Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 28 Nov 1928

Vol. 10 No. 34

PRIVATE BUSINESS. - PUBLIC BUSINESS. HOUSING BILL, 1928—SECOND STAGE.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Mr. FARREN

I want to say that I am not opposing this Bill, because I do not think anybody could reasonably stand up in this House, in view of the housing conditions existing in the country at present, and oppose this Bill. There is a need for providing houses in the country at present so as to relieve the present position of distress that is existing amongst the people. Though not opposing the Bill, I must say that I am greatly disappointed that some greater effort has not been made to solve this very pressing problem before us. I have stated here on former occasions that I believe, from my own knowledge of the existing conditions in the tenements and slums in this city, that in my honest belief most of the social evils from which we suffer in this City of Dublin are due solely, or are mainly attributable, to the bad housing conditions. For that reason I say I am disappointed at the poor effort that has been made under this Bill to deal with the terrible problem of housing. There is no need for me to dwell or to go into figures with regard to the present state of affairs.

Every Senator here knows, or should know, what the position is at the moment in Dublin and in the Saorstát. The mere contribution of a sum of £200,000, as provided for in this Bill, for the purpose of granting a subsidy to encourage building, or, as the President said, to end the present housing policy of the Government, is, to my mind, not adequately dealing with the position. The President has distinctly stated in reference to this Bill that it was to wind up the whole of the Government housing policy. He went further and he made a statement which has alarmed me considerably, when he said that the Government did not intend in the future to provide £200,000 in any one year to help to solve the housing problem. To my mind that is a very alarming statement, and I think it is a serious statement. I have no doubt that the Government do propose a future policy with regard to housing. What that policy may be there is no means of ascertaining at the moment. There is no means of ascertaining what the intentions of the Government are, but in view of the statements that have been made with regard to the amount of money that will be required to deal with this problem of housing, to my mind the contribution of £200,000 in any one year is not going to solve it. When speaking of this matter in the Dáil the President said that some people, when talking about tenements in slums, did not understand exactly what the position was. I think I can claim to know what the position is. I stated it here already, and I repeat it to-day, that I am the product of the Dublin tenements. You have to live there to understand what the evils are. Everybody will say, "We have sympathy with the poor people who live in these slums," but they have to live in them in order to understand what the difficulties are. It is all very well to have sympathy with these people, but it is not sympathy they want, but bricks and mortar. Sympathy is no use to them.

I could shock this House, and if it were not for the presence of some ladies who are members of this House I would shock the people here by giving them a description of the conditions in the slums as I know them. I could shock them, and society has got to be shocked in order to be brought to a sense of responsibility with regard to this problem. The President paid a great compliment to the dwellers in the slums and tenements. It is a compliment that I think is deserved. The wonder to everybody is not that those people who are compelled to live in the slums are as bad as they are, but the extraordinary thing, considering all the circumstances, is that they are so very good. In view of what the President said about the grand character of these people, surely to goodness they are worth providing them with something better in the way of housing. In what I am saying I am speaking more particularly of Dublin, because I am familiar with the conditions there. I know that there are in other parts of the country conditions as bad as they are in Dublin. For that reason I think we ought to get some idea of what the intentions of the Government are in this respect. In the other House there were certain suggestions made to try to fix the responsibility or to fix the blame for the present position with regard to housing on certain people. One Deputy went so far as to say that there was a conspiracy amongst the builders and builders' operatives to hold up the people to ransom. I do not know so much about that. I have had a large experience in dealing with builders in the City of Dublin. I do not think it could be claimed that there was such a conspiracy. All kinds of statements are being loosely made by people who do not understand this problem, and who have not gone to the trouble to try to understand it. It is all very well for people to be talking glibly and making suggestions of a solution of problems which they do not understand, and about things of which they know very little. The problem is there and it will have to be faced. The houses have got to be built for those people who need them and who are entitled to some bigger effort on their behalf than has been madé up to this.

