Archives: Why should building be so much dearer in Cork than elsewhere?

One hundred years ago, the Cork Examiner published a series of opinion pieces by a contributor known as 'Periscope', highlighting a range of social and political issues, some of which are as relevant today as they were back then

New Cork Corporation housing at Gurranabraher, Cork, in March 1934.

In the little scheme of operations connected with my reflected knowledge, so many “current topics" are recurrent topics that a sort of classification suggests itself. 

Some topics are classified as 'occasional', some as 'frequent', others as 'regular'; now, I fear, I shall be obliged to add another term to the general classification, and under the heading 'eternal' I shall be obliged to put the housing question. It is becoming an evergreen. It is like a teak floor, or a swivel eye — you can’t wear it out.

Several red rags in the form of letters written by inquisitive people have been waved before the eyes of the committee bull, but that obtuse animal merely stands in the middle of the ring and declines to become the sport of the banderilleros. 

I am afraid I shall have to resort to the painful and undignified expedient of twisting the animal’s tail to get it to move. Someone who calls himself “Dun Spiro” has tried to goad this dumb animal into a movement of some kind and he evidently wants me to help him, because he suggests that I should make what he calls a frontal attack.

I protest I have been as frontal as I could, for I have asked the direct question: “Why should building be so much dearer in Cork than elsewhere?” and I have as yet got no reply. 

Of course, there are many builders who will consider my question as positively indelicate, and one that ought not be asked; they will regard it as rudely inquisitive, and not merely a frontal attack, but an affront one as well. That is their point of view, not mine. 

Of course, I know many of the materials in use by builders are very much dearer in Cork than in other places.

I know for instance, that bricks are only £3 a thousand in Dublin while they are £6 a thousand in Cork; that good cement can be purchased in Dublin for about 65s per ton, while similar cement in Cork is nearer 90s per ton. 

Other things are priced in like manner, and knowing this, I am impelled to ask the question — “Why is it so?”.

No answer to my reasonable question being forthcoming, I am now entitled to go further and to point out to the Housing Committee that it is their duty to see that answers are given to such questions, so as to satisfy the public desire or information on the subject. 

It is the duty of the committee to go into the matter of these prices thoroughly and to find out the cause of the discrepancy, and, further, to ask whoever is responsible for inflated prices what he means by his demand. 

The committee can easily get the present prices from other places where houses at £300 are being built and compare them with Cork prices. 

Old houses pictured before their demolition to make way for Cathedral Rd on the northside of Cork city in 1935.

For my part, I consider it impossible for anyone to justify the higher price asked for houses in Cork. At all events the builders’ case should be stated in detail, and upon that it should be possible to form a fairly accurate judgement as to the reasonableness or otherwise of the increased demand. 

Whose is the fault of the high and prohibitive price? That is really the question for which the committee should be able to find an answer. This is a matter of such vital importance, not merely to the workers who are living in unsuitable houses, but to all (and their name is legion) who require either for private housebuilding or repairs the aid of the builders’ art, that it ought not to, and cannot, be cushioned.

I am told that labour accounts for half the cost of building in Cork, and in Dublin for much less than half. Why should that be? The answer given is that the cost of living is higher in Cork. That, of course, would fully account for the higher demands of labour in this city.

Whatever effect it may or may not have on labour, there cannot be a shadow of doubt of the absolute truth of the statement that the cost of living in Cork is far too high, and unquestionably higher than it ought to be. 

I do not know how prices asked in Cork compare with those in Dublin, but I know that the prices in Cork for everything one eats, wears, or uses are much higher than prices at the other side of the sea. 

This does not merely apply to imported matters, but to native produce. And even in the case of imported goods there is, I think it would be found, a margin of profit for the sellers far too large.

There can be little doubt either that the effect of high prices in food, etc, the high cost of living generally, has been in the case of labour most disastrous. 

All the time, all the indications have justified the belief that if food had not gone up in the preposterous way it did, labour would never have been enabled to justify its greater demands, and much of the trouble which has occurred would have been spared. 

It is doubtful, indeed, whether the cost of living remaining normal, labour would have budged at all. Be that as it may, there is, I fear, little prospect of any abatement on the part of labour until the cost of living falls to a much lower level than it is at just now. 

Present shop prices, compared with pre-war prices, are enough to take one’s breath away, and the currency note vanishes with the quickness of a conjuring trick. 

That sort of financial flurry was not worth noting, I suppose, when boom wages were the order of the day, but with the boom wages gone the high prices of the boom time should no longer prevail. 

So far as I can see, anyone can charge anything they like in Cork and no effort worth the name has been made towards dealing with profiteering.

Coming back to the question of housing, I think there is far too great a disposition to go in for fancy houses. Roomy cottages, plainly built, with a rent that an ordinary labourer can afford to pay, ought to satisfy the present need. 

If pretentious houses of the garden-city type are built, the rents will of necessity be far too much for the purse of the average labouring man, to whom brass knockers and tessellated pavements naturally make no appeal. 

I have seen some of the houses built under housing schemes and the rents were 16s a week, made to suit the hall doors with leaded glass and the porcelain enamel baths. 

All the houses were inhabited by artisans, electricians, insurance collectors, and people earning ten or twelve pounds a week. What we want in Cork is a house of the plain cottage class. 

To say that such a house cannot be erected for anything less than £1,000 is absurd; the obvious comment upon such a statement is “Fudge!” 

Meanwhile, the Housing Committee had better spend a little time collecting and comparing figures and framing a few pertinent questions based on those figures. 

A corporation has, we know of old, neither a body to beat nor a soul to damn, but unfortunately it has a purse, and as that purse belongs really to the ratepayers, it is just as well the ratepayers should insist on certain precautions in the handling of that purse.

• First published in the Cork Examiner 1922.