I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. Under the Road Fund (Advances) Act of 1926, the Minister for Finance was empowered to advance to the Road Fund moneys to an extent not exceeding £2,000,000. The object of this Bill is to increase that limit from £2,000,000 to £5,000,000 so that the Road Fund may be able to meet the abnormal commitments which have arisen in this year in respect of road restoration maintenance. These increased demands and commitments will cost more than the sum available in the Road Fund at the present time.
Road Fund (Advances) Bill, 1948— Second and Subsequent Stages.
How much more?
Under the Act of 1926, £1,790,000 was borrowed—all of which has long since been repaid to the Exchequer—so that there is only a balance of £210,000 still available for borrowing. With the increase of £3,000,000 in the borrowing limit provided in the present measure, the fund will be entitled to borrow up to an aggregate of £3,210,000. Under the provisions of the Act, which still remain in operation, the period and terms of repayments of advances to the Road Fund will be at the discretion of the Minister for Finance, who also has borrowing powers under the Act.
Normally, perhaps, we should not object to the proposal contained in this Bill in so far as I understand that it is considered that the power to advance to the Road Fund sums up to £2,000,000 set definite global limitation upon the total of moneys which could be advanced to that fund at intervals and that consequently if the fund had to raise money at the present time the Exchequer would be prepared to advance only up to £210,000. It might be held that it is desirable that that limit should be increased so that if, by any chance, an abnormal expenditure developed by the Road Fund and the resources of the Road Fund were insufficient to meet it, the Exchequer might, so to speak, come to its rescue. However, I have a feeling that the introduction of this Bill at this particular time has been necessitated by the fact that the Government is already committed to make substantial grants to the road authorities throughout the country. These grants would, in fact, require something over £1,300,000 in excess of the present resources of the Road Fund if the undertakings of the Government were to be fulfilled. It would, therefore, appear that the real reason why it is necessary to introduce a Bill at this particular stage is that the Government which held office prior to the 18th February last had decided that, in so far as the resources of the Road Fund would be insufficient to finance the programme of road restoration and reconstruction which was essential in order to make good the deficiencies of previous years, there would be a grant to the fund in that respect which would involve no future liabilities on behalf of the fund. It would be a grant given as a gift in recognition of the fact that a large part of the abnormal restoration which has to be carried through at the present time arose out of the exceptionally heavy traffic which the general conditions of the time imposed on the roads during the period from September, 1939, until the cessation of hostilities in Europe.
We think that this measure is unjust in so far as it proposes to impose upon future road users a liability which properly arose during the period from September, 1939, to the close of hostilities in Europe. We consider that the community of that day enjoyed all the advantages which the use of the roads entailed and that, by reason of the fact that the roads were there, the community was able to secure the distribution of fuel, wheat, beet and other commodities which, if it were not for the fact that we were able to organise the road transport at the time, would not be available to them and would not be available in particular to the people of our towns and cities. That is obviously work for which the community as a whole is responsible. Obviously, if it did entail abnormal wear and tear on the roads during a period when it was not possible to maintain those roads in a proper condition, it is a job the cost of which should be defrayed by the community at large and not by the road users in general nor by the roads users of the future. If this Bill goes through and the Minister for Finance is given the power to make further advances to the Road Fund up to a total of £5,000,000 in all, it simply means that the future revenues of the Road Fund are going to be mortgaged and that the moneys which should be available in the Road Fund to finance the construction of the new roads system which is urgently required in this country will have already been mortgaged to the Exchequer, and that the proceeds of the road tax in the future will not be available for the purpose for which Parliament designed them—to enable the road system to be improved and maintained during the period when the income from the motor vehicle duties would properly accrue. Those of us who are familiar with the history of the Road Fund know that it had been previously mortgaged.