Greater efforts will have to be made to try to meet the situation. There was a suggestion made that there should be a national housing programme entered into for the next fifteen years, and so on. I think we ought to be told something about such a programme. It is not this £200,000 that is going to deal with the housing problem. More money must be available for the building of houses if this problem is going to be dealt with. It was stated that in the future the country cannot afford to give more money for housing unless it gets value. The whole suggestion underlying that idea about getting value is that somebody is getting more out of the housing than he should get. It is a well-known fact that a couple of years ago the Dublin Commissioners, who are now in charge of the housing problem in Dublin, went across to the Continent to study this problem there and see whether they could produce houses cheaper than they were being produced in Dublin. They came back not alone with new ideas as to the construction of houses, but they brought back with them a number of foreign contractors. Foreign contractors were brought here to build houses with foreign material, and of these foreign contractors it was found afterwards that they, too, must have been in a conspiracy in this matter, because they were not a conspicuous success. The proper way to deal with it is to set up a National Housing Council, and to put on that National Housing Council people who know their job, representatives of the builders, representatives of the builders' operatives, and representatives of the State that can handle the job and see whether houses could be produced cheaper and if the matter could be dealt with in the proper way, and not in a piecemeal way. If it is done on a huge scale, the work could be done cheaper. If it is going to be done to bring relief to those people at present it has got to be done in a big way. Let the Government have a programme a few years in advance and let the builders' operatives know that the harder they work the better they will be respected. At present the harder they work the more they are getting near to the time when they will be getting to the dole and the streets. It cannot be said in recent years that it is the building operatives who are responsible for the present conditions, as the building operatives are being wiped out. We have hardly any operatives because the houses are being built with foreign materials and foreign labour almost. The money is leaving the country for foreign materials. There was a reference to brickworks and other matters. Now I know this problem. I have studied it carefully. I have worked at the building trade myself. I do not think it will ever be solved by tinkering. The only way in which it can be solved is by the establishment of a proper housing authority which will have power to do the job in the manner in which it can be well done in order to provide decent homes for the citizens.

Sir EDWARD BIGGER

I would like to add a few words to what Senator Farren has said. He has spoken strongly about the Dublin slums. He has not said a word that is too strong. The conditions are deplorable. I have myself visited some houses and I have seen a mother and five, six or seven children living in one room sixteen feet square. One of the children was suffering from consumption. That child went away to a sanitorium, was sent back after some time, got ill again, was again sent to the sanitorium, and again back home and so on. That is not tackling the question as it should be tackled. I do hope that the Government will see their way to do something substantial in the way of improving the slums in Dublin. They are spending very large sums on public health in order to prevent consumption and for child welfare. But the solving and the real solving of this problem will be found through better housing for the people. If we start at the right end we would improve the houses, and perhaps such large sums will not be required for that.

Dr. GOGARTY

In the old days one of the chief sticks with which we used to belabour the old Local Government Board of which Senator Sir Edward Bigger was a member, was the fact that there were 50,000 people living in one-room tenements in this country. I think in thirty years the old Local Government Board did not build as many houses as this Government has built in three years. This is a problem that it is equally necessary that the Labour Party should tackle. The reason why tenements are not condemned is because there are not enough houses to take the place of the tenements. A ship is condemned by the Board of Trade when she is unseaworthy. But a house that is uninhabitable and that has become a pest is allowed to remain there a pest centre so long as it is not relieved by the building of a new house. Until there is a sort of permit required to become a citizen that condition will be indefinitely maintained, because people will continue to go into houses that are condemned as soon as the former tenants leave them to go into a newly built house. If you build new houses in Fairview in order to empty the slums in Cumberland Street you find that the slums in Cumberland Street are again filled by new tenement dwellers.

Housing conditions are just as bad in the country. There was no general architect to control the building of houses and everyone built a house wherever he thought fit.

I have seen a house eight feet below the level of the road, and which you could not distinguish from a manure heap. I asked why it was not condemned, and I was told it was condemned by an inspector, but that such houses must continue to exist, as men could not be put out on the mountainside. The casual labourer is the cause of the slum problem in Dublin. One thing that could be controlled by the Labour Party is the auctionings of labour on the quays. That you have on the quays three times as many men as you can get employment for is one of the causes of the slum problem. As long as the old filthy houses are there waiting for new tenants the slum problem will continue. The tenement houses that are unfit to live in should not be allowed to be occupied again after they have been emptied. The health condition in Dublin is low. It is not as healthy as some of the cities in Great Britain according to the deathrate returns. The happy-go-lucky places where the Danish ship went aground in Dublin, in the lowest level, are not healthy.

