The object of the Bill is to remove a doubt which has arisen in the interpretation of the Arterial Drainage Act, 1945. Under that Act, the Commissioners of Public Works are responsible for undertaking both original construction work on arterial drainage schemes and subsequent maintenance works. The Act provides that the initial capital cost of an arterial drainage scheme carried out by the commissioners shall be a State charge and that the cost of subsequent maintenance shall be borne by the county council or county councils concerned. Provision is made in Section 37 for repayment to the Commissioners of Public Works annually, by the appropriate county councils, of the amounts expended from year to year on maintenance. Efficient and economical maintenance of the large-scale catchment drainage schemes will require the employment of mechanical plant— excavators, vehicles, etc.—and of considerable quantities of small tools and supplies.
In order to carry out the various arterial drainage schemes, the commissioners have acquired a large number of excavators, machines, vehicles, tools and other equipment based at their central engineering workshop from which issues are made as required to the various works in progress. The obvious and practical course is to draw on these existing resources for the purpose of the maintenance of drainage works, in the same way as for drainage construction works. In order to arrive at the full cost of works, the normal practice is to add, to the direct outlay, charges in respect of the services rendered—the charge for tools and supplies being their recorded value and for machinery a weekly rate computed by reference to the original purchase price, the cost of servicing and overhauling the item concerned and to its estimated working life.
For the maintenance of each completed drainage scheme a local depot, combining the functions of an office and a store will be needed, and in measuring the cost of maintenance for each year account must be taken of the annual value of the premises made available for this purpose.
A doubt arises whether sub-section (3) of Section 37 of the 1945 Act in fact empowers the commissioners to include, in their statutory demands on county councils for recovery of the cost of maintenance, sums representing the value of the services rendered by engineering plant and machinery, stores or premises provided by the commissioners. The purpose of the present Bill is to remove that legal doubt.
By virtue of Section 37 as at present worded, the commissioners could buy specifically for the maintenance of each drainage scheme every item of plant, equipment or supplies required for that purpose and recover such outlay from the county council concerned. The adoption of such a course would result in inordinately heavy charges against the county councils, particularly in the first year of maintenance when the heavy initial cost of plant would have to be recovered, and in an unequal distribution of the cost of maintenance as between one year and another. The present Bill will enable the commissioners to adopt the obvious and practical course of drawing on the available pool of plant and machinery, etc.
The main provisions of the Bill are in Section 2. Paragraph (a) (1) of sub-section (1) of Section 2 covers the question of machinery and engineering equipment and supplies and paragraph (a) (2) deals with the matter of premises.
As I have stated, the purpose of the Bill is to ensure that the machinery available will be used to the best possible advantage and that it will not be necessary, as apparently it would have been—due to a mistake in the draft of the original Bill—that the councils would have to pay for the purchase of the new machinery for maintenance purposes.