Not for works which are being done for their benefit, mind you, but for works which were selected by the Government, selected by the Board of Works for the relief of unemployment. My experience of that in Roscommon was that the Roscommon County Council, composed largely of the Minister's supporters, definitely decided to turn down one of the schemes, and would not make the contribution. They felt it was not fair to ask them to make the contribution. The reason was that they did not feel that the county council ought to be made contribute to a scheme of that type, because as far as distress was concerned they had the board of health to look after that particular side of it and to relieve it.
It was anticipated that, when the supplementary agricultural grant would come to be made, the Government possibly would make a further contribution under that head to meet the demands that are being made on the county councils for this particular type of work. The Minister will admit that the county councils, through their engineering service, are in a position to be the best judges of what is required in the county. They make full provision for road works, special works and for all other county requirements. I am aware that various people did expect that some compensation would be offered to the county councils by way of an increase in the agricultural grant, or by some other method, from the Government to repay them for the moneys which they have been asked to put up to support this and other schemes. The statement of the Minister on this Vote does not give any encouragement whatever to the rate-paying community to provide the assistance which the Government expect from them towards the solution of the unemployment question.
The rates are high. They have increased enormously. They have gone up by over one-third since the Fianna Fáil Party came into office. Therefore, the agricultural grant ought to have gone up proportionately, but it has not. Under almost every head, the ratepayers are having their burdens increased enormously, and it is certainly disappointing at this stage to find that there is no governmental gesture to give a further grant to relieve the rates. The ratepayers are left to grin and bear the load. I think the Minister would be well advised to use his influence with the Government to increase the agricultural grant, and thus lighten the burden on the ratepayers. I have always realised, and I think all who have been engaged in public life will agree with me, that our local government system and the ratepayers provide the machinery for carrying on the business of the people of this country. Local government services must be maintained, and the people's burdens ought not to be made too heavy for them. At the moment that is being done. From every side they are being overloaded. They expected to get some relief under this Vote and I am sorry that the Minister has disappointed them.
The reports which appear in the provincial newspapers show that many of our local bodies are, at the moment, financially embarrassed. They are being urged by the Department of Local Government to speed up the collection of the rates so that they may be able to meet their demands in full. In view of all that, this supplementary agricultural grant is altogether inadequate to meet the present situation. I am sorry the Minister did not see his way to be more generous and endeavour to redeem, even though it be on the eve of a general election, the promise which his Party so definitely made to derate all agricultural land. In my opinion they should have come to the people's assistance by increasing this year the amount of this grant.