The predecessors of the Fianna Fáil Administration which took office in 1932, had borrowed already £2,000,000 for road works on the security of the Road Fund. The consequence of that was that the normal yearly revenue from the Road Fund, which should have been available to finance work undertaken in the year in which that revenue accrued, was hypothecated, in the first instance, in order to meet the obligation imposed upon the Road Fund by our predecessors when they borrowed that £2,000,000. That was, in fact, a crippling impost on the Road Fund during the early years of Fianna Fáil Administration and it was responsible, to some extent, for the fact that we could not go ahead and provide the people of this country with a modern road system. It is all very well for people to say that they do not intend to spend money on trunk roads and on main roads. Money must be spent on trunk roads and main roads if this country is to continue to progress. Roads are of vital importance to the people of the country as a whole, whether they are consumers or producers, whether they are agriculturalists living in the country and producing food for the towns or whether they are industrial workers living in the towns. If we had a modern system of road transport the cost to the industrial workers of the foodstuffs produced in the country could be considerably reduced. If we are going to continue to labour under the disadvantages of a road system, which was designed primarily to meet different traffic conditions from those which obtain to-day, to that extent the cost of transport of agricultural produce of all kinds will be considerably increased. Conversely, if we maintain this out-of-date and antiquated road system without endeavouring to remodel it to meet modern requirements, the agriculturalist similarly will be called upon to bear an additional cost on the industrial needs which he requires and which are produced in the cities.
Most of the members of the present Government said that they were going to decrease the cost of living. A very important element in the cost of all the simple commodities is the cost of transport. If we want to do something to reduce the cost of living then we should try to modernise our transport and make it as economic as possible for the producers. We cannot do that in present circumstances unless we modernise our roads. From time to time we read in the papers of the number of accidents which occur and the number of fatalities which arise out of the present use of the roads. If we want to reduce these fatalities we must try to make our roads less dangerous to those who use them, whether as drivers of vehicles or as pedestrians. We cannot do that without expending a considerable sum of money. There will be less money spent on the roads and less money available to spend if the responsibilities which the Exchequer should meet in this year out of the ordinary resources of taxation are not going to be met in that way but are going to be met by borrowing and by making them a charge on the fund.
For that reason I think we must be critical of this Bill, because it indicates that the Government has gone back on a decision taken by its predecessors—a decision that, in so far as the Road Fund would not be able to provide the grants which were promised to the road authorities out of its own resources, it would enable them to do their utmost in this year to restore the roads to a serviceable condition and, incidentally, to provide a good deal of employment. Instead of getting that, however, as a free grant, the Government is going to advance this money as a sum which must be repaid by the Road Fund, and, therefore, as I said in the beginning, to mortgage the rate for the Road Fund of the future. I think that is a short-sighted, penny-wise policy. I am surprised that the Minister for Local Government, who is a member of a Party that was always desirous of spending as much money as we possibly could in order to provide employment in this country, should have agreed to allow that retrograde decision to be forced upon him, as I believe, by his colleague, the Minister for Finance.
Deputy MacEntee has given some indication to the House in regard to the danger of borrowing on the proceeds of the Road Fund in the future. I should like to make a few more observations on the matter. As Deputy MacEntee indicated, we suffered during our first period of office from a depleted Road Fund. We were fully aware of the result of making the motorists pay in each year for special expenditure incurred in former years. The position so far as the roads at present are concerned is as follows: In 1939 the Second World War broke out; from then onwards the quantity of tar available for road improvement and maintenance constantly decreased until it reached a figure of 5 per cent. of normal; it was impossible to secure anything but second-hand machinery for road work; and all that time the Road Fund was reduced by a limitation on the number of vehicles on the road. At the same time, a volume of completely abnormal traffic took place along certain stretches of road due to the use of lorries for turf haulage. The result was that towards the end of the war the skin or surface of the main roads had depreciated to such a point that very, very heavy expenditure was required if £25,000,000 worth of capital was to be preserved and not unduly depreciated. Concomitant with all that, there had been a diversion of labour during the summer months from road work to turf work over a considerable portion of the country. That meant that county roads were neglected as well as main roads. The previous Government decided because of that to give special grants for the restoration of the roads dependent on the contribution made by local authorities; and any contribution made above a certain rate and level, based on the average of four or five years' expenditure during the war, was subject to an increasing level of support from the Road Fund.
