or read some of the historical descriptions of the city, even into the early years of this century, to know of the appalling conditions under which the majority of Dubliners lived. One would then recognise that the featureless rabbit warrens of suburbia would have been regarded as paradise by many of those people had they been given the opportunity to enjoy them.
Those types of movements are not simple one-way items to be easily denounced or attacked and neither are they to be perpetuated. The rationale which gave rise to them has certainly diminished in relative importance. This is the sort of issue which we must now face. If we ask what were the features which caused the inner city to decay we would have to say that the relative decay emerged because we had this separation or split between the working functions and the residential or leisure functions of people. Once they transferred to their homes away from their working environments we come across the phenomenon of city areas that died at 5.30 or 6 p.m. However, there is another phenomenon in that typically those areas do not die altogether. They produce certain categories of population and the phenomenon there has been that overwhelmingly it is the lower income families who end up inhabiting, relatively speaking, the older inner city areas. That then gives rise to a different kind of social problem because, classically, a healthy city depends on an adequate mix of people. It is necessary to have people with all kinds of interests, skills, attitudes and incomes if we are to have a vibrant, healthy and dynamic community. Once we allow our cities to become very highly compartmentalised or, to use the derogatory term, once we allow ghettos to be created, almost inevitably the quality of life for people is adversely affected.
If we look at the reasons why this type of segregation or compartmentalisation of people should occur we start stumbling on the individual policies that were pursued over the years, very often with the best intentions. Of course, we know that it is the road to hell and not to paradise that is paved with good intentions. One finds that with the best of good intentions one gets sectionalised or compartmentalised policies which may be dealing with planning regulations, permitting different types of development to take place or may be dealing with housing or taxation policies. It may be a variety of factors which end up producing effects that certainly were not intended and, very often, were not thought of by the originators of policies.
One of the important examples I should like to give—it is a telling argument that is usually neglected in any reference to rates—for instance, for the abolition of rates on domestic dwellings to which insufficient attention was given, is that they were a factor which served to intensify the movement out of inner city areas to the suburbs. Typically, the older houses in the inner areas had higher valuations. As house prices and house tax rose the newer suburban houses became doubly attractive not only because of their more attractive locations but also because they carried a smaller tax burden. One of the encouraging features of the last few years has been the tendency for this outward flow to be halted. Indeed there is now some inward movement because the relative costs of living in an inner-city housing unit have been significantly reduced through the abolition of rates. That is a very important, very desirable and very healthy social feature in our community because, as I have said already, it is undesirable that the majority of people living in the inner-city area should be predominantly from one particular income or social group. It always struck me as one of the paradoxes that it was only people with the smallest incomes who apparently could afford to go on living on the most expensive sites in the country. That illustrates the point I am trying to make about the effects of policies not necessarily being the ones that were originally envisaged.
These are the sorts of problems which have to be looked at and of course if we use these as examples, then I would certainly agree with Deputy Mitchell on one point and that is that there is not going to be any satisfactory solution to them by going at them in isolation and having individual agencies and going off at tangents in tackling them. Instead we need some comprehensive approach which seeks to look at the total space within a defined area. In a different context we may be looking specifically at the inner-city area or we may be looking at the greater Dublin area and so on. Whatever the particular geographical entity we take we must look at the population characteristics to which I referred at the outset; then we must look at the range of facilities, the range of activities that would be appropriate for that type of population. So we must immediately look at the question of facilities and opportunities for work, facilities and opportunities for leisure, facilities for children and the various specialised facilities that are needed, whether for leisure activities, caring for the old and for the sick and so on. It is only by developing a comprehensive set of development proposals that we can hope to achieve a satisfactory resolution of these issues.
Even in going at it in this way I have to come back to one of the points to which I referred earlier and that is that ultimately we are touching on very important issues in the lines between individual freedom and the need to achieve solutions that are desirable for the overall well-being of the community. We can all now look at the product or the work of the Wide Streets Commissioners and say that it was great that people had the foresight in relation to O'Connell Street but the people who were affected at the time, I am sure, regarded this as an unwarranted intrusion on their privacy upsetting their established way of life. We see the same sort of problems today where we need to get a change of use for a particular block of land and it does not matter whether we want the land for a new road or new houses or new office blocks or new shops. There will always be some people who will be upset by the change in the status quo. One of the most important tasks that we have as politicians representing the interests of the people is to make sure that we convey to them the importance, the necessity and the desirability of having a healthy degree of change. We have to emphasise that the one option that is not open to any community is to try to insist on the total preservation or freezing of the status quo because that is a classic recipe for guaranteeing stagnation and decay with all its consequent damage to the future health and vitality of the community itself.
So, we need then to identify policy for change, policy for development, policy for progress that must inevitably call for some upset in the existing pattern of activity, and therefore for some expressions of concern by those who are affected by the change. Nonetheless one of our tasks must be to ensure that there is a sufficient degree of support and understanding and goodwill in the community as a whole to permit that type of development to take place. I do not believe that we are going to be able to solve all these problems overnight. Indeed I doubt if one ever in that sense solves this kind of problem because the healthy community, the healthy society is one in which there will always be change taking place, and just as one feels that one has successfully tackled and overcome the issues of today, tomorrow will present itself with its new questions and its new challenges which must be faced and resolved.
The approach on which we have embarked in the inner-city group arose from the work of an inter-departmental committee reporting to me. That represents the first step on the part of the Government to produce the type of comprehensive approach to issues of inner-city development and issues of general urban development which are at the heart of this type of motion. The commitment that we have already made financially is designed as an indication of our intention to speed up the progress in these areas and particularly to use these funds as pump primers or as ways of initiating work rather than losing time while items are channelled through the various separate agencies, be they central or local, which are inevitably involved once there is any large scale proposal at issue. For that reason then I am confident that tackling the issues in this way will enable a much more rapid and much more positive level of progress to be achieved.
The actual question of the changes in the institutional arrangements which should accompany any more vigorous approach to the inner-city question is something which we can leave for another occasion. I would rather begin by using the various departments and agencies that are there and simply injecting a type of co-ordinating function into them rather than attempting to redesign a system from scratch. While I sympathise with many of the sentiments which Deputy Mitchell expressed in that area at the need for institutional reform, I am sure he will agree that the first consequence of his seeking to put through any major reform along the lines he proposes would be to, in effect, stultify and hold up all progress for quite some time because evidently there would be very prolonged disputes and debates as to the most desirable institutional reforms. So if we are genuinely concerned about doing something positive for the people of the inner city and indeed the other urban areas which require it, surely we can agree that it is possible to make a worth while start and be doing things which require action. Surely we can agree that it is possible to make a worth while start and do things. Perhaps then when we have accumulated sufficient experience and can point to sufficient achievements we can also think in terms of carrying out some institutional modifications that may be appropriate to see us through the 1980s.
