asked the Minister for Local Government the total number of families on the waiting list of the Dublin Corporation for housing accommodation in each year since 1951, and the total number at the present time.

According to the latest available figures there are slightly over 4,000 families on the Dublin Corporation's effective waiting list for rehousing. The information for earlier years has not been recorded in my Department but the City Manager in his report to the Corporation in September last stated that the number of families in urgent need of rehousing in 1948 was 20,000.

Is the Minister aware that the City Manager recently informed Dublin Corporation that the number on the waiting list is 9,500 and if the figure he quotes represents those who are regarded as officially in urgent need of rehousing, that is to say they represent cases of more than four people per room——

That is not correct.

The situation is——

The Deputy did a lot about housing in his time. He tried to wreck the housing programme and he failed.

Do not talk rubbish.

He is not a member of the Housing Committee.

The man behind the Deputy.

The number of applicants according to the City Manager, that is, the City Manager for Dublin Corporation, as the Deputy should know, is 9,000 and the effective waiting list is 4,000. I have no information to indicate that only people with four children are on that list but I know that the 4,000 are people who have been reported upon by the medical officer of health as people in need of housing and should be——

So that there are 4,000 recommended by the medical officer of health for houses but Fianna Fáil will not house them with its miserable 500 houses per year?

The Deputy will recall that it is not the Fianna Fáil Party who are in the ascendancy in the City Hall at the moment and the point is that if the Dublin Corporation could see fit to build more houses, Fianna Fáil have given it every possible encouragement to do so.

You are only giving them £1 million for every £6 million they got before.

The Deputy never attended a meeting.

As a member of the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation, I must say——

Is the Deputy asking a question?

——that housing construction went down because——

The Deputy is making a speech, not asking a question.

——of the number of vacancies and it is no use making an apology for——

Who created the vacancies?

They were created in 1956.

400 left in 1956 and 1,600 left in 1958/59.

Grow up.

I can count up, which is more than the Minister can do. The Minister is being deliberately rude.

The Deputy does not know what he is talking about

The Deputy never spent a minute trying to provide houses.

The Deputy believes in work, not in talk.