For the first time grants were made from the Road Fund for the restoration of county roads. Very great pressure was brought to bear on the previous Government during its years of office to include county roads in awarding Road Fund grants. This was done largely because of the depreciation of those roads during the war. The result of these special contributions for county roads has been to increase very largely the expenditure by county councils. One of the ways in which the Minister for Finance could have economised in making proposals of this kind would be to cease to give grants for county roads. I think that would be a very bad remedy. When the Minister for Local Government said that he had in mind the development of very much improved secondary roads I considered that he was speaking quite correctly; but there is no reason why expenditure on county roads should be at the expense of main roads, or vice versa. What is needed is the continuance of the present programme. In about January of this year restoration on the main and county roads had only been effected to the degree of about 30 per cent. in the turf areas and only to the degree of about 50 per cent. in certain special counties where there had been no turf work. That means that it will be some time before the present surface of the roads is adequately covered. It will be at least a year, or a year and a half, before the depreciation that set in during the war is made good.
Still more serious, however, is the fact that it is intended, under the terms of this Bill, to borrow upon the future proceeds of the Road Fund. The cost of road maintenance and road improvement has increased by at least 50 per cent., in some cases by as much as 60 to 70 per cent., whereas the proceeds of the Road Fund, at the present rate of vehicle taxation, has not increased to any like degree. The Government are, therefore, faced with the dilemma that whatever programme is adopted for road improvement or road restoration the Road Fund is inadequate, from the point of view of borrowing—grossly inadequate. It will be found, for example, that it will be necessary to improve part of the road from Dublin to Bray. No matter what Government are in office and no matter what may be their views about road policy, that road will have to be made a double carriageway road. Even if the Minister intends to neglect main roads and confine his attention to secondary roads, he will find that in the interests of public safety and good transport it will be necessary to improve the Dublin-Bray road. The compensation costs resulting from the increase in housing values have increased enormously along that road; they have increased far more than what is represented by the general depreciation in the value of money. The pre-war estimate for improving the Dublin-Bray road was £50,000 to £80,000 a mile and in present circumstances the improvement of that road offers a very big problem to any Government.
Next we have to consider what is the policy of the Government in regard to road improvement. The time will come when road restoration has been completed and when it will be necessary to improve the roads on a long-term basis—to remove curves and widen roads. The Minister spoke very slightingly of the last Government's road plan. Like other persons in the present Government, he seemed to follow the usual line of propaganda by implying that we were going to build gigantic, expensive main roads at the expense of the farmer. There was nothing further from our intentions. If the Minister will consider our road plan he will find memoranda written by myself and the previous Minister clearly indicating that there was no suggestion of building over-elaborate autobahnen—the German type of road. What we intended to carry out was a matter of plain commonsense; we intended to provide our country surveyors with some reasonable standard upon which they could engage—a sound programme of road improvement.
Anybody going from Dublin to Cork along the main road will realise that a great deal of money must have been wasted through chopping and changing on that road. It was widened in two or three places by one county surveyor on one basis and in four or five places elsewhere on another basis. Our object was to create reasonable standards based on the estimated traffic density along our main roads. We adopted as a sort of yardstick the increase in road traffic and it would have been possible to modify our plan during periods of five years. It would be quite possible for any Government which desires for its own reasons to improve county roads to a greater degree to modify our plans. When the plans are prepared there is no need for any particular standard to be adopted and if a Government chooses to modify them they can do so, so as to develop suitable roadways on an economic scale and in keeping with the circumstances of the time.
