The time remaining for the debate on this motion is two hours six minutes.
Private Members' Business. - Revision of Valuations of Island Holdings—Motion (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following Motion:—
That in view of the grave lack of amenities in islands around the coast and the consequent hardship accruing to people living on them, Dáil Éireann is of opinion that the valuation of all island holdings should be revised.—(Deputy M.P. Murphy.)
I had just begun to deal with this motion when I had to move the adjournment the other night. I had said that the people on the islands are getting most of the amenities due to them from various Departments, compared with what people are getting on the mainland.
In regard to the valuation of island holdings, when the valuation was done by Griffith and his team over 100 years ago they had to have regard to the remoteness of an area as well as everything else and as a result they put a valuation on these islands which was lower than it would be on the mainland, especially on the mainland fairly convenient to a town, for land of equal value as regards fertility and other factors. In fact, therefore, the islanders are asked to pay a somewhat lower rate than the people on the mainland in respect of land of more or less the same value.
I did not mention the Department of Agriculture in regard to Departmental schemes except to say that it has various schemes first of all, for the whole country and, secondly, for congested districts. Of these schemes, the most favourable are applied to the islands, such as the schemes for the placing of bulls and rams, seed schemes for potatoes, oats and so on. All these are applied to the islands under the most favourable circumstances. In the case of the ground limestone scheme the transport of the lime to the island is paid for.
In introducing the motion Deputy Murphy mentioned in particular post office services. I find that the larger islands, where there are 100 inhabitants——
In respect of only one island did I refer to post office facilities.
I am talking about the islands of the whole country and not about Cork islands alone. The Post Office rule is that islands that have a certain population—I think of over 100 people—have their own post office. In other cases the post is brought to the island as often as possible. I find that in these islands off the Cork coast where there is no post office the delivery is daily where that is possible; in most cases it is four days a week or two days a week and in one case, it is one day a week. The Post Office is doing what it can.
The Department of Education also deals with the islands through its various schemes as far as possible. They give more favourable consideration to allocating schools on islands than they do on the mainland. They will give a school to an island for a lower number of pupils than they would on the mainland. In some cases where the number of pupils is very small they must get the pupils to come to the mainland and in some cases transport for these children is paid for; in other cases, the islanders get a subsidy to maintain the children on the mainland during the school term.
The islands have Local Government services. It is true that they have not got the main road, a road to lead from the island to the mainland. On the other hand, there have been quite a few subsidised transport systems, one of them being to an island off the Cork coast which was recently initiated by the Minister for the Gaeltacht. There is, of course, subsidised transport for the Aran Islands off the Galway coast for many years. These transport systems are fairly costly on the Exchequer, and are provided to give transport to and from the islands on a very reasonable basis. Bridges have been built on some of the islands or causeways and these were also heavily subsidised. A few of them were built at Galway, and recently I sanctioned a proposal to build a bridge to Valentia Island. That was under discussion and consideration for many years.
Rural electrification has been extended already to some islands off the Donegal coast, Valentia, Achill, Aran Mór, Bear Island and Spike Island and an island off the Galway coast. In addition to that, the Minister for the Gaeltacht also helped some of the islands off Donegal and Galway to install what is technically known as "bottle gas." The installation of Calor Gas was provided free for those islands and is used for heating and lighting with efficiency equal, I am told, to electricity, and cheap to run and pay for in use. Naturally, that will be extended to other islands because a start was made only about a year ago. It will mean that most of the islands will have no further complaint that they are not getting the service from the E.S.B. that people on the mainland are getting.
So far as the Department of Health is concerned, the bigger islands have doctors on them although it is very difficult sometimes to get a doctor to stay because his income is not very good outside his dispensary practice. That is a case we have under consideration at the moment and I think it is possible that some proposals may be made to make it more tempting for a doctor to stay on one of those islands and content himself with the practice he may get there. It is true that islanders must leave the islands to get hospital treatment. The only island that has a hospital is Valentia. Although most islanders must come to the mainland for hospital attention they are helped and facilitated so far as possible in regard to being moved to hospital and they get the usual free service if their means entitle them to free service. There are nurses on some of the islands where there are no doctors, where the size of the island would justify it.