Money is wasted in the attempt to cure tuberculosis. If the money were spent on providing housing for the dwellers better results would be obtained. If you got a case of tuberculosis in an Irish village the victim is removed and put into a windy house in some other place, in order to try and effect a cure. It would be better if instead of waiting to deal with people when they become seriously ill some sunny place were rented from, say, the Portuguese Government, and those suffering from tuberculosis sent there. The money spent on the tuberculosis campaign, if spent on providing houses for the people, would be the best means of preventing tuberculosis. Some of the slum areas in Dublin, like Summerhill, are a disgrace to civilisation, and for that you cannot definitely bring the blame home to anyone's door. The difficulty in dealing with this problem is that you cannot put the people out of the slums until other houses are built for them. Owing to the extraordinary use of modern transport, satellite towns could easily be built up around Dublin. There are parts of Dublin highly desirable for building, such as Ticknock, where there is granite and a gravely soil. Houses built in these outlying areas should have a fifth of an acre attached. In connection with the Housing Commission which sat last year, I made a minority report, and I made that report not because I am a crank. Houses should be built where land is cheap. With modern transport the greengrocer can go to Dalkey or Killiney, but it is the workers who want these healthy surroundings for their children. Dublin is spread out to the greatest extent of any city. From Killiney to Howth it goes around the Horse-shoe Bay, but the congestion in the middle of the city is very high. The moment tenement slums are emptied they should be knocked down, and if houses were built in healthy districts around the city, owing to modern transport facilities the workers would be able to dwell there, and that would relieve the congestion in the city.

Under Board of Trade regulations I believe that every ship is bound to give eight hours' notice of its arrival. You could bring casual workers from Cork in that time, and it would only be a matter of twenty minutes when the ship is brought to port to discharge, so that there need not be that concentration about the port we have with the resulting growth of slum tenements. The floors in these tenements are rotten, and the children who live in them rarely see the sun, for the sun is obscured with the smoke that lies over the valley of the Liffey. I again repeat that the chief factor to be considered in any housing problem is the amazing factor of modern transport. You do not get rid of the housing or slum problem by making the possibility of another one quite near the town.

Sir THOMAS ESMONDE

I hope this Seanad will realise the importance of the statement made by Senator Farren. He speaks with authority and with knowledge on the question. Everybody is agreed that our slum problem should be dealt with. Senator Farren says what the people in the slums want is not sympathy, but houses, and he gave us an indication. Speaking with authority, he pointed out the right way in which to deal with the housing problem. If you could have a national housing authority, with our Ministry of Public Health represented on it, and if you could have the Committee formed on the lines which the Senator pointed out, and in addition to that you could have an extended programme spread over a series of years, it is quite possible that some practical solution would be found of this very pressing problem. Objection has been taken to the amount of Government grant allocated, which, I understand, is £200,000 for this year. That is not a large amount, but it represents a fixation of policy, and it denotes that the Government is appreciative of the importance of this issue, and desires to deal with it as best it can. It is largely a question of finance. It is a question of raising the money to build these houses. Various ways have been proposed, but I think the subject has been treated in a piece-meal fashion. What we want really is a large programme extended over a period of years which will enlist the sympathy and the goodwill of the dwellers in these slums, and enlist the sympathy and the goodwill of Irish labour, and also of those who represent the Irish taxpayers.

In view of the statement made by Senator Farren, I think that this question is approaching a condition that is ripe for solution, and I suggest to the Government to persevere in its inquiries as to how far it can follow on the lines the Senator suggested.

Mr. O'FARRELL

This Bill involves such a meagre contribution of what is a colossal problem that I feel there is not much use in devoting a lot of discussion to it. It merely continues the policy which has been in operation for some years now, and which certainly has not relieved in any material degree at all the housing problem. Since the war we have built here, I believe, about 14,000 houses. During the same period in Great Britain one and a quarter million houses have been built. In the year 1927 alone, 225,000 houses were erected in Great Britain. I am afraid that our present rate of building is barely keeping pace with current requirements and that we are not overtaking the shortage that accrued as a result of ceasing to build during the war, and not relieving the shortage that occurred long before the war. It is, of course, altogether a matter of finance.

The President stated in the other House, that if we could be assured of getting good value for the money spent that it would be possible to get the money, and mention was made, I think, of a housing loan of £10,000,000. It would be interesting to know in what respect we are not getting proper value at the present time. Statements are being made repeatedly regarding the alleged restriction of output by the building operatives, but I think the charge has never been established, certainly it has never been established to my satisfaction. I would like to have it fully investigated and probed but I do not think it has ever been established. Certain incidents have occurred recently which would go to show that proper value is not given by the master builders in this country. One glaring example of that was given in the case of a contractor for houses in Cork where a British firm got the contract at £11,000 less than the lowest Irish tender received, and about £30,000 or £40,000 less than the highest Irish tender received. While the British firm got the contract for the houses at this low tender and is giving at least as good material as that tendered for by the Irish master builders, they were able to pay their operatives a higher rate of pay than were the Irish master builders. The men employed by the British firm were working, whilst the employes of the Irish builders were walking the streets on strike against a cut in wages. I know a public utility society here that recently gave a contract for houses to the same firm, and thereby saved £55 per house as compared with what they would have to pay if they had given the contract to one of the Dublin contractors.

