I move:—
That, viewing with alarm the serious reactions which the decision of the Minister for Local Government in relation to road grants for the coming financial year will have on the finances of the local authorities and on employment, Dáil Éireann is of opinion that the decision should be reviewed, so that the grants may be provided on the same basis as in the years 1947-48 and 1948-49.
In moving this motion I am merely putting the views of every public representative in the country before the House. During the past fortnight or three weeks there have been meetings of county councils in every county in the State for the purpose of striking a rate for the coming year, and in no case have these councils agreed to strike the roads rate, due to the fact that the grants which were made available to the counties during 1947 and 1948 have this year been drastically reduced. Irrespective of how those councils throughout the country are composed with regard to politics and otherwise, we have had the same unanimous desire to have this question reviewed, and I understand that during the past couple of weeks the Minister for Local Government has been asked to meet deputations almost from every county. The attitude of the Minister regarding those grants has been the cause of that. These grants were given by the Fianna Fáil Government for the purpose of restoring the condition of the roads to their pre-war level. As we all know, during the emergency period, due to the diversion of traffic from the railways, turf haulage and the withdrawal of men from road works, our roads all over the country had deteriorated to an alarming extent. This year those grants have been cut to an alarming extent.
In my own county, Kilkenny, where last year we got a grant of £121,000, this year it was reduced to £85,313, and what effect is that going to have? It means that we are going to have unemployment of road workers. In a normal year the normal period of employment for road workers is about ten or 11 months, but this year, due to the slashing of those grants, that period of work will be cut by at least ten or 11 weeks. In Kilkenny we have about 650 men employed and our wage bill runs to about £2,500 a week. If you take the figure we have been slashed, £35,000, plus the amount of money the council would normally have had to put up to obtain these grants, you will find it comes to some £30,000 in wages which represents 60 per cent. of the total cost, 30 per cent. for materials and 10 per cent. for machinery.
If these men are to be thrown out of employment—as they will be—where are they going to find alternative employment? Who is going to provide it for them? We know from past experience that the Minister for Finance certainly will not provide it. He said that it was not the function of a Government to find work for the people. Down the country his supporters are throwing the blame on the Minister for Local Government because the grants are being cut. That is the attitude which comes from the other side of the House. But that is not going to relieve the responsibility or take it from the shoulders of the men who are responsible for having those grants allocated each year to the county councils, that is, the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Finance.
During 1947 our expenditure was £161,075 and of that sum we received by way of grants £96,635 while the rates we were asked to bear were £64,440. Assuming that the same grants were made available this year, Kilkenny County Council, even though it was not a coalition county council but largely a Fianna Fáil county council, gave a promise that the same amount of money would be provided for the restoration of roads and their maintenance as was given last year, so it cannot be said that we in any way tried to hamper the functions of the Government with regard to the restoration and maintenance of roads in our county. What did we find? Four days before our meeting was due to be held our grants were reduced from £121,000 to £85,000. In the case of main roads, where last year we had a grant of £53,666, this year all we were getting for the same main roads is £19,100.
There was a contingency, however, that if we provided 40 per cent. of a special grant which might be made available we were to get £19,100.
That was the only grant that we were getting for main roads in Kilkenny. We were getting 40 per cent. of the amount that we put up last year for our county roads. That was increased all right. We were getting an increase there because in 1947-48 our grant in that year was £40,272 for county roads. This year it will be something more; it will be £61,000 for our county roads, but in the aggregate the grants in County Kilkenny have been reduced by £35,000. The net result, as far as employment in the county goes, is this, that there is a reduction in the labour content of £29,000 or £30,000. These are the actual facts as we find them in County Kilkenny.
The same position applies all over the country, as one can gather from the reports which appear in the newspapers of county council meetings which have been held during the last ten or 12 days. What is the present position? If we were to provide the same amount of money this year for the upkeep, restoration and maintenance of roads, as we provided last year by way of grants and by way of levy on the rates, we find that the ratepayers in County Kilkenny would be saddled with a burden of 2/0½d. in the £. That is what the slashing of these grants amounts to. It amounts, on the one hand, to a loss of £30,000 to the workers, and on the other hand, to a burden of 2/0½d. on the ratepayers of the county. I contend that the ratepayers in County Kilkenny are not in as good a position to pay that increased rate this year as they were last year.
Despite what may be said from the opposite benches, the conditions in agriculture are not as good this year as they were last year. We have had no increase in the price of agricultural produce, even though it may be said by the people on the opposite benches that we had. What increase was there in the price of beet over the last two years? There was none. There has, however, been an increase in the cost of producing it. No farmer sitting on the opposite benches will deny that. Consequently, the beet grower is not in a position to pay an increased rate.