There were proposals discussed at some of the county council meetings in the counties concerned with these islands off the coast and various suggestions were made. Up to recently, most of the islands were paying their rates but in recent years many of the islands have fallen away and are not paying rates at all. There was a discussion at the Cork County Council in 1956 and the council passed a resolution recommending to the Minister for Local Government that legislation be introduced which would authorise the council to reduce by one-half the rates assessed on holdings situated on the islands off the coast of County Cork. I see that that resolution was sent to the Minister for Local Government who rejected it and said he did not agree with it at all. That was in 1956. He pointed out that the county council had it within their own right to be lenient with islanders who were not able to pay, that they could write it off as a bad debt and not insist on the payment. That, as a matter of fact, is the position at the moment in these counties which find it difficult to collect rates off the various islands that are around the coast.
When we are told that the landholders on these islands are very badly off and not able to meet the rates, we find that where land has been sold within the last 10 years, let us say— we do not want to go back any further than that—in some of these islands they got a fairly good price. In fact, I would say that land was sold at about the same figure as the average price of land in County Wexford.
On what island was that sold?
Bear Island is one mentioned here.
Land on Bear Island fetches as much as land in County Wexford?
It does.
Is that your statement?
That is right. Add it up for yourself. Seven and a half acres got £240, that is, between £30 and £40 an acre; 21 acres got £435, that is, over £40 an acre; 10 acres got £380, that is £38 an acre. My experience of land in County Wexford is that it sells at in or about £40 an acre. That is the price it fetches. When I see these prices paid for land on the island holders the conclusion that the island holders are placing as high a value on their land as land holders in County Wexford place on their land.
My plea when I started to speak about this was that we should try to get a real picture of the position of these islands. If there is a position to be remedied, and there evidently is, because some of the islands are not paying rates at all, we can only arrive at a sensible remedy by trying to get the true facts. There is no use in our saying here that the islanders have no amenities whatever because that is only to encourage them, if you like, to look at their own sores and their own disabilities and give them self-justification for not paying any rates at all. We should try to find out in what way do they differ from, let us say, remote holdings on a mountain side or in a valley between two mountains. When you examine the case you will find that their disabilities are not very much more, in fact, perhaps, not any more than those of holders of land on the mountain side and in the valley.
If we are going to give moral support, as it were, to these islanders not to pay their rates by exaggerating their difficulties, people living in these outlying areas may come next and say that they should not pay rates either, that they have no good road coming near them, no hospital within miles of them, no dispensary doctor within miles of them, and so on. They could make the same case as is made for the islanders in this House. That would lead to a very serious state of affairs in many counties where there are wide areas of mountain side and remote valleys and so on. If people living in these places refuse to pay rates, it would lead to a very serious position indeed, especially for those who did pay rates and who must pay, not only their own rates, but also for the default of those who refused to pay any longer.
What the Deputy asked for in this motion is a revision of the valuation. Of course, I shall not stand on technicalities but I want to warn the House that it would require legislation to alter the rate on land. In fact, the Act that was passed at the time of the Griffith Valuation has never been changed. The valuation of land has remained the same. The rates paid, of course, have not remained the same but the Poor Law Valuation has remained the same and, in order to alter the Poor Law Valuation you would have to bring in an amendment of a nature that has not been brought in for the past 100 years. If it was done, we would find that, in fact, it would benefit only a small minority, if you like, of the land holders on these islands because the great majority are not paying the full rates. Some of them are paying half the rates by a sort of gentlemen's agreement with the county council and some are paying nothing at all. There was no agreement on that; they are just not paying.
So, to revise the rate would make no difference to the great majority that we are dealing with. It would undoubtedly give relief to those who have been paying up to this and who, perhaps, might merit more consideration from us for the reason that they have continued to pay even though they suffer from the same disabilities as the others, whatever these disabilities may be.
To alter the Poor Law Valuation is not the best way to approach this problem. There are, of course, ways of doing it which I have not considered or which certainly the Government have not considered. A simpler way of doing it, perhaps, would be, that when it comes to the annual consideration of the relief in rates that is given to land holders, it could be considered whether some difference could be made but, as I say, I have not considered that at all and neither have the Government considered it.
The way in which I approached this question was: I asked what are the disabilities islanders suffer from. I found that in social welfare there is no disability, that they get any payments that are due to them; in education they are fairly well treated on the whole; they either have a teacher or the pupils are brought to the mainland somehow or other, or sometimes kept on the mainland; in health they have as much medical attention as, I am afraid, we can ever provide for them. If they have to go to hospital they will have to be taken off the island. That applies to people in remote districts, who also have to be transported to hospital.
