This Bill has, briefly, three objects, first, to provide financial assistance to persons building for themselves houses within certain standards as to size, secondly, to revive on a large scale the efforts of local authorities to eradicate bad housing conditions and, thirdly, to provide satisfactory houses for workers in town and country.
The housing problem of the middle income group is mainly a product of the recent war, with its aftermath of insufficient materials, shortages of skilled manpower, and abnormally high building costs; these forces have intensified the housing scarcity as it affects workers, but the working-class housing problem is of older origin than the war of 1939 or even than the war of 1914. It is the outcome of generations of neglect, of insufficient replacement of houses which fell into decay through age or misuse, of the almost complete withdrawal of private enterprise and capital from the sphere of workers' letting accommodation, and of a number of other factors less individually decisive perhaps, but whose cumulative weight so aggravated the problem that towards the close of the last century State intervention became imperative.
From 1883 onwards the story has been one of increasing public concern with the question of housing. It may be said to have, so far as the Government are concerned, culminated in the Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous) Provisions Act, 1932. The result has been that out of a total of some 600,000 inhabited houses in the country, more than one-third have been built or reconstructed with State assistance. The magnitude of the housing programme undertaken since 1932 as compared with the preceding 35 years may be gauged from the fact that of more than 200,000 State-aided or State-built houses, about 140,000, or 70 per cent., were built or reconstructed since 1932. This great achievement coincided with, and was an integral part of, the first real attack which had ever been made in this country on the slum problem.
The housing drive which was then begun made tremendous strides during the years before the war and had results which were unparalleled in the same sphere in any other country in the world. The recent war, however, brought about a disastrous change. While building was not altogether suspended, the rate of output of houses rapidly diminished until it fell below the wastage rate, or the minimum rate at which new houses must be built or old houses reconstructed if the national stock of dwelling accommodation is not to decrease. The emerging deficiency, accentuated by population movements, family growth and other factors, is estimated to have reached 100,000 dwellings, of which 60,000 represent the needs of rural and urban workers for whom local authorities normally cater, and 40,000 those of other classes.
The immediate objective of the Government's housing policy must, therefore, be to get 100,000 houses built in the shortest time possible. This task, formidable and onerous as it would be even in normal times, is infinitely more so in a period like that which we are passing through, of insufficient building materials, and inadequate supplies of skilled labour. There is a continuing shortage of soft timber; the demand for cement has outrun production; rainwater goods and other materials and equipment are difficult to obtain. An acute bottleneck has developed in the labour force available for house-building, by reason of wholly inadequate numbers of bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and other skilled tradesmen. These are serious checks to the expansion of the building industry, which can cope at present with only a fraction of the work crying out to be done. Local authorities are finding it hard to get contractors to undertake their housing schemes; in Dublin especially, schemes under contract are being held up by scarcities of materials and labour.
Resumption of the housing drive on a scale which will offer the prospect of a permanent solution of our national housing difficulties must, therefore, depend, in the first place, on the recruitment of greater numbers of skilled tradesmen, on a stronger and more regular flow of essential materials and equipment, and on the concurrent expansion and improvement in the organisation and technique of the building industry.
The present Bill must be considered against that background. It provides an interim measure of aid to meet the immediate needs of certain classes on which the general housing scarcity presses with more than usual severity; the classes I refer to are the intermediate or middle-class everywhere, and newly married persons in large urban centres. The Bill also effects a number of improvements in the administrative machinery for the provision by local authorities of workers' dwellings. I shall deal first with those parts of the Bill which are concerned with private building.
Under the Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous Provisions) Acts, 1932-1946, grants ranging from £40 to £150 have been payable hitherto to public utility societies and persons building or repairing houses. The Bill proposes to replace this scheme with one more nearly related to present-day conditions, particularly in regard to cost. The new grants will vary from £80 for reconstruction work to £400 for a house built for letting. They will be payable in respect of houses both in rural and urban areas, and will not be confined except in the case of rural reconstruction grants, to particular classes. They will be limited, however, to houses built or repaired in a particular period, within certain limits of size, and built either for owner-occupation or for letting.
The grants are not being offered to persons building immediately and directly for speculative sale. Builders, speculative or otherwise, who build for sale are making adequate profits in the present circumstances and there is no reason why the Exchequer should be called on to subsidise their activities. Grants to builders for sale are made with two main objects in view: one is to stimulate building, the other is to effect a reduction in cost for the ultimate occupier. As to the first, house building, as I have pointed out, is already proceeding to the limits of our resources of materials and manpower and, as to the second, the payment of the grant to the ultimate occupier is a surer method of abating the net cost to him than paying the grant to the builder. By proposing the withdrawal of the grants to builders who build to sell—I would like to make this clear—I do not discount the value of private enterprise as a factor in the solution of the housing problem. Private enterprise, however, takes many forms. Certain forms of it, such as persons or companies building for letting, or public utility societies—which are, in effect, co-operative housing associations—building houses for members, I have thought it best to encourage directly; others, such as the builder of houses for sale, I have decided should make contact with the scheme indirectly, through the purchaser of the house, who has arranged with the builder to have it built, and who occupies it when built.
