Sins of the Father (2 page)

The Irish Free State inherited a rural social housing system and a body of planning laws and design ideas from the British administration, but very little in the way of actual, constructed, urban social housing. Whatever was needed to address the needs of the towns and cities, the Irish government was going to have to work out for itself.

‘[We] wish to resuscitate the speculative builder …’
⁶

On the eve of the First World War, around 29 per cent of Dublin’s population lived in slum conditions. This included not only the majority of unskilled labourers, but also a significant proportion of the city’s skilled (or artisan) workers. In 1923, the Cork Borough Restoration Committee said that the city needed at least 2,500 houses. The same year, the Limerick Housing Association called for the immediate construction of 3,000 houses and that all rented accommodation be subject to medical, sanitary and structural tests. ‘The housing conditions in Limerick,’ it said, ‘are a perpetual crime against humanity.’
⁷
Two years earlier, it had been reported that of the seven members of a family who lived in one room of a tenement in the city, three had died of influenza, ‘and for a time living and dead were together in the one small apartment’.
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The Irish Minister for Justice and Foreign Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins, told the Dáil on 12 June 1923 that, ‘We are confronted with a serious situation in regard to houses; it is a disease in our social system.’ These sentiments were echoed by W.T. Cosgrave at a meeting of the Rotary Club at Clery’s Restaurant, Dublin in 1924. ‘At no time in the history of this country was there greater need for the provision of housing for all classes of the community,’ he said, adding that he knew ‘of no service in the State that demanded a greater amount of co-operation and sacrifice in order to achieve something towards the desired end’.
⁹

It was clear that the housing problem was of such a scale that it could not be solved without significant government assistance. The manner of that assistance, though, was a matter for debate.

At the same Rotary Club meeting where Cosgrave spelt out the seriousness of the housing problem, he also discussed the government’s preferred solution.
The Irish Times
reported his conclusions:

Looking around the country he knew of no better platform than that of the Rotary Club from which to deal with this subject. They [the government] had discovered during the last few years that neither municipalities, nor local authorities, nor State organisations were in a position to deal alone with the housing problem. They had come to the conclusion – and he thought it would be subscribed to by all who had knowledge of the conditions – that if success in this matter were to be achieved it must come through private enterprise; that is to say, commercial enterprise.

Cosgrave’s speech was praised by
Irish Builder and Engineer
, which wrote that ‘it was gratifying, in these days of socialism, to find the head of State disassociating himself from the foolish notions that some have, that the whole of such vast problems have only to be made a government concern to be solved’.
¹⁰
And the President’s comments echoed those of his cabinet colleague Ernest Blythe, who said in June 1923 (as Minister for Local Government) that ‘we believe, in general, more houses could be got for the money available by subsidising private builders than by subsidising local authorities’.
¹¹
It was a rare occasion of a government minister publicly stating that he wanted
less
money for his department.

Cumann na nGaedheal planned to reduce the level of construction undertaken by local authorities, and instead divert public funds to private builders (via grants and tax breaks) in order to answer the State’s housing needs. The party argued that it was doing this because public services were inefficient and incapable of delivering value for money. The contradiction of a private sector that needed public money in order to deliver an ‘efficient’ service was never teased out by Cosgrave, Blythe, and the rest of the ministers.

The government not only moved to divert funds from the local authorities; in a number of cases it shut them down completely. The official reasons ranged from the over-charging of business rates to financial irregularities on the part of councillors. However, the councils which were disbanded had on them a strong Sinn Féin and anti-Treaty presence. Dublin City Council, for example, had passed resolutions calling for the inspection of jails, the release of Civil War prisoners, and their examination by the Corporation’s medical officer.
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Dublin Corporation Council was dissolved in May 1924 by order of Seamus de Burca, Minister for Local Government, who was satisfied, having heard the evidence of an inquiry into the council, ‘that the duties of the Council of the County Borough of Dublin are not being duly and effectually discharged by them’.
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Cork Corporation was suspended the same year, with P. Monaghan appointed as commissioner. Monaghan said, ‘The Corporation was a business concern, to be run on business lines, with a definite programme of work to be done in a definite time and for a definite amount of money.’
¹⁴
He told the people of Cork that although he was a Dublin man, he had their interests at heart, and was better positioned to answer their needs than the elected representatives from their communities.

There may have been other reasons for the suspension of the local authorities. In January 1924, Thomas Johnson, leader of the Labour Party and the official opposition in the Dáil, told the House that:

… there appears also to be an intention to remove any control which local authorities may have in the past intended over the layout of sites: that where something in the nature of a town plan was decided on by a local authority, it is now suggested that all those decisions shall be set aside, and that anyone will be allowed to build a house anywhere, in any fashion, subject to the final decision as to the design of the house by the Minister for Local Government. I think that is a defect, and I think that there ought to be, in the minds of Ministers, some general plans and that the policy of
laissez-faire
in house-building should not be allowed to continue.
¹⁵

For the next six years, the administration of the capital, including the social housing programme, was in the hands of three government-appointed Commissioners.

The Housing (Building Facilities) Act was passed by the Dáil in April 1924. It provided grants of between £60 and £100 to anyone building a house for their own use, for sale, or for rent. It also offered remissions on local authority rates. The maximum selling prices were £270, £300 and £450, for three, four and five-roomed houses respectively. An additional Housing Act was passed in 1925, which expanded on the themes of speculation and owner-occupancy.