The price of wheat was fixed in October, 1947, before Fianna Fáil left office. The price then guaranteed for the cereal year 1947-48 was £3 2s. 6d. per barrel. Again, I ask any farmer sitting on the opposite benches to say whether the cost of producing that wheat has gone down. I say that it has not. In fact, the cost of producing it has increased. The price of milk was fixed by the Fianna Fáil Government in 1947, and since then the costs of production have gone up. If a man is sending his milk to the creamery, he is getting a lesser price for it from the creamery now than he was in 1947, due to the fact that there has been an increase in the cost of the production of butter by way of an increase in wages in the creamery, an increase in the cost of repairs, renewals, oil, salt and the other things that go to increase the costs of creamery production. On the farm, you have a similar position. There have been two increases given to agricultural workers during that period. As I say, the price of those commodities still remains the same, even though the increases that I refer to have been given. As regards better conditions in the matter of agricultural produce, the only argument on that that can be put forward from the opposite benches is one—the mythical increase in the price of cattle.
What is the Minister's intention in regard to this? Does he want the ratepayers in County Kilkenny to pay 2/- more in the £ in order to have the same amount of money put up this year as was put up last year? Will he, in that case, have the support of the Minister for Lands, or of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, or of those other people who claim to represent the farmers here? Are they going to stand up and support him in that attitude? Let us not get away from the facts. What I have stated are the hard fundamental facts. There are no two ways of dealing with this. You either have to put up the rates or reduce employment. Will Deputy Seán Dunne or Deputy McAuliffe stand for a reduction of work on the roads? Will the Minister for Local Government, who probably has greater experience in this than any of those sitting on the opposite benches, agree to have these grants reduced? He knows the position. There is nobody who should know it better, and it is for him to say whether the Minister for Finance will be able to keep the purse closed or not.
Now, there is another matter which also concerns the workers on the roads. In Kilkenny we have adopted the Local Superannuation Act under which the men who are working on the roads must put in 200 days at work. At present, our men are getting work for ten or 11 months in the year. We will take the figure at ten and one-half months. If we take off a further two and one-half months that will bring them under the qualifying number of days. They must work 200 days, and if not they will not qualify for superannuation. Taking Church holidays, wet days and the period in which they will be idle as a result of the reduction in these grants, it will mean that the men will not be working 200 days on the roads. I am sure the Minister for Local Government will not stand for that.
Again, in Kilkenny we may not be in as bad a position as other counties. We do not produce as much turf as other counties. Consequently, our men may be working on the roads for a much longer period than they would, for instance, in the turf producing counties. Neither had we as much haulage on our roads as they had in other counties. Nevertheless, our county surveyor, who is the best judge of road conditions in Kilkenny, put forward an estimate asking the county council to give him this year the same amount of money that he got last year. It is his contention that it will take two years more before the roads in County Kilkenny will be restored to their pre-war condition. We did, I know, take a lot of our men off the roads to do harvest work, but it was only for that purpose. Take counties like Leix and Offaly, Mayo, Galway, and other turf producing counties. If the roads in our County of Kilkenny cannot be restored for another two years, how much longer will it take to restore the roads in those turf producing counties? As I have said we have been told that it will take at least two years more to restore our roads to their pre-war condition. I should mention that our roads in Kilkenny suffered from abnormal flooding in 1947. In that year the damage done to them by flooding was estimated at £50,000. Several bridges were knocked. We got a special grant of £38,000 to repair that damage, but the work has not yet been completed. As I and my colleagues from the County Kilkenny can tell the House, we still have bridges that have not been repaired since the flooding in 1947, and they will not be touched this year unless we get the grants that were given to us in the years 1946 and 1947.
In 1946, the first year that the grants were given us, we spent £140,000 on our roads and we increased the rates in order to qualify for the grants that were then, for the first time, being made available. In that year, 1946-47, we got a grant of £58,840. In 1947-48 we spent £161,075 on our roads and we got £96,635. We raised £64,440 by rates, an increase in that case of £9,000, which represents more than 6d. in the £ in the rates, in order to qualify for the grant. Last year we got a grant of £122,888. The total grants to the county in the past two years amounted to £278,363. If we have two more years to go in which to restore our roads to the pre-war condition we have spent £278,363 in three years. So it is only a matter of calculation to find out how much more we should need to bring the roads back to normality.
I do not think there is any argument for the Minister for Local Government in this case. He knows the position and he knows what the effects are going to be. There should be no question whatsoever of having to put down a motion of this kind. These grants should have been made available in the same way as they have been during the past three years. The roads are not in a proper condition yet. There is no county in Ireland where the county surveyor has not submitted to his council an estimate equal to that which was submitted over the past three years. These are the people on whom we have to rely. If they, as technicians, are telling our people that we must do this or that to our roads in order to restore them and maintain them, surely it is up to the council, if they are concerned about the roads, to give them the money. We have done that. I submit it is up to the Minister for Local Government to do his share in this case. If he does not do it he will have to bear the responsibility of either increasing the rates of the country or denying the road workers the right to get work on the roads.