I thought someone was going to make a justification for this Bill. Apparently it is not intended that that practice should be followed, and I want to say a few words with regard to it. It seems to me that there is no justification whatever in postponing the elections for Dublin City or County to a date not later than the 30th September, 1930, meaning that there will be no elections for another 18 months. I predict that there will be no elections in 18 months. There has been on the stocks for a couple of years or more a proposal for a reconstitution of the administrative authority for Dublin City and County. It has been suggested that that Bill will be brought forward, and, presumably, passed in time to allow the elections to take place before September, 1930. We have no assurance whatever that elections can take place in that time. The Bill has not yet been drafted. There have been no consultations, which, I presume, will be found necessary between the Department of Local Government and the various councils which still exist, and I would imagine that there will be such consultations before the Bill comes to a final drafting. The Bill has then to be submitted to the Dáil and the Seanad, and, I have no doubt, will get a very close scrutiny, and will probably be considerably amended.
I shall be astonished if all that can be gone through in time to allow the elections to take place before the 30th September, 1930. I would be inclined to ask the House to agree, instead of passing this Bill in its present form, that the elections be postponed until, say, the end of June of this year, and that the elections, in fact, of the new councils shall take place before the end of June of this year, and let them sit, let us say, for two but not for three years. In the absence of such elections we shall have a continuation of the rule of the Commissioners in Dublin City in place of the Council, and Commissioners in place of the Guardians, and we shall also have a continuation of the present councils in the urban districts outside Dublin and in the rural districts. I think it is fairly well admitted that the councils under the shadow of dissolution are not taking the keen, active interest in the work of administration that they would have if they thought they were going forward for re-election in a few months, that there has been, in fact, a lassitude and, in some cases, carelessness about the work of the councils. That is not good for local administration, and if it is to be the case that these councils, which were elected nearly four years ago, are to go on for another eighteen months without any prospect of having to go before the electors again, they will become a little tired, weary and careless at their work, and local administration is not likely to be tuned up to the highest pitch of efficiency.
Then there is the case of the Dublin Commissioners for Poor Law and the Commissioners for borough administration. Whatever may have been the justification for their appointment, whatever may have been the defects which they are supposed to have remedied, and which no doubt they have remedied, justification for the continuance of the Commissioners has passed; they are no longer necessary for the remedying of the defects in the old administration, if those defects existed. The position regarding the Commissioners in place of the guardians and the council is that never, I think, in the experience of any Dublin citizen now living, and perhaps for very many years before that, has there been so little sense of civic inquiry, civic responsibility, or care about civic affairs as there is to-day. We do not know at the present time to whom the Commissioners are responsible. They are not responsible to the citizens, and I am not sure to what extent they are responsible to the Minister.
I would like to have some clear intimation from the Minister whether he is answerable to the Oireachtas for the work of the Commissioners. Is he prepared to answer to the Dáil or to the Seanad for the conduct of the Commissioners in their work? One cannot get any precise information or anything to rely upon either in the Dáil or the Seanad as to their conduct of certain very important public works that have been undertaken by them, and that is quite an unsatisfactory state of things. One assumes, of course, that everything that is being done by the Commissioners is being done in order, for the good government of the city, and for efficient administration, that the law is being faithfully observed, but where any question arises as to departure from legal rectitude one cannot get any satisfaction; nobody is answerable, and there is no one to call the Commissioners to order, nobody to inquire as to whether the Commissioners have or have not stepped aside from what they would be strictly bound to do.
I am going to illustrate that by reference to a certain matter which has been brought to my notice, and which I hope the Minister will be able to deal with and give some information upon. The Commissioners for the Poor Law adopted a scheme some months ago in regard to the giving of relief to workless men. There had been a refusal to put into operation what is known as Section 13 of the Local Government Act. Instead of giving relief, the Commissioners decided that they would employ a certain number of men on certain public work at a certain rate of pay, and as it appears to me from information I have been able to get— it has not been easy to get it confirmed from authoritative quarters—the Commissioners, instead of giving relief, adopted the method of entering into what is in fact a contract for certain public work, and in the carrying out of that contract engaged unemployed men, and paid them a very low rate of pay. In the normal course of operations of work, such as the clearing of sites for building houses, it might be presumed that it would be done by ordinary contract, or by direct labour by the City Council, but instead of doing that, in the guise of giving relief to the unemployed poor, the Commissioner said: "We will clear this site; we will give you this work to do; we will give you a rate of pay which is very much lower than anything paid elsewhere, and we will call it relief." Now the benefit of that presumably goes either to the Corporation—that is to say, the City Commissioners—or to the future tenants or owners of the houses that are to be ultimately built on the site.
I am referring now to the clearing of a site and to the laying out of new roads in connection with a proposed building scheme beyond Glasnevin. I am told it is outside the city boundary, but that the City Commissioners are interested in the building scheme. I am not sure whether that is correct or not, but it is clear the work is being done by the guardians, or the Commissioners for the guardians, and it is the kind of work which would be done normally by contractors. Instead of obeying the ruling of the guardians—as I understand the guardians, as also the city council, have a standing order to the effect that they shall pay normal rates, as agreed upon with the trade unions—they have employed this particular kind of labour at the rate of 10¼d. per hour, are getting the work done at that cheap rate, and taking it out of the poor. There have been attempts to get this matter elucidated, but up to now the attempts have failed, and I would like to know from the Minister whether the Commissioners have authority for doing this work, and if he will indicate what is the legal authority that they have for doing that particular kind of work in the way they are doing it.
The position seems to me to be that this particular kind of work is being done at the expense of the standard rate of pay ruling in the city for work of the kind, that the need of the poor unemployed man is being taken advantage of to get this work done cheaply, with the effect—whether that was or was not the intention—of generally lowering the standard of the labourers' pay in building operations or in the preparation of sites for building work. This is a matter of very serious concern to a very large number of people in the city. It is a matter of importance to know whether the Commissioners are exceeding their legal powers in doing this work, and from the point of view of this Bill it is important to make this comment, that nobody is in a position to call them to order or to examine the authority under which they are acting. They are irresponsible, and they may depart from every rule, transgress every practice in carrying out their duties as Commissioners, and nobody has the right to inquire as to their authority or as to the wisdom of their actions. Because the Commissioners are in this position I want to cut short their reign as much as possible. I, therefore, think the Bill should not be allowed to pass in its present form, that, in fact, the Seanad should do its best to secure that the rule of the Commissioner in his present irresponsibility should cease as soon as possible, and that the Bill, before it leaves this House, should require that the elections should be held at a date not later than 30th June, 1929.
