There are many features of the disbursements envisaged by the Minister on which I should like information. Is it possible for the Minister to indicate from what source certain of the plans and specifications in relation to these projects came? Are they plans and specifications that were on the stocks awaiting merely the transfusion of finance for their completion? I want to know from the Minister whether local authorities are yet advised as to what amounts of money are going to be available to them under these new grants. I want to know from the Minister whether there is any departure that might have necessitated the establishment of this separate Bill. Is there any function to be performed under this Bill for which the machinery is not already in being? Is this National Development Fund Bill to be purely a method of passing a large financial subvention to enable the infusion of finance that is necessary for certain projects under various Departments now stultified by lack of money? If this is so, can the Minister indicate to the House what was the urgency or what, in fact, was the necessity for the departure into this type of legislation? Can the Minister give the House any information as to whether many of the projects on hands by various local authorities of immense consequence to the immediate neighbourhood can hope to have any subvention in aid from this fund to enable them to go on with those projects, particularly in districts such as the area I have the honour to represent, where the spectre of unemployment is becoming serious again and the potential of employment termination is very real? Can people like the Clonakilty Urban District Council who have submitted plans in connection with water schemes and the provision of a new town hall-can projects submitted by Skibbereen Urban Council and the Bantry town commissioners over a period of years—hope that from this money now voted will flow some subvention in aid to enable them to get on with the necessary works, or is this Bill designed purely, as suggested by my colleague Deputy Sweetman, to overcome the difficulty of the introduction of Supplementary Estimates?
I want to leave out at this stage political comment on the Bill. I feel that I would like information from the Minister as to what work is going to be done, and in particular, I want to know what benefits are going to flow and what good is going to inure to my constituency by virtue of this grandiose styled new legislation called national development. Is national development within the concept of his Bill one limited to the political fruitfulness of the area in which the money is going to be disbursed, or is it one designed to give an honest impetus to various areas that are, in fact, trying to advance, whether it be under the aegis of an urban council or a local council? We see already out of the £5,000,000 that this Bill proposes using this year £3.6 million provided for. In it I defy the Minister to nominate any project enunciated by him for which the machinery of continuity of effort does not already exist. The various sub-sections of the Department of Agriculture are able to deal with all the projects that have been grouped under money granted to the Department of Agriculture whether it be for fishing ponds, examination of fish fertility or the quality of progeny of certain spawn. The machinery already exists within the Department for that particular type of activity. All that was necessary was money.
I say, as I said on the Second Reading of this Bill, that there was no necessity, so far as any of the money already voted was concerned, for this large window-dressing and flag-waving of a Bill styled National Development Fund Bill, when, in fact, all the various projects enunciated by the Minister, whether it be Dublin harbour develop-or Cork harbour development, all of which we are more than delighted to welcome in so far as they hold forth a reasonable prospect of this work being gone ahead with and a reasonable employment content for the people in those areas—these projects are welcome; but will the Minister say why it was necessary to bring in this type of legislation to enable him to grant that money?
Was it not possible for the Government, whether by way of advance from Contingency Fund or by way of Supplementary Estimate to the main Estimate, to make these moneys available for the work that they now propose to do? I do not want anybody to feel that I am in any way opposed to spending money at home here on worthwhile projects that are going to inure to the benefit of the Irish people, but I feel that we should do it in a practical way, and if the machinery was already available, as I contend it was, for every project in that £3.6 million already enunciated, why should we create the atmosphere of a National Development Bill that is not doing anything new? I had hoped that the National Development Bill did conceive some co-ordinated plan whereby projects for national development that have for some reason or another been held up or not favourably considered could have been financed not on the basis of an impetus to departmental work already in existence but on the basis of a side by side drive that was going to enable the increase in employment that we had hoped this Bill would immediately effect.
I want to know from the Minister, not in any acrimonious way, what hope, if any, projects that are shelved but which are known to Departments to be of value and of need to areas now have of reaching realisation? Can I go back, can my colleague Deputy O'Sullivan go back, or my colleague Deputy Murphy go back, to the people of West Cork and say: "You have prospects now of getting the recurring flooding of the Island River in the town of Skibbereen dealt with, prospects of getting the question of a new town hall, so long needed, in Clonakilty dealt with, you have prospects of getting various projects in relation to the provision of better hygienic and sanitation conditions for some of your older type of building schemes—you have hope of getting a Grant-in-Aid for these or a total grant to enable you to do it?" Or are we to go back with the story of the deception that the Bill, in fact, carries a title but only provides a way in which money can be poured in to supplement the amount of money that various Departments now find necessary to get in addition to what they got in the Estimates? I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some reasonable hope that these projects can look forward to substantial grants to enable them to be put into operation.
In dealing with the problem to-day of a rapid expansion of local works, whether it be works under the Local Authorities (Works) Act coming directly under the county council or whether it be works carried out under an urban authority, there is an immediate and urgent necessity to decelerate the movement out of rural Ireland and slow down the impetus of mass emigration. That is particularly true of West Cork where there is grave necessity at the present time for the creation of good, solid employment within the area. Local authorities have schemes of practical national value and importance. It is possible for the Minister under Section 4 of this Bill to exercise discretion. I want to know in what direction the Minister's mind is running. Is there any hope that he will exercise his discreation in the direction of making available in the rural areas, such as that which I represent, along the west coast of Ireland and in the various Gaeltacht districts, money to enable the local authorities in these areas to give employment that has some degree of continuity and reasonable prospects of enduring for a period? If that is not the case, then the clarion of trumpets that played in the National Development Bill will become very muted indeed in the realisation that this Bill might be better described as a new method of introducing Supplementary Estimates en masse.
I do not want the Minister to try to hoodwink the House and the public into believing that this Bill has any greater scope or any wider purpose than that shown by the £3.6 million allocated. I do not want a Bill such as this to go on the Statute Book unless the Minister can tell us here and now that it is his desire, as acting-Minister for Finance, to ensure that this money is disbursed throughout rural Ireland to enable projects of national development, shelved or turned down for lack of money, to be put into operation in order to create local employment markets thereby alleviating the unrest and unease which result in emigration from the rural areas to the cities or across the water.