When we come down to consider the question we find that most of the benefits that are given by various Departments or by the local authorities are available to the islanders to the same extent as to those on the mainland. There is one big exception and that is that they are divided by deep water from the mainland. If there were some help in relation to transport which would be needed for the islanders between the island and the mainland where the cost would not be any higher than, let us say, they would have to pay in bus fare if they were living on the mainland, that would make them equal with the people living on the mainland.
The other exception I mentioned already is that some of them complain that, living on an island, they do not get the benefit of rural electrification. Of course there are remote districts in every county where people have not got the benefits of rural electrification and where it will be a long time before they get it. They would have the same complaint but the Minister for the Gaeltacht approached that in the proper way as far as the Gaeltacht islands are concerned. He has not dealt with them all yet but he has dealt with a number of them in the short time he has had his scheme in operation, that was, that where it was impossible, except at exorbitant cost laying under water cable, to supply electricity to these islands, the best thing was to supply the alternative, that is, calor gas. I do not want to advertise calor gas because there are other gases just as good, but let us say bottled gas.
I was about to say that.
In actual fact they gave a fair crack of the whip between the two companies.
Perhaps they did. Anyway let us say bottled gas. Where the island get bottled gas they have as good light as you would get from electricity and as good a system for cooking. Therefore they are as well off as if they had rural electrification, and they have this amenity much cheaper.
Maybe the Minister should not say that either.
I say that against electricity all right. I understand the yearly bill is cheaper than it would be for electricity. Therefore, we are narrowing down the differences very much and we should proceed on the lines we are going at the moment in giving these further amenities, the lack of which these people complain about, and try to put the islands on equality with the mainland as regards amenities.
I do not think anybody in this House, whatever Party he may belong to, is not anxious to see that the islanders get all the benefits they should get. They should get fair play in every way. That is why I should like to have this motion discussed on the basis of trying to find out what their disabilities are and see if we can do away with these disabilities so that they can have as good a standard of life as people on the mainland in so far as we can do that. I do not think this Government or any other Government would be in any way mean or parsimonious about the amount of money that might be required to do a job of that kind and I should like very much indeed to have this motion discussed in that atmosphere. We are all anxious to see what we can do but we want to know what the facts are before we sit down to find out what the remedy will be.
My contribution to this debate will be on the lines suggested by the Minister for Finance, Dr. Ryan, to try to remedy defects we know exist in regard to the islands. I am not so satisfied that the motion on the Order Paper is the best suggestion that can be made but we should be able to solve the difficulty if we approach the matter in a sensible way.
Having a revaluation of the island would not solve the difficulties. Indeed it might have the opposite effect because the industrious, enterprising man on the island who improved his holding might find after the revaluation that his valuation would be increased instead of being reduced and the ne'er-do-well who did nothing but draw the dole may get a reduction in valuation. For that reason I think the revision of valuation would not be a solution to the problem.
You have an alternative given in the motion.
There are many alternatives. Deputy Murphy has given one; I shall give many alternatives in my speech here this evening to improve the conditions on the islands. I did so in my first speech in Dáil Éireann and I have continued to do so for the past two and a half years, bringing to the notice of this House the disabilities under which the islanders suffer and the necessity for improving conditions on the islands so that the people would be able to live more comfortably and make a better living here. That is the all-essential factor, that we should provide the island people with those facilities which would enable them to make a good living on their island.
There is one island off the Cork coast, the only island where the population of children has increased over the years, that is, Hare Island, where some 30 years ago the Government built 40 new houses. As a result of the Government's intervention at that time the number of children on the island going to school to-day is greatly increased. If the Government would tackle this problem seriously there are many things they could do. The provision of fishing boats is the first essential because fishing is the natural living of the island people.
The motion suggests the revision of valuation. Perhaps the Deputy would relate his remarks to the motion before the House.
Deputy Murphy has suggested alternatives and the Minister for Finance has asked us all for our views so that we may alleviate distress on the islands, and to put forward sensible remedies, to quote the Minister's own words. That is what I am doing, putting forward sensible remedies for the depopulation of the islands. I pointed out that on one island there is an increase of population as a result of the Government's intervention 30 years ago. Government intervention would be welcomed now in providing fishing boats in the first instance and, having provided fishing boats, in providing, say, fishmeal factories, so that when a glut of fish is there it will not have to be dumped into the sea again as has been done off the West Cork coast on many occasions by these island fishermen. There is an open field for extension and development as regards these islands, especially in the case of the fishing industry and ancillary industries such as canning and fishmeal factories. We are importing fishmeal from Iceland and various other countries at an enormous cost while our island fishermen are dumping their catches in the sea.