Whether the Minister carries out our plan to accommodate agricultural traffic and to carry goods from our ports to towns throughout the country, or whether he decides to hold back progress in main road development for the sake of county road development, he will never have enough money if he borrows on the Road Fund. It is quite clear that there is a case for applying the Transition Development Fund if road work is to proceed properly. I should like to know if it is a fact that funds from the Employment Schemes Vote are not going to be applied to roads, rural or other public roads, during the coming winter? If that is to be the case it will still further diminish the total amount that will be available for road work. The Minister will be well aware that one of the ways we were able in some counties to compensate for the loss of revenue arising from borrowing from the Road Fund was by means of employment schemes grants. Some £3,000,000 was contributed by the Employment Schemes Vote to road restoration and road improvement.
If the Employment Schemes Vote during the present financial year has not only to provide money for unemployed turf workers but also has to provide money for other workers, the fund will be diminished in respect of roads. We understood from the Minister for Finance that there was no increased grant available for employment, that the present Employment Schemes Grant will have to cover the special grant available in connection with the schemes for turf production. That places the county surveyors in a still more difficult position if they are to continue with their work.
I do not know at what rate repayment will be made in connection with this Bill, but I anticipate that in the next financial year it will still be necessary to make grants available for local authorities over and above the proceeds likely to arise from the Road Fund, unless there is a volume of road restoration far beyond what we computed to be possible during the present financial year. I should like to know at what rate it will be repaid in order to ascertain the total adverse effect on road improvement work in the future.
In the present circumstances it would be highly undesirable to raise any objection to the method by which the Government propose to increase the Road Fund. Deputy MacEntee said, quite rightly, that roads have deteriorated very considerably. It was inevitable they should, because of the heavy traffic which they were not made originally to carry. He said that this fund should be passed down to the ordinary user of the road, because it would be an advantage to the ordinary road user. In that connection, we are all agreed that it is very necessary that the ordinary user of the road should get the full advantage of the fund. There is one thing that I do not think the Minister has taken any precaution to meet. We know that throughout the country certain public authorities are refusing to qualify to get the necessary amount of the fund, and, therefore, be able to pass down to the ordinary user of the road what it is necessary and desirable he should get—that is, to construct the roads in the way in which they should be constructed. That is one of the things I would like to see covered in this Bill.
I should like the Minister to enact some provisions by which he will be able to deal with a recalcitrant local authority who will refuse to claim from the Road Fund the amount of money to which it would be entitled. I am sure Deputies are aware that that is a common occurrence in the case of some councils. Whatever game some local authorities are playing—I do not propose to characterise it by any special name—it sometimes happens, that in order to hit somebody or something, road authorities refuse to claim the necessary amount due to them from the Road Fund. I put it to the Minister that he should consider seriously putting the roads into condition which will enable ordinary users of the roads to travel over them in reasonable safety, a condition in which they are not, because of the circumstances that prevailed over the past five or six years. He should take precautions to see that some provisions are made by which the full value of grants from the Road Fund will be passed on to the ordinary people of the country.
I think that Deputy Hogan seems to have got the wrong end of the stick as to the intentions of the Bill. It is an extraordinary thing to me that Deputy Hogan, being a member of the Labour Party, if he had studied the Bill and the implications of the opening remarks of the Taoiseach, should have made the speech he has made. So far as I can see, the necessity for this Bill arises from the fact that the Government have decided to implement the decisions of their predecessors by way of borrowing at the expense of the Road Fund instead of providing these moneys from the Transition Development Fund this year. I should like the Taoiseach to correct me if I am wrong in that view. In other words, the Government are proposing to borrow at the expense of the Road Fund this year in order to balance their Budget.
The previous Government undertook with local authorities to provide certain moneys for the maintenance and improvement of roads in the year 1948-49, and they proposed to provide that money out of the Transition Development Fund, which fund, I understand, is raised from direct taxation. This proposal is to borrow at the expense of the Road Fund in order to save the Exchequer in the present year and enable the Government to balance the Budget. So long as the Exchequer is saved this expenditure, it is all very fine for the Government. The same amount of money will be spent on the roads this year, but in future years a very serious problem will arise for local authorities because the moneys in the Road Fund that would normally be available to them, will have been depleted in order to provide what has been borrowed this year.
