Who will pay for Home Rule?

Concerns about how adequate housing will be provided for working-class families after the establishment of a Home Rule parliament were raised by a deputation of lord mayors from Irish cities in Dublin yesterday.

The deputation - consisting of the mayors of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford - met the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond, at the Gresham Hotel on Sackville Street.

The deputation raised serious concerns that the proposed Home Rule parliament in Dublin would not have sufficient funds to provide working-class housing and that the capacity of the new government to address the grave situation in inner-city areas would be extremely limited.

A letter from the Town Clerk of Cork City to the Chief Secretary in Dublin Castle outlines the scale of the housing crisis in the city, September 1913. Cork officials had requested that the inquiry into Dublin housing conditions might be extended to include evidence from Cork. Concerns at the housing needs of the working classes in Irish cities would be met under Home Rule were raised with John Redmond at his meeting with the deputation of Lord Mayors from Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Waterford in January 1914.
Click on documents to enlarge.
(Image: National Archives of Ireland: CSO RP 1913, Box 5277, 21633)

In a statement issued after the meeting, a representative of the Irish Parliamentary Party sought to ease the concerns of the deputation by saying that there was nothing in the Home Rule Bill to prevent an imperial grant being made to Ireland at the same time as to Great Britain for housing purposes.

The party also claimed that, as Ireland would be contributing to the central exchequer, it would be manifestly entitled to an equivalent grant to Great Britain.

Finally, it was claimed that the Chief Secretary to Ireland, Augustine Birrell, had assured two separate deputations that Ireland’s claims in this respect would be conceded.

These assertions were rejected in a trenchant editorial in today’s Irish Times, which claimed that the cold reality of the mistake that was Home Rome was now beginning to dawn on nationalists as they looked at the detail of what was proposed.

The paper said that ‘fantastic assurances can no longer deceive intelligent nationalists. They are beginning to realize the hideous barrenness of the Promised Land.’ The paper concluded: ‘They begin to perceive that the Bill for which they have sacrificed so much spells national bankruptcy for Ireland - increased taxation, the starvation of all schemes of material improvement and social reform.'

'The Irish Parliament must find the money for all these things, and will be powerless to find it.’