The Deputy seems to be embarking on a debate on the fishing industry. There is nothing about the fishing industry in this motion. It deals with the question of valuation.
The Minister for Finance asked us to put forward reasonable suggestions and that is what I am doing.
Would these suggestions affect the valuation of the islands?
Indeed they would. If what I suggest is done the valuation of the islands would increase considerably and the people would become prosperous as the result of the setting up of these industries. In addition to the fishing industry, there is also the question of the island holdings and I must say, on behalf of the island holders, that they have not been treated fairly in the disposal of their milk and butter. I think an alternative scheme could be put forward by the Dairy Disposals Board for the collection of cream from all the islands. They could at least collect the cream from the islands at various collecting points along the coast and thus give the islanders the benefit of the creamery facilities available to farmers on the mainland. That would be a great help and if it is not feasible perhaps a subsidy could be given on the butter.
There is no mention of cream and butter in the motion. All it refers to is the valuation of the islands.
The Minister for Finance asked speakers to the motion to offer reasonable suggestions for the betterment of the present conditions on the island. That is what I am doing on this occasion. However, I must say that I have not had the same experience as Deputy Murphy who says that all the representations made by the Deputies of West Cork have been turned down.
I made no such statement.
I shall quote it for the Deputy. This is what the Deputy said in the Official Report of the 25th November, column 462:
Unfortunately the demands made over the years by myself and other representatives particularly in relation to my own constituency have gone unheeded so far as the Government is concerned.
I could not associate myself with that statement because my experience is that any representations I made were reasonably met as regards certain matters in connection with the islands, especially by the Department of the Gaeltacht and the Department of Lands. I had occasion to visit Deputy Childers as Minister for Lands and Deputy Moran as Minister for the Gaeltacht in connection with the mail boat and the Gaeltacht fishing boat. We got both of these and I think they cost about £14,000 each. We also got a grant of £1,500 from the Department of the Gaeltacht to be spread over a period of three years—1958, 1959 and 1960 for the improvement of the road on Cape Clear. That in itself should make a very good job of the island road.
Does the Deputy know when the money for that road and for those boats was sanctioned?
I do not know when they were sanctioned but I do know the two boats came to West Cork in the last two years and that we are very pleased to have them. They are doing very well, especially the fishing boat.
Acting-Chairman
There is nothing about boats in this motion. It concerns rates only.
On behalf of myself and my predecessor I must say that I find it greatly flattering.
We were asked to offer sensible suggestions and to approach the whole question of conditions in the island in a reasonable fashion and to offer constructive ideas.
Acting-Chairman
The Deputy will admit that the Minister for Finance is not the presiding Chairman. The Deputy should keep to the motion before the House.
I would not agree with the terms of the motion but I would agree with anything that would be for the benefit of the islands. What we want is to improve conditions on the islands and to create conditions under which the population will increase. I have offered these suggestions at the request of the Minister for Finance and I hope that when the time comes he will not hesitate to grant extra money for the benefit of the islands. Money talks and the lack of money on those islands is responsible for the depopulation of them. Vegetable growing and fruit growing would also be a great help.
Acting-Chairman
The Deputy must keep to the terms of the motion.
The valuation of the islands will be vastly increased if the plans which I am putting to the Minister to-night are implemented. I am fully behind any proposal which will help the development of the islands the people of which are the essence of Irish nationality. They are the old aristocracy of this country. They have travelled the seven seas of the world and are excellent sailors and a credit to their country, especially those from Cape Clear and Castletownberehaven. It would be a good thing if we could help them in any way and I think that we should be able to help them in many ways.
I do not think that a revision of valuations is the only remedy. The better one is to improve conditions on the islands, provide amenities and work for the islanders. If that is done, then you will have more contentment and a better living for the people on the islands.
This matter came before us in Cork County Council last year. I do not believe in people paying taxes and rates for something they do not receive. These people do not receive the benefits for which they are rated. In justice, they must either get all the amenities for which the ratepayers of Cork pay, or else they should not have to pay for amenities they do not receive. The only way to do that is to revise the valuations.
But that cannot be done without legislation.
Would it be possible to have the attendance of the Minister in the House?
The Deputy cannot compel the attendance of a Minister.
I appreciate that, but I wished to ask the Minister some questions before concluding.
The Deputy can ask the questions anyway.
The Minister may possibly be available?
The Minister is not available.
