This is the operative section. It operates largely to abolish the obligation of the local authorities to apply, ad hoc, for power to borrow for specific purposes. It substitutes for the general power given in the 1960 Act. It leaves a queer overall power in the Minister for Local Government which, I often wonder, the Oireachtas ever intended should remain. It is not appropriate on the occasion of a Bill of this character, which consolidates generally the powers of local authorities to borrow, to raise this issue.
Since 1898, the local authorities have gradually become more and more under the control of the executive, as represented by the Department of Local Government, as a result of a development of which I do not believe the Oireachtas was ever fully conscious. The original purpose of the 1898 Act was to distribute the functions of Government, to decentralise them and set up a whole lot of local authorities which would act not only as administrative authorities operated through people in close contact with those whom they were charged to serve, but also as a kind of training ground for the public life of the country, such as operated in Britain, the United States and other countries where people graduated to the public life of the country through service in the local authorities.
The design was that these local authorities would be given the widest possible discretion to use funds which they were charged with the responsibility of raising through local rates but as the system of local government developed these funds were supplemented by grants from the executive and the local authorities became largely administrators of schemes entirely financed out of State funds.
Side by side with these developments there grew up a practice in the Department of Local Government of saying that wherever a local authority was borrowing money for the operation of any of its various functions, inasmuch as the Minister's authority was required, every detail of the scheme for which money was being borrowed must have the prior approval of the Minister. We have now reached the stage where practically every activity of a local authority, whether it be the provision of houses, or drainage or roads, is controlled by the Department and is subject to this general regulation by the Custom House. This is tending to make the elected representatives on the local authorities more and more frustrated and convinced that they have very little real function left and that they are no more than rubber stamps of the central executive.
Before we irrevocably consolidate that position, I would like to know the views of the House on this particular matter. The conviction is growing on me that the powers of the local authorities should be substantially restored to them and that this control of their powers by the Minister should be curtailed. It is my growing conviction that the local authorities should be given a general approbation to borrow money, if the purpose of that borrowing is deemed to be good, and then let the local authorities and their elected representatives answer to the electorate for the proper operation of the schemes for which they borrow the money. In the absence of this, the tendency will grow for local representatives to say: "We really have no power in this matter at all. It is the Minister for Local Government who controls the whole matter. If there is any delay it is his fault. If housing is not going forward, it is because the Department of Local Government is interfering with our plans." I think there is a good deal of truth in that alibi when it is put forward by members of local authorities and I think it is time to restore autonomy to these local authorities.
Mistakes may sometimes be made as some sums of the money which have been borrowed under the Minister's general authority may be misspent, but, in the long run, the general work of the local authorities will be better carried out with a greater sense of responsibility if the Minister, while sanctioning loans for the various services, leaves it to the local authorities to carry that work out well or ill. If that kind of autonomy were restored to the local authority, more people would be prepared to offer themselves for election to local authorities, in the belief that membership would create a greater measure of responsibility and potential for good rather than at present living under the constant and ubiquitous control of what is commonly known as the Custom House.