LEAVE. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 15 March 1877)

§ SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH,

in moving for leave to bring in a Bill to consolidate and amend the Acts relating to Public Health in Ireland, said, the main object of the measure was one of consolidation. The House would be aware that by the Act of 1874 certain powers in sanitary matters which were conferred on several local authorities were uniformly vested in urban sanitary authorities and Boards of Guardians. 2024 It was proposed by the Bill to consolidate this and other Acts and bring them to the compass of one Act. There were also some Amendments he proposed to introduce giving certain powers to rural sanitary authorities with reference to the structure of dwellings and closing houses unfit for human habitation. Another feature was making the burial districts coterminous with the sanitary area. It proposed to allow the Local Government Board, where a town was under the jurisdiction of a County Grand Jury, to transfer, subject to certain safeguards by Provisional Order, the powers of the Grand Jury to the town authority, without the consent of the Grand Jury. These were the main amendments in the law, with the exception that the Bill also proposed to extend the Local Government audit to the three towns of Cork, Kilkenny, and Waterford. He hoped the House would not be alarmed by the length of the Bill, which extended to no less than 290 clauses, because in the main they would only have the effect of bringing about the consolidation of existing Acts. He brought the Bill under the notice of the House, with hardly any exceptions, save those he had named, as a consolidation Bill. If discussion was invited he should be perfectly willing to submit it to a Select Committee for the purpose. He hoped that no objection would be offered to what he believed would be a useful consolidation of the law.

Motion agreed to. Bill to consolidate and amend the Acts relating to Public Health in Ireland, ordered to be brought in by Sir MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH and Mr. ATTORNEY GENERAL for IRELAND. Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 116.]