In response to many requests from Deputies when the Bill was before the Dáil, reconstruction and new house grants at about 70 per cent. of the proposed new rates will be payable in respect of houses begun but not occupied in the period from November, 1945, to November, 1947.
The grants for houses built for owner-occupation will be differentiated on the basis of the presence or absence of piped water supply and sewerage. The higher grant will be payable where the owner has installed his own system of water supply and sanitation as well as where the house is connected with the public water and sewerage system. I think it is important to emphasise that if the owner puts in his own piped water supply and sewerage system he will get the grant at the higher rate because that was not clearly apprehended in the other House when the Bill was being discussed on Second Reading.
Reconstruction grants in the case of small farmers and agricultural labourers are being doubled in amount, and the valuation limit in the case of the former is being raised from £25 to £35. Grants up to £60 may be paid in respect of work begun but not completed between November, 1945, and November, 1947.
The usual rates remission will attach to grant-aided houses, where the grant is made by the Minister alone, that is to say, when there is no contributory grant from the local authority.
Senators will find full details of the new scheme of grants in Part III of the Bill, and in the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Schedules. The grants are generous, and will mean a considerable addition to the housing commitments of the Exchequer, and to a less extent, to those of local authorities. They are a measure, however, of the Government's awareness of the seriousness of the housing needs of a class which is being pushed to the wall in the scramble for houses which the current dearth of accommodation has produced. I refer, of course, to the "whitecollar" worker, the better-paid artisan, the small farmer, and the middle-income group generally.
The class or classes to which I have referred will also benefit from the extension of operations under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts, to which Part VI of the Bill should open the way. Section 38 will enable me, with the consent of the Minister for Finance, to adjust, as conditions may require, the market value of houses for which advances may be made under these Acts. It is my intention, as soon as the Bill becomes law, to raise the limit from £1,000 to £1,750, and I have the assurance of the Minister for Finance that he is prepared to concur in this proposal.
Section 39 will enable operations under these Acts to be resumed in certain areas where they have become suspended through local authorities having exceeded the rating limits set out in the Act of 1899. Section 40 provides that the interest rate at which local authorities may lend under the Acts will be adjusted automatically to the rate at which they may borrow. I should, perhaps, mention that the general interest rate on advances under the Acts was reduced last year from 4¾ per cent. to 3 per cent.
I turn now to those parts of the Bill which affect the powers, duties and responsibilities of local authorities in relation to housing. Part II of the measure contains a number of important provisions dealing with the regulations of tenementing, control of the demolition or diversion to other uses of dwellinghouses, the making of bye-laws respecting certain single-family dwellings, and the procural of certain information from the tenants or prospective tenants of local authority houses. These powers, I believe, will materially strengthen the hands of local authorities in their struggle against bad housing conditions in their areas. They are, in the main, powers of preventive action, designed to forestall or arrest the decline of good houses to slum levels, and to prevent the destruction or misuse of habitable houses. The power to secure information is a power which local authorities will find extremely useful in the operation of systems of differential rents, or in considering the introduction of such systems.
Section 30 of the Bill embodies a principle new to Irish housing legislation. The section will authorise certain major urban authorities to provide dwellings to be reserved for a particular class. What I have in mind in this connection is the erection of special houses for newly-married couples, a class which in recent years has suffered more severely than others from the prevailing shortage of housing accommodation. Though local authorities generally, and especially urban authorities, have undertaken very great commitments with regard to the rehousing of badly-housed workers, I have not hesitated to impose this additional burden upon them on behalf of a class of persons for whom good housing has an importance transcending its immediate utility or convenience. From the point of view of the future of our people, and for other reasons, it is in the highest degree desirable that young couples should begin their married life in a good, healthy environment, and in houses which, so far as mere physical surroundings can achieve it, will foster habits of neatness and cleanliness, and an attitude of responsibility towards the community of which they are both the benefactors and the beneficiaries.
I have in mind that under this provision two types of house will be provided, each to have two bedrooms and the most up-to-date equipment. The rent for one type is to be an economic rent of about 30/- weekly; for the other it is to be about £1 a week, the loss being met by a lump-sum grant from the State. The two categories of houses would be allotted amongst applicants according to their economic circumstances. The tenants of these houses would have to vacate them after a specified period of, say, five years. After long consideration, I have come to the conclusion that it would not be possible to operate the scheme otherwise, since the houses would rapidly become overcrowded if no provision of this kind were made, while, if childless couples or couples with one or two children were allowed to remain, the houses would in the course of time become permanently occupied by such couples and cease altogether to fulfil the purpose for which they were designed.
