§ *MR. DAVITT (Cork, N. E.)I rise to crave the indulgence of the House in order to make a brief reference to the statement made last night by the right hon. Member for St. George's Division, in which he called in question the accuracy of some figures used by me in my speech last Tuesday evening. The right hon. Gentleman stated last night—
The hon. Member for North-East Cork spoke of the enormous number of mud houses which still exist in Ireland, and he said that one-third of the population are still housed in mud cabins. In fact, he said that the population of such houses was 36 per cent., but the real figure was 2 per cent.The right hon. Gentleman was good enough to denounce my figures as "a monstrous statement." What I really said, and what is reported in the Official Report and in The Times, was this—There are no less than 300,000 or 30 per cent. of inhabited houses in Ireland mostly built of mud.and I based my figures upon the Census Report of 1891. In that volume, at page 108, I found these figures—the number of third-class houses is 312,589; and on page 109, in a note to Table 8, the classes of inhabited houses are described as follows:—There are four classes of houses, and in the lowest of the four classes is comprised houses apparently built of mud or other perishable material, having only one room and one window; in the third class—the class I referred to —there is a better description of houses, varying from one to four rooms and windows; in the second class, good farmhouses, and so on. "A better description of house than a cabin built of mud "would have been the official way to describe the 36 per cent. of the inhabited houses in Ireland. The classification adopted in the Census of 1871, but departed from in subsequent Reports, would have amply justified my description of the 36 per cent. of the inhabited houses, and the Return as to the rateable value of houses in Ireland fully bears me out. The statistics of Ireland in Thom's Official for 1893, on page 566 625, shows the number of inhabited houses rated at —12 and over was 39,745; over —4 and less than —12, 58,216; the number rated at over —1 and not exceeding —4, 226,822; the number at —1 and under, 435,178.
§ MR. GOSCHEN (St. George's, Hanover Square)I think I may be permitted the same licence as the hon. Gentleman to make a personal explanation. I venture to say that the statement he has read out to-day justifies fully what I said yesterday. I did not speak of the rating of houses at all, nor did the hon. Member in his speech. That is a matter which he now imports into the question, and it is a matter which can be dealt with separately. The hon. Gentleman did not deal with the question of the rating of houses. What he referred to was quite different, suggesting different reflections. He stated that this percentage of houses were built mostly of mud. That was the phrase which I took hold of—that there were a certain number of houses "mostly of mud." I found the sentence in The Times report, and with regard to the third class, to which he says he referred, there is no single indication that they were to any extent built of mud. My contention was that his figures wore wrong. I may say that even this morning I have obtained official confirmation of the statement I made, and of the disappearance of mud houses in Ireland.