Now these are incidents that cannot be overlooked, and they are considerations that should be borne in mind when charges of a restriction of output are being made against the building operatives. Statements were also made in the other House in favour of building three-roomed houses in order to hasten on the relief of the housing shortage. Unfortunately, our Dublin Commissioners have set a terrible example in that respect by building hundreds of three-roomed shacks. That really is going from slumdom to slumdom. In order to get one of these houses, the applicant must have a more or less exceptionally large family. He must have a family that the wealthy classes would look upon as large. He must have six or seven in family in order to be able to get a three-roomed house. What on earth sort of morality, hygiene or ordinary decency can be observed where you have a family of that dimensions in a three-roomed house? I do not believe in relieving slumdom in a temporary way, seeing that you are only creating a future slumdom. Strings of these houses have been built, some four-roomed and others five-roomed amongst them, on the outskirts of the City, in places like Glasnevin and Drumcondra. One effect of that has been to pull down the value of the property that they surround.

One of the finest thoroughfares in Dublin is really being ruined by the erection of these little slum shacks with large families in every one of them. I do hope that if we are going to relieve slumdom at all, that we are not going to relieve it in a way which is going to create a new slumdom, and in addition take away from the value of decent houses that already exist, and in the end leave the position worse than it was before, because when they did build in previous days they did so with some sense of durability and with a certain amount of convenience in the houses. They did not confine the houses, except in very few cases, to three-roomed apartments. In the twentieth century it is a very retrograde step for anyone to advocate a three-roomed house for a family of large dimensions. Moreover, the type of house which is being built is unfortunately of a very unstable character. One feels that some of them, within a decade or twenty years at most, will be tumbling down, and then the present generation will have the task of restoring them and relieving another form of housing shortage.

I hope that during the Recess the Government will give some consideration to the question of making money available for the public loan fund whereby a more or less continuous programme can be embarked upon with some decent consistency of plan, policy and outlook. That is the only way in which we shall be able to face this problem in a practical way, and not in the nibbling manner in which we have been dealing with it during the last four or five years.

MINISTER for LOCAL GOVERNMENT and PUBLIC HEALTH (General Mulcahy)

The Bill before the Seanad proposes to extend the operations of the 1925 and the 1926 Acts, and to place at the disposal of the Minister for Local Government an additional sum of £250,000—not the sum of £200,000 as some Senators have stated —for the purpose of winding-up what may be called the arrears of commitments arising out of the 1925 and 1926 Acts. The moneys voted under the 1926 Act were fully allotted in June last. At that time we found ourselves with commitments on the part of certain local bodies to the extent of plans being in a greater or lesser state of advancement, for the erection of approximately 1,600 houses, and of private individuals with commitments of one kind or another to the extent of perhaps 800 houses. It was felt that the Government were not prepared, as early as the autumn of this year, to place before the Oireachtas proposals for a new housing policy, but they decided that money should be made available in respect either of local authorities or private persons who had been rather dilatory in arranging plans and who had been committed, to some extent, to expenditure. As I say, the Bill originally proposed to meet commitments in respect of local authorities to the extent of 1,600 houses, and in respect of private persons and public utility societies to the extent of 800 houses. It proposed that houses should have been begun by the 17th October of this year, and completed by the 17th October next year, in order to get the advantage of the grant. The Bill in the Dáil was amended to the extent of increasing the amount of money that is being made available, so that instead of a total of 2,400 houses a total of approximately 3,000 houses would be provided for. The concession was also made in the other House that the building of the houses need not be begun until the 31st March next—at any rate that houses begun before the 1st April next, as long as they were completed by 17th October next year, would be eligible for the grant.

The Bill contains a provision by which the Minister for Local Government, in reviewing the circumstances in any particular case, may extend the period inside which the house will be completed in by not more than four months beyond the 17th October next. That is the proposal in the Bill, and I think there can be no objection on the part of anyone to that. I have said that the Government were not in a position to put plans before the Oireachtas for a new housing policy. As the general question of housing has been discussed, I want to say one or two words in regard to it. Senator O'Farrell has rightly said that there is not much to be gained by discussing the matter over this particular Bill. I suggest that there is very little use in discussing it in the spirit Senator Farren did, and with the small contribution that he made. Any new plans for a housing policy that will be put before the Oireachtas by the Government will be based on the clear understanding on the part of the Government that there is a housing policy to be continued, and that the problem is one that is not going to be settled in one, two, three or four years. The Government are also satisfied that the problem is one that cannot be solved by the expenditure of State money in the way in which State moneys are being expended now—at any rate, comparing the return got for the expenditure of State moneys with the moneys being expended now, the problem cannot be solved in that particular way. Senator Farren suggested that the President made a statement to the effect that the Government will not in future, in any year, expend as much as £200,000 on housing. I doubt if the Senator could quote that particular statement. At any rate, I think he would find that it was taken from its context. The position is that to expend £200,000 a year in respect of the general return that is being got for the money that is being expended now is not a policy that the Government would be prepared to continue.