I am sure that Deputies from rural areas, especially those who happen to be members of county councils, will appreciate what is going to happen in the future. I am surprised at the attitude which Deputy Hogan adopts. I am sure that on other occasions he would make a speech directly opposite to the one he made to-day, if he stopped to think for a moment and if he did not happen to be seated on the benches opposite. It is a very serious matter for local authorities that the amount of money available to them in future years will be depleted. The Minister can borrow from the Road Fund this year, but he cannot go on borrowing £3,000,000 every year. That would be an impossibility. The whole question of the maintenance of roads and the amount of money required in future years for that purpose, is going to be a very serious problem for any Government during the next 20 or 30 years. Having regard to the increased motor traffic on the roads, the problem is one almost beyond the resources of the State. As the number of motor vehicles increase and as transport is being diverted from rail to road, the problem is becoming increasingly serious and the amount of money required by local authorities in future will be huge.
I want to issue a note of warning in this respect, that local authorities cannot, at the expense of the ratepayers, provide all the money that is needed to maintain the roads in the condition needed to make them safe for motor traffic in future. I hope neither the present Government nor any future Governments will tinker with the idea that the ratepayers can afford in any way further to tax their industry to provide the amount of money that will be needed to improve the present condition of the roads. The ratepayers of the country cannot bear that burden and unless the general taxpayers are prepared to provide through the Exchequer the necessary moneys required for this purpose a serious problem will arise. The proposal put forward by the Government in the present instance is, in my opinion, unwise and unsound from the point of view of the Road Fund and taxation in general, and I am very sorry that the Government are going on with it.
After listening to previous speakers, I can only come to the conclusion that there seems to be some confusion as to what the Taoiseach actually suggested. They all agree that we want better roads and they all attribute the present very bad condition of the roads to the fact that it was impossible to repair them during the war years owing to the difficulty of getting supplies and the bad quality of such materials as were available. Deputy Allen got up professedly to clear up the situation, but I think, so far as the rest of the House is concerned, our minds were as clear as mud after he had sat down, because instead of clearing the situation he boxed the compass completely.
He suggested that the Government were carrying out the programme of the previous Government. Surely there is no objection to that? He went on to say that it was absolutely necessary that the roads should be repaired and, at the same time, he warned the Government of the very dangerous nature of the programme they are adopting. I may not have heard the Taoiseach correctly and I may be completely wrong in my interpretation of what he said, but I understood from him that what the Government proposes to do is to borrow from the Road Fund for the future. I think that is a very wise and sane policy to adopt, because the roads are admittedly in such a very bad condition now, due to the circumstances of the last eight or nine years, that it is necessary to expend upon them more money than it would be possible to expend in the next five years. If I interpret the Taoiseach correctly, I believe that that is a very wise policy. The number of motorcars is constantly increasing and, consequently, the amount of road tax accruing to the Road Fund will be increasing yearly. I think that the Government should proceed without further delay, therefore, to put all the roads of the country in proper repair and I agree with the suggestion that for that purpose the money which it is now proposed to expend should be borrowed from future years.
I think that Deputy Fitzpatrick has correctly summed up what I intended to convey. We have to meet a certain abnormal condition, due to the emergency and to the fact that for a long period supplies of necessary materials for road repair were unprocurable. To meet the abnormal expenditure necessary for the purpose, it is proposed to advance to the Road Fund certain sums of money not exceeding £5,000,000 which will be repayable out of future revenues of the Road Fund. It has been decided by the Minister for Finance, in order to ease the situation for local authorities, that the commencement of the repayment of the advance may be postponed to 1950 and the accruing interest refunded. That possibly would meet Deputy Allen's point of view put forward on behalf of the local authorities. I find it somewhat difficult to reconcile Deputy Allen's suggestions with those of Deputy Childers. Deputy Allen is anxious that the roads should be more or less reasonably looked after, but that, under no circumstances, should the local people have to pay for them, whoever had to pay for them; Deputy Childers wanted modern double-carriage roads, but did not suggest who would pay for them, except that it appeared from his statement that the general taxpayers should pay for them.
