even with the increased output the new Government’s policy was remarkably similar to their predecessor’s. Private homeownership was prioritised over public housing while the latter predominantly favoured better-off workers and the middle class.
While in part this reflected the financial constraints of the time, it was also based on a deep-seated prejudice towards those trapped in poverty.
During a revealing debate on slum clearance in 1931 the then Minister for Supplies Seán Lemass told the Dáil that
The ratepayer who has to pay for slum clearance and re-housing is sceptical of the use of helping the slum dweller … [they] will tell you that money spent on slum clearance and re-housing the slum dweller is largely wasted.
Lemass went on to argue that the best way to ‘counteract that argument’ is to ‘show that a person who has lived all his life in the slums is capable of being taught how to care for property’. The future Taoiseach urged the use of ‘instructors and other people capable of educating and training’ slum dwellers when they move into new homes, a practice apparently used in ‘certain English cities’. Though Lemass wondered ‘whether that system would be suitable to the Irish character’.32
However, Lemass, better than most, fully understood the need for Fianna Fáil to drive a wedge between urban working-class voters and both the Labour Party and more radical social activism. Thus while their housing policy didn’t depart in substance from their predecessor’s, its quantity was certainly higher as evidenced by the increase in social spending from £8 million in 1929 to £12.6 million by 1939.33
In what was to become a regular feature of all subsequent Governments, significant disagreements emerged during the 1930s between the Minister and Department for Finance on the one hand and high-spending Departments such as Local Government on the other. While de Valera erred on the side of electoral caution during the 1930s the balance started to swing in Finance’s direction in the following decade.
But like Cumann na nGaedhael before them much of the focus remained on private ownership. Within a year of taking office Fianna Fáil almost doubled the subsidy for cottage building to 60 percent of the value of the Council loan repayments.34
The 1930s also saw the emergence of questionable building practices as Local Authorities, under pressure to deliver new homes, reduced standards in a practice known at the time as ‘skinning down’. The 1932 legislation provided subsidies to the Councils on a per unit basis creating a perverse incentive to produce a greater number of units at a lower cost.
The consequences were soon felt by tenants who discovered that their new homes were not built to an adequate standard. The longer-term legacy for Councils were only to be discovered when future generations had to bear the cost of substantial regeneration. Despite strong criticism at the time from the Dublin City Housing Architect, the practice was widespread.
While such ‘innovations’ were clearly not welcome developments, other more positive policy ideas did emerge during the 1930s. In response to the problem of whether to charge lower-income tenants economic rents or affordable rents the manager of Cork City Council Philip Monaghan introduced a system of rents as a percentage of family income. What became known as differential rent was eventually applied across all Local Authorities and remains in place today.
Despite the increased output, need, particularly in cities and towns, remained high. The Emergency brought new construction to dangerously low levels. The Dublin Housing Inquiry published in 1943 estimated that an additional 43,000 new dwellings were needed to replace the tenements in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.
However, unlike the post-war Government in Westminster and its ambitious plans for substantial public investment in health and housing under the socialist Minister Aneurin Bevan, there was no post-war optimism in evidence in the Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government Seán MacEntee.
Indeed, as need continued to increase output continued to decline, reaching an all-time low in 1946 when just 563 houses were built.
Fianna Fáil’s failure to tackle the urban housing crisis was one of the key reasons for its fall from office. The emerging electoral threat of the new left republican party Clann na Poblachta was grounded in a growing disenchantment at the failure of the Free State after twenty-five years to improve the standard of living of a significant number of the urban and rural working class.
A Reforming Coalition
Despite his attempt to thwart the rise of Clann na Poblachta by calling a snap election in February 1948 Éamon de Valera was unable to stop the formation of the Free State’s first coalition Government, bringing his seventeen-year run as Taoiseach to an end. The new Government was an incongruous collection of Fine Gael, two Labour parties, Clann na Poblachta and a small farmers’ party.
However, despite its eclectic nature it had a reforming zeal which brought some of the post-war State interventionism gathering pace in Britain and Europe to bear on areas of policy including health and housing.
In housing this was led by Labour Minister Timothy Murphy until his unexpected death in 1949; he was then replaced by his party colleague Michael Keyes. Murphy not only significantly increased the targets for housing output for the coming years but exerted significant pressure on the banks to increase lending into the construction sector and delivered a tenfold increase in output within four years.35 He was also assisted by the availability of funding from the Marshall Aid Programme.
The 1946 census reported that there were 310,265 houses without any sanitation and 80,000 people were still living in single-room dwellings with 23,000 in Dublin.36
The first significant development on the housing front was the 1948 White Paper which reviewed policy to date and attempted to set out a longer-term plan to deal with both current and future demand. Important considerations such a migration, population change, property obsolescence, overcrowding and the need to raise accommodation standards were central to its considerations.
The White Paper estimated that the State needed 100,000 new homes over the next decade and argued that 60 percent of these should be public. To achieve this ambitious target the report recommended a range of changes to the existing regime of subsidies including halving the interest rate of the Local Loans Fund, extending the repaying period from 25 to 50 years and the provision of lump sum grants to Councils.
The subsequent 1948 Housing Act also increased the maximum market value of houses to be purchased under the Small Dwellings Scheme, increased home buyer grants and introduced a new supplementary grant for lower-income home buyers.
The results of these measures were significant with both social and private housing output increasing over the following ten years. Keogh notes that ‘in a spirit of new age optimism’ Government’s capital expenditure increased to £120 million including £6 million of borrowing the bulk of which was to fund houses and hospitals.37 Social housing output doubled from the 1940s to the 1950s from 20,768 houses in the first decade to 52,500 in the second while private output increased from 37,164 during the 40s to 49,188 in the 50s.38
While housing output increased significantly, the ratio of social to private housing shifted dramatically in favour of the latter from the early 1960s with just 29,124 social units delivered in that decade compared with 64,835 private homes. Kenna confirms that despite the significant increase in Council house provision, Government subsidies still benefited the private home buyer more than the social renting tenant:
In the 16 years from April 1948, about 137,000 dwellings were built with State aid, of which 74,000 were provided by private enterprise and 63,000 by local authorities. Capital expenditure in the period 1948 to 1964 on