Mr. FARREN

I will quote the President's own words. They will be found at page 1148 of the Dáil Official Reports for 31st October last. The President said: "The Government are not prepared to put up the same amount of money as has been put up in the last two years in order to solve the question." That is the whole statement.

General MULCAHY

I suggest that statement was made in the way of a certain amount of conversation rather than in debate. I suggest that the President's statement, in fact, was that the Government are not prepared to put up the same money per house and the same money per room as they have been putting up under the 1924, 1925 and the 1926 Acts. That is a fact. The President's statement was made in the course of cross-fire.

Mr. FARREN

I am only taking the statement at its face value.

General MULCAHY

Any new proposals must bear on the face of them the conviction by the Executive Council that they cannot continue to contribute the same amount of money per house or per room as they have been contributing, and that to do so would be to do something which so far from helping to solve the housing problem might make the problem a bigger one than it is. Questions were raised by some Senators as to criticisms by one person or another of people engaged in the building trade. All that I can say at the moment is that the proposals the Government will be prepared to put before the Oireachtas in regard to their housing policy must bear on the face of them the conviction by the Executive Council that the cost of house building at the present moment is too high, and I think that statements made here by some Senators will bear out the conviction of the Executive Council in that particular matter. The condition of tenements and of the slums in Dublin has been raised. The very fact that Senators have been emphasising that point must make us look very much more than we have been doing in the past to the financial side of this question and the value that we are getting for the money that is being expended.

Mr. FARREN

I say the saving of human life is more important than the question of finance. The children that inhabit these houses have no chance in comparison with children in other districts. If the Minister asks for a return of the deaths in the slums amongst children and amongst the children of people who live in Merrion Square and compare it, he will soon see the difference between the conditions of children in the slums and those in Merrion Square.

General MULCAHY

The Senator apparently was not prepared to shock his colleagues, or indeed any of us, by a statement of the facts as seen in the slums of Dublin. I am quite prepared to say there are many Senators who know the facts of the conditions in the city to-day. The problem of housing cannot be solved either by mentioning this or that particular instance, or saying: "I could mention terrible instances." The problem of the tenements can only be solved by getting down to facts and figures, and to the finances and cost of building generally. I think it would be undesirable that our judgment should be warped or strained by any unnecessary labouring of the conditions that exist. If we may not know to the last decimal point the suffering and ignominy that is there, we know sufficient about it to realise that there is a problem there and that when we talk about housing and the solution of the housing problem, we are driven, if you like, by a conception of what exists in some of these places, to say that expenditure along the lines that was absolutely necessary is not going to do what Senators who touch upon the problem would desire to see done there. A consideration of the conditions that exist, in some very bad parts of the city, and in some very bad parts of the urban areas, are amongst those things that must drive the Executive Council, in considering these matters, to base its fresh housing proposal on a clear understanding that that problem cannot be solved except they get a better general return in respect of State moneys than what they have been able to get up to the present. There have been reasons why that could not be got under the present Housing Acts. These considerations, I suggest to Senators, do not serve any good purpose by cutting across the discussion of the present Bill. The present Bill makes provision for the allocation of an adequate amount of money in respect of a pretty considerable number of houses, and in respect of commitments that had been entered into as a kind of tail to the operation of the previous Housing Acts. They mark a very definite stopping of the policy that existed ever since 1924. I would just repudiate, also, the suggestion that certain Senators have made, that the Government, in making up its housing policy, has been acting in a piece-meal way. I think the Acts that the Executive Council have instituted since 1924, and if you like, since 1922, show on the face of them a consistent and continuous policy. It is only shutting our eyes to the existence of the problem, or trying to do so, for anyone to suggest that because only a limited amount of money is made available for one, two, three or four years, that is dealing with the matter in a piece-meal way. There is a continuous problem to be dealt with, and we have dealt with it in a continuous way. But it would not solve the housing problem if under the terms of the 1924 Act a sufficient amount of money had been made available to continue operations under the 1924 and 1925 Acts, say, for 10 years further. It would be getting us deeper into a state of financial indebtedness without solving the housing problem.

Question put and agreed to.