Deputy MacEntee suggested that the decision embodied in this Bill to advance to the Road Fund moneys repayable from future revenues was a retrograde step. The decision of the last Government undoubtedly was that £2,250,000 should be advanced to the Road Fund, but it was not decided whether that sum should be obtained from the Transitional Development Fund or out of moneys provided by Parliament. The decision was taken in principle that a gift of £2,250,000 should be made to the Road Fund, but the source from which this gift was to emanate had not been determined when we took office.
I am told that the moneys in the Transitional Development Fund are required for other purposes, particularly for the purpose of housing, by the Minister for Local Government and the only available source, therefore, from which this £2,250,000 could come would be the pockets of the general taxpayers. The Minister for Finance felt—and I think the Government agreed with him—that in the present stringent financial circumstances and the heavy taxation that the general taxpayer has to bear this year, even with all the lopping he was able to do, in the short time at his disposal, and all the economies he was able to effect, and in order to allow for the social services which the Government intended the Minister for Social Welfare to augment, it would be impossible to raise, by means of a general taxation, this additional sum of £2,250,000 this year. It would mean an additional tax or a series of taxes on the general taxpayer in order to provide that £2,250,000 for abnormal expenditure on the roads. I do not know that any Deputy, except Deputy MacEntee, wants that burden placed on the shoulders of the general taxpayer. If it is a retrograde step, it is a step that we stand over, because we do not feel that this additional burden should be placed on them. The Road Fund, in circumstances which, we hope, will arise in the future when times are better, when trade is better, when conditions are more normal, will be able to repay the expenditure that will fall on the fund this year in order to meet the abnormal circumstances. We felt, accordingly, that in existing circumstances, this would be the proper way to do it from the financial point of view, and particularly from the point of view of the taxpayers.
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle, Deputy Hogan, raised the point that some public councils were evading their duties in respect of taking advantage of the grants that would be available to them from the Road Fund. It will be found, I think, that the Minister for Local Government will use all the machinery available to him to induce local authorities to take up to the full the grants available to them. Deputy MacEntee said that the policy embodied in the Bill was shortsighted and penny wise. I think I can confidently assert that while my colleague, the Minister for Local Government, has grips on this sum which is going to be put into the Road Fund, the taxpayers and the road users will get the best possible value for their money and the job will be done with regard to main roads, trunk roads and also county roads in a way it was never done before.
Might I ask a question, arising out of this matter? Could the Taoiseach say if employment grants will be made available this year through the local authorities?
I am not in a position to answer the question, as the Deputy will appreciate. I think that this question would more properly have been raised on the Estimate.
It only arose at the present time.
I do not think that there is anything further than what Deputy Childers adumbrated.
You are evading the question.
I am not evading the question. I am not answering it as I do not know anything about it. If the Deputy wants the information, he should put down a question to the appropriate Minister.
You had not far to seek it.
The Deputy can put a question on the Order Paper and get a precise answer from the Minister who has machinery available to him to get the information required. Could we have all the stages now?
We think it is very short-sighted, but we realise that we have no option as the Government has all the big battalions and has support through the House.
I am very glad to hear Deputy MacEntee say that we have the big battalions.
There are not many on this side of the House.
The Deputies are at the Galway Races.
Bill passed through Committee, reported without amendment, received for final consideration, and passed.
This is a Money Bill within the meaning of Article 22 of the Constitution and Seanad Éireann will be notified accordingly.
There is just one point I would like to mention. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle was referred to as having spoken. It is usual to speak of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle as Deputy Hogan when he is speaking in the House and as Leas-Cheann Comhairle when he is in the Chair.