Listening to the Minister's statement, it was evident that he is not very knowledgeable so far as island conditions are concerned. He made that fact quite clear himself. I agree with portion of his statement that this is a matter that would require further consideration from him. That was a frank statement by the Minister. All other Deputies who spoke supported the motion, but I must express disappointment that my colleague from West Cork, like the Minister, seemed not to be too conversant with island conditions either.
The last speaker, Deputy Corry, put the whole thing in a nutshell when he stated, as a Deputy not directly interested in this motion, that if we do not provide amenities for people, we should not charge them for them. If we do not give services, we should not take money for them. Is that not a reasonable attitude? As I said in my opening statement, these valuations were assessed in 1852, 107 years ago. Conditions on the mainland have changed considerably since 1852. Conditions on the islands have changed also, but the changes are not of the same magnitude as those on the mainland. The Minister for Finance stated that one of the difficulties in accepting a motion of this kind would be the likelihood of similar motions appearing in respect of some of the remoter districts on the mainland. I think the Minister is unduly worried about that. No matter how remote you are on the mainland, you have a firm road under you to take you from one part to another if you need a priest or a doctor. But on the islands one is surrounded by the deep sea and cut away from the many amenities I enumerated on the previous occasion.
In replying I shall refer only to the statements made in the course of the debate. The Minister told us that educational facilities on the island were almost as good as those on the mainland. I am afraid the Minister is sadly mistaken. I would not charge the Minister with telling a deliberate untruth in this House—he is not a man to make deceptive statements— but he must not be conversant with the position. What do we find on the islands? We find that in a few of the smaller islands there are no educational facilities whatever and that the small number of children in these islands have great difficulty in getting educational facilities. When applications are made to the Department for help in procuring these facilities, the Department do not view them as favourably as they should. It is very difficult to get that kind of help from the Department. So much for national or primary education.
I know of no island where secondary school or vocational school facilities exist. That immediately brings to our mind that any pupil living on an island at the present time cannot attain to any of what I might describe as the higher paid posts in this country, because none of them, with possibly very few exceptions— those who have friends on the mainland—can avail of secondary education and without that, as every Deputy knows, it is impossible to attain to these higher posts. Therefore, we see that, looking at it from the educational aspect, these children, by virtue of being surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, are cut adrift from secondary education, except, as I said, the small number who may have good friends on the mainland who may provide accommodation for them.
It may be said that though an island holder has no secondary or vocational education facilities on the island he has the same right to send a son or daughter to a boarding school as people on the mainland do. The answer to that is obvious. People living on islands are not in a financial position to do that, and it would be completely impossible for them to save sufficient money from their slender and meagre incomes to send members of their families to boarding schools with the exception of a very, very small number.
The Minister referred to postal facilities on the islands and said that some few islands had a daily post. He said others had a postal service four days weekly and still others only one day weekly. I did not refer to that aspect of the position in my opening statement because I appreciate that it is utterly ridiculous to ask for daily postal deliveries for a small island. I have no complaints, as far as postal deliveries are concerned, from any island in West Cork but what I did try to bring about, in so far as the Department of Posts and Telegraphs is concerned, was that on the island adjacent to my own home, Long Island, where there are fifty residents, the Department, on both occasions I made the request, refused to install a telephone on that island.
Everyone knows that this is a grave, major disability because, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, if a person on Long Island gets sick and needs clerical or medical attention, people would have to row across a mile of the Atlantic and subsequently walk two miles to the nearest town, Schull, to get these facilities and, if it were a rough and windy night, the task could not be performed at all. I am sure Deputies will agree with me that, in so far as the Department of Posts and Telegraphs is concerned, the island holders have not proper facilities, and I am putting forward the position in Long Island in support of that fact.
The Minister also said that the Department of Agriculture schemes on the islands were somewhat similar or as good as those obtaining on the mainland. I say again that that statement is not a fact. Does everybody not know that until the removal of the subsidies for milk production quite recently, the State subsidised milk production in every part of the country, with the exception of the majority of the islands where there are no creamery facilities? Only two or three islands around the coast from Donegal to Cork have any creamery facilities and, as a result, small holders on them who were producing milk, were not a burden on the Exchequer inasmuch as that milk was turned into home-made butter and sold without any charge on the produced on the mainland, where creamery facilities were available, was a charge on the Exchequer.