Although these Acts applied to all urban local authorities, most construction took place in Dublin and Cork. Cathal O’Connell, in his book
The State and Housing in Ireland
, explains why:

The modest level of housing activity which these Acts stimulated was limited to Dublin and Cork – big local authorities who could raise money through bond issues on the stock exchange. This is illustrated in the figures for house completions. Fully 80 per cent of all local authority building by local authorities was carried out by Dublin and Cork Corporations. Because the Local Loans Fund, the mechanism used to finance local authority infrastructure projects, did not extend to housing schemes, smaller local authorities who wanted to proceed with schemes had to borrow funds from commercial banks who were very reluctant to lend money for such ‘unproductive’ purposes.
¹⁶

The majority of houses built under the Acts was done so not by speculative builders but by owner-occupiers. This was the type of
laissez-faire
construction that Johnson had warned about, and the local authorities had opposed before their suspension.

Nevertheless, future owner-occupiers as builders of their own homes, using whatever sites they could and lacking any sense of town planning, was seen as a positive outcome by the government. The argument was that this process would free up the quality rented accommodation previously occupied by the now property-owning middle classes. These vacancies would eventually filter down to the slums, allowing those who could afford the rents to move up the housing chain. The problem was one of congestion, the government said, and the 1924 Act would help to relieve this.

For that to happen, though, populations would have to have remained absolutely static. The moment that more people entered the equation – through births, the continued migration of thousands from rural to urban areas, and by people starting families of their own – the spurious symmetry of housing which is freed up for those at the bottom by those at the top, is gone.

The government’s plan also required that the housing problem itself did not exist. They maintained that it was not housing that was the problem, but the lack of better housing for the middle classes which was causing the bottleneck within the slums. It was as if the need for housing was akin to a tram queue, one that no new passenger ever joins, but which is made shorter by those at the top buying cars and becoming transport-occupiers instead. Yet, this was the logic: middle-class people and property speculators, building and selling houses with public money, will make life better for those in the tenements and slums.

The reason why local authorities were excluded from the Act was all too clear to Richard Corish, the Labour Party TD for Wexford. On 25 January 1924, he spoke in the Dáil in relation to the Housing Bill:

The President has suggested here, on more than one occasion, that the reason that prompted him to take this matter out of the hands of the local authorities was that the houses would cost too much money if they were built under their jurisdiction. I do not know whether that argument is correct or not. I do not believe it is correct, because I do not see why the local authorities, whose members represent the people, would squander money to the extent suggested by the President. The only inference to be drawn from the President’s statement is that the money would be squandered. I have yet to learn that any private builder will take as much interest in the working classes as a local authority. I do not think the President is going to accomplish what he proposes to set himself to do under this Act, by handing over the building of houses entirely to private builders. This, to my mind, is an invitation to private people to become speculators, without due regard to the fact that these houses are wanted for the housing of the working classes.

In the words of one historian, the Housing Acts of 1924 and 1925, by emphasising owner-occupation, tended ‘to favour the middle classes, rather than the working classes, for whom the housing problem was so severe’.
¹⁷

The First World War, the War of Independence and the Civil War had all dramatically curtailed building activity in Ireland. By the time hostilities had ceased in 1923, it had been almost ten years since Ireland had seen relatively normal levels of construction. The drop in new housing affected the middle classes, and it was this shortage rather than the horrendous slum conditions in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford that the Free State government made its priority. ‘One might as well try and live in an aeroplane,’ said one Dublin Corporation barrister, summing up the middle-class dilemma, ‘as to get a vacant house in Dublin.’
¹⁸
The Housing Acts were one element of this strategy, while the other was the construction of suburbs.

In 1914, Dublin Corporation commissioned a study for a proposed garden city at Marino from the respected town planners Raymond Unwin and Patrick Geddes, both of whom were admirers and colleagues of Ebenezer Howard. Their original plan called for 1,100 houses with a density of twelve per acre, green paths and a complete separation of traffic and pedestrians.
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A further plan was commissioned in 1918, this time from the City Architect, Charles McCarthy, with final permission given in 1920. This was for 530 houses, construction of which did not begin until 1922 due to the post-war political upheaval.

Marino was Dublin Corporation’s first garden suburb. By the time the final tender was completed in 1927, the scheme had expanded to include Croydon Park and consisted of 1,283 five-roomed houses with a density of twelve per acre. Although it was social housing, the entire scheme was tenant-purchase. On 21 May 1925 the Dublin Borough Commissioners invited ‘applications from persons of the working classes, employed or resident in the City of Dublin, for the purchase of houses at Marino under the Corporation house Purchase Scheme’.
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There were 258 houses available in this first batch and the prices ranged from £400 to £440.

The Corporation received 4,400 applications for the first phase, of which a shortlist of 414 was drawn up. The houses were earmarked for married couples with at least four children, but of the 414 families shortlisted, not one had fewer than six children.
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A deposit of £25 was also required, but the Borough Commissioners – who, since the suspension of the Corporation Council in 1924, had the final say in all applications – stated that ‘preference, however, will be given to intending occupiers who are prepared to deposit the whole or a substantial portion of the purchase money’.
²²
Each applicant had to be able to meet the minimum weekly repayments of 15-16
s
a week. Such financial barriers meant that the Marino scheme was out of the range of the majority of Dublin’s working class.

In March 1927, tenders were advertised for the erection of 128 three-roomed houses, seventy-seven four-roomed and sixty-one five-roomed in the fields behind St Patrick’s Training College, Drumcondra. This was the first time that Dublin Corporation had tendered for three-roomed houses and as with Marino, the scheme was tenant-purchase. Prices went from £230 for a mid-terraced three-room, to £460 for a semi-detached five-room, with the Corporation offering forty-year loans at 5¾ per cent for part or all of the price.
²³
The weekly cost to the purchaser ranged from 9-17
s
a week, depending on house size. On its completion in 1929, the scheme consisted of 535 houses: 211 three-room, 144 four-room, and 180 five-room.