The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 2, 1914. THE SLUMS OF DUBLIN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 283, 2 May 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 2, 1914. THE SLUMS OF DUBLIN.

The disclosures regarding the conditions under which Dublin workers are houaid do not reflect credit on the governing people of that city. Here is a mattor in which the City Corporation enjoys the fullest power of control, yet it ha 3 been only too clearly demonstrated that the Councillors have entirely neglected their duty. The debate in the Honso of Commons the other day, briefly reported in our aable messages, is but an echo of the report made by the Departmental Committee of the Irish Local Government Board, on the subject of the housing question in Dublin. That committee stated in effect that Dublin is one huge slum, that the Corporation by neglect of its sanitary powers connived at the growth of this monstrous excrescence, and that some of its members are directly interested in perpetuating its abominations. Mr. Birrell sought to minimise the condemnation of the Corporation, by stating that its members t owned only four tenement houses; but this fact does not alter the fact that the Corporation has been guilty of almost criminal noglect. The important part of Mr. Birrell's speech was the statement that the Government was unable to provide cheap money for j the building of houses for city dwellers. This means that the only remedy whteh the committee suggested is not to be applied. The report condemned, more or less, the entire system of tenement dwellings and the conditions under which nearly 27,000 families were housed. By remodelling the best of the tenement dwellings, 13,000 families might be accommodated, but the remainder shou.'d be swept away. The minimum of new housing required was 14,000 dwellings. The committee indicated that the problem of providing the money which the erection of 14,000 cottages would demand was one that the citizens of Dublin could not contemplate without the prospect of State assistance. The total outlay, on the basis of £250 per cottage, would be £3,500,000, and on the annuity system the sum needed for repayment of interest and capital over the period of 64 years would be £9 lfis 9V4 f° r each house. Adding charges for public health service, insurance, maintenance, and so on, the sum be brought up to £l4 3s 6%d for each house, equal to a rent of as u%& psr week. But since the houses could not be let at an economic rent owing to the poverty of the people, there would be a deficit annually of £68,250 which the , Corporation would have to meet. The committee suggested that the State might arrange to give aid on the same terms as those adopted in the rural areas of Ireland, which would have the effect of Teducing the charge on the rates to more moderate proportions, 1 and that, further, the State might give a grant equal to 16 per cent, of the amount annually required for the repayment of principal and interest on loan. This is a deplorable revelation of Irish poverty, as well as of Irish dependence upon.State "spoon-feeding." Left to their own resources, it seems that the people of Ireland will never be able to improve matters. They are not to blame for this; it i 3 the natural result of centuries of ■ mis-government and of the absence of training in selfgovernment; perhaps, more than all, it is the outcome of the constant agitation for Home Rule, which was to be the panacea for all ills. Thirty or forty years ago, the working classes of Glasgow v/ero as badly boused as those of Dublin are to-day; but the City Corporation, composed of men of selfreliance and resource, took the matter in hjind, and in the course of ten years or so swept away all the slums an;l replaced them, by better dwellings. What was done in Glasgow might have been done in Dublin, if the people, instead of being led by political agitators to pursue a visionary reform, had been taught to rely upon their own exertions and to work for practical ends. The contrast between Dublin and Belfast in trie matter of housing is most marked, and seems to indicate a racial reason for the ' terrible conditions prevailing in Dublin. If the Irish of the south and west cannot be taught to help themselves, tl'ev must apparently go on sull'ering until they learn in the hard school of experience.