Bearing out that statement, I understand that the State-sponsored body, the Dairy Disposals Board which, if I may say so, did very good work in remote areas, after consideration of the island position submitted a memorandum to the Government stating that in their opinion island holders were entitled to some facilities as far as milk production was concerned, and they recommended that butter produced on the islands be allocated a subsidy of 6d. per lb. They felt this would be the most economical way of dealing with milk and butter production on the islands, that it would be fair to the people on the islands, and that they were entitled to the subsidy. However, I regret to say that the recommendation of the Dairy Disposals Board was rejected but it is evident, once they made that recommendation, that the board were completely satisfied island holders were in a completely different position, as far as butter production was concerned, from those on the mainland.
I may say that the Minister for Finance has made possibly the most amazing statement ever heard in this House when he said that the value of land on many islands was as high as the average value of land in County Wexford. I happen to know County Wexford reasonably well. It is a good, rich, mixed farming county and I am sure that the value of land in it is reasonably high. Surely the Minister, in making that statement, knew it was not a fair statement to make? Surely it is a gross exaggeration? I do not, however, put it down as a deceitful statement, nor do I attribute the making of a deceitful statement to the Minister. I attribute it to the fact that the poor man—if I may use the term —has no knowledge of the value of land on the islands. I could give him some idea of the value of island land, at least on six or seven of them in my own immediate neighbourhood. It is impossible to sell land on the islands. People who migrated from the islands could not obtain any price for their land and had to close their doors and abandon the land.
In dealing with the land—I only mention this as incidental to a statement made by the Minister in relation to the value of land on islands and in County Wexford—it is no harm to remind the House that the Land Commission have refused to help in the relief of congestion on any of these islands over the past few years. They have closed down on relieving congestion and the information at our disposal is that they are not likely to resume activities in that regard.
There was one major point to which I referred and to which the Minister also referred; indeed it was because of this particular point that I was anxious to have the Minister in the House. When we had this discussion last week I said:—
I should like to make it clear that it has come to my notice that in other counties—Mayo, Clare and Galway have been mentioned— island holders who are resident on islands do not pay more than 50 per cent. of their rates.
If that is the position on islands in Mayo, Clare and Galway, irrespective of whether or not the holdings are economic, surely the Government should bring about some uniformity in the payment of local revenue by island holders everywhere? I can see no reason why there should be discrimination as between these islands and other islands. The Minister did not elaborate on the position in that regard. He more or less agreed that the position was as stated. Surely there is an obligation on him and his Government to deal with this problem and ensure equity for all? I am hopeful the Minister will address himself to this matter during the next few months and that we shall have information from him as to the position obtaining in islands as a whole and the steps he proposes to take to deal with it. My colleague from West Cork said that some of the island holders are not doing too badly. I have not the same knowledge as my colleague. I doubt, however, if any Deputy has had more dealings with island people than I have had. I live in very close proximity to a number of these islands. We were told about two boats which were made available to Cape Clear. Those boats were made available in the lifetime of the previous Government. When I say that, I am not casting any reflection on the activities of the present Government in that particular regard; the previous Government were meeting only part of their obligations when they provided these boats for the Irishspeaking islanders of Cape Clear.
I am disappointed with many of the statements made by the Minister but I do not think I should press this matter to a division. The only obligation resting on me, or on any Deputy similarly placed, is to bring to the notice of the Government as forcibly and vehemently as I can the disabilities encountered by people living on these islands. Those who have supported me in this debate have done that. The Minister has assured us that the matter requires further consideration. It is only right that the Minister should have time to give the matter that further consideration. I appreciate it is difficult for the Government and the Minister to make up their minds on such a question in a short time. I am prepared to allow the Minister a fair time and I believe that a fair time would represent three or four months. I hope, therefore, that by the end of the financial year the Minister will be able to give us further particulars as to the benefits he may have in mind for these island people. He himself mentioned some of their disabilities. He asked for time to consider the position. I am agreeable to giving him that time. I hope that, as a result of the examination which he and his Department will institute into this matter, when the House has occasion to deal with it again by way of question, or some other method, the Minister will be able three or four months hence to give us information that will be beneficial to the islanders concerned. I hope, too, that we shall have more facts then from the Minister about the disabilities under which these people labour, facts which are not in his possession at the moment.
I do not see that any useful purpose would be served by pressing this motion to a division now. I hope that in the not too distant future the Minister will have a policy and a programme outlined for these people. I hope that the policy will be uniform for all the islands off our coast.
In moving this motion I made it quite clear that any reductions afforded to these islanders should not be made at the expense of the other ratepayers in the county. They should not be a county charge. The rates remitted should be met by a grant-in-aid from the appropriate State department. I want to make that quite clear.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.