Dublin Opinion

Not from the Celtic Tiger years, but from 1925, and spoken by this man: the President of the Irish Free State, William Thomas Cosgrave.

It comes from a debate in the Dáil on 1 April 1925 [link here, paragraph 1675].

A few brief lines by way of background and context.

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 artizan) 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.’ Two years previous 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.’

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.’

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 of 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.

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

The president’s comments echoed those of his cabinet colleague, Earnest 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 subsidizing private builders than by subsidizing local authorities.

It was one of those rare occasions where a government minister publicly stated 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.

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.

Cumann Na nGaedheal’s argument was that by providing houses for the middle classes, it would ‘free-up’ rented accommodation for the more prosperous working classes, and so on and so on until the ‘freeing-up’ filtered down to the slums.

Of course, none of this happened. Urban populations are never static. By 1931 the number of people living in slum housing had increased, while thousands of new owner-occupiers enjoyed the fruits of the government’s subsidies.

These subsidies were contained in the 1924 Housing act, which was passed by the Dáil five months after the government had cut the Old Age Pension, pleading poverty.

In order to get the city councils in Dublin and Cork to change housing policy towards speculative building schemes and owner-occupiers, Cumann Na nGaedheal had a simple solution: it simply abolished the councils and appointed Commissioners instead.

Anyway, a report on Cosgrave’s speech from the Irish Times.