The tenants going out from these houses, however, are to be given the option of transferring to ordinary local authority houses. It is intended that all these special houses, or reserved houses, to be built should, for the present, be restricted to about 15 per cent. of the annual output of houses in the county boroughs of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford, and the borough of Dún Laoghaire. In the other areas the figures will be fixed according to circumstances.
Sections 29 and 35 of the Bill will enable the Minister for Local Government to frame comprehensive regulations with regard to the letting and management of local authority houses. It is proposed in this connection that regard should be had in making lettings to the character and industry of applicants, as well as to their occupations, family circumstances and existing housing conditions. Moreover, in allotting the tenancies of labourers' cottages, priority must be given under the Bill to farm workers. The Bill, incidentally, provides that agricultural workers on the family holding shall in future be eligible for cottages provided by county councils. Thus, the son working on his father's farm who wishes to get married, or the farmer who leaves the family dwelling to his son, can then be given the tenancy of a cottage, and this provision may help to overcome what is recognised to be one of the major obstacles in the way of early marriages in rural areas.
The Bill also contains a number of miscellaneous provisions, all of which are designed to assist local authorities in the work of getting houses built. Section 23, for instance, will extend the period for which housing subsidy in the form of contributions to annual loan charges may be paid. The period, which was limited to 35 years in 1932, is now being extended to 50 years. This change will enable local authorities to take full advantage of the new terms which, as announced by the Minister for Finance in May, 1946, apply to loans from the Local Loans Fund. These terms, as I think Senators may be aware, comprise an interest rate of 2½ per cent. and a repayment period of 50 years. This section also provides that major or slum clearance subsidy will be payable in respect of the rehousing of persons living in dangerous buildings, or persons displaced by the collapse or destruction of their former dwellings.
Section 41 will enable me to free local authorities wishing to engage in house building by direct labour from the restrictions imposed on them by the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878, in connection with the making of contracts. Sections 42 and 43 provide, in effect, for the division of compulsory purchase Orders under the Labourers Acts into unopposed and opposed parts with a view to cutting down procedural delays. As the law stands, a single objection may hold up the acquisition of a large number of sites for months; in future, the objector will be entitled to oppose a compulsory purchase Order only in so far as it concerns his own property. The Bill also provides for entry on lands in course of acquisition for rural housing purposes; reduction of the rate of interest on compensation money where a local authority enters on land before compensation is paid; remuneration of solicitors for work done under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts; and for a restatement of the borrowing powers of county councils under the Labourers Acts.
The list of repeals contains two which may be of interest: one is the proposed repeal of Section 17 of the Labourers (Ireland) Act, 1883, which involves removal of the existing limits on the rate which may be levied for rural housing purposes. There is no corresponding limit, I may mention, in connection with urban housing. The other repeal is that of sub-section (2) of Section 1 of the Housing (Ireland) Act, 1908, which will put urban housing authorities on a par with rural so far as borrowing from the Local Loans Fund is concerned. At present an urban authority need not repay to the fund any part of the principal of a loan during a period of two years from the date of borrowing.
I would ask the House to give the Bill a quick passage, so that I can get down at once to the work of translating its provisions into action. Senators may, perhaps, be inclined to complain of the fact that the Bill does not include a greater degree of consolidation of the long series of enactments dealing with housing. I may say at once that I sympathise with that view but that it has proved impossible, in the limited time at the disposal of the Government and in the fluctuating circumstances of the day, to have a codifying measure prepared. The transition period through which we are passing is hardly an opportune time for the enactment of a comprehensive statute, that is the statute drawn up to meet current needs which might be very ill-adapted to the requirements of a highly problematical future. It is better, I think, to continue for the time being with ad hoc legislation aiming, at this stage, at flexibility rather than permanence, and striving to fulfil the immediate and urgent needs of a rapidly changing situation rather than endeavour to prepare an ideal housing code in vacuo. There are, I admit with apologies, some traces of legislation by reference in this Bill, but it will be found, I think, that most of its important provisions are new and stand by themselves.
I would again repeat my request and trust the House will see its way to let me have this Bill expeditiously. It is a Bill mainly conferring benefits upon the mass of the people, and the longer it is delayed the more the enjoyment of these benefits will be deferred and the more also will attempts to meet the existing deficiency in housing be impeded. Therefore, while I appreciate very keenly the demand which I am making on the House, I think it would be in the public interest if the House would forego on this occasion its right to consider this measure closely and in great detail, and see its way to allow me to have not only this stage of the Bill but the other stages with the utmost expedition.
