Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 11 Jul 1968

Vol. 236 No. 6

Adjournment Debate. - Cork Local Improvement Schemes.

Mr. Corry

First of all, I must sympathise with the House in the Whips they have. Neither the Fine Gael Chief Whip nor the Labour Chief Whip knows the rules of this House.

This afternoon I asked the Minister for Local Government a question in regard to local improvements scheme grants given to Cork County Council. For the past 40 years local improvements scheme grants were given by the State. This year the county council were invited to take them over. We were quite prepared to do so. What we were not prepared to do was to take over the neglect by the Department of Local Government represented by the three years' backlog. Schemes were sent down to us with a £25,000 grant to do them. Mark you, I have a far higher opinion of our county engineers than I have of the geniuses of engineers in the Department of Local Government. When we handed the schemes over to our county engineers, we found that a backlog of 124 schemes which had been lodged with the Department of Local Government over a period of years was sent down to us to be done, in addition to the proposals from our local people.

My question asked the Minister whether he was prepared to give us the amount of money necessary to cover the backlog due to the neglect on the part of his Department. That is what this matter rests on. I am in a responsible position as chairman of the largest county council in this country. I fully realise the honour conferred on me by my colleagues in the county council. A couple of years ago I had to prove how much I prized the honour that had been conferred on me in that respect and I did prove it.

It is a straight question. The only thing that I can advise my county council to do if the Minister refuses to do as I have asked is to return the schemes to the Department and let them carry them out. What I am not prepared to do is to have the representatives of the ratepayers in Cork County blamed and held responsible by the ratepayers whom they represent for not having the proposals carried out. If I cannot get some reasonable agreement here with the Minister this evening, my advice to Cork County Council will be to return immediately to the Department of Local Government the backlog that exists and let the Department do the work. I am not going to have the blame for the failure to carry out these schemes transferred from civil servants in the Department of Local Government to my engineers and my comrades in Cork County Council.

Mr. Creed

Hear, hear.

Mr. Corry

That is the course that I intend recommending to my council. We were asked, and I agreed, that, in the interests of economy for all the parties concerned, this work could have been done far more reasonably and more cheaply by Cork County Council than through the Department of Local Government. I know my engineering team in Cork. I have been associated with them for the past 44 years. I have known each generation of them. I know their value; I know their worth. It is grossly unfair and unjust for any Department of State to ask a local authority to take over proposals such as these and then to send them two or three years' arrears of work and send them only the money to cover their present requirements, ignoring completely the backlog that exists. That is the situation.

I have asked the Minister here today to meet this backlog. I do not think I am asking too much. When I see the money that is being squandered in millions by that very Department for the improvement of roads for tourists, surely something can be allocated to carry out this work to which I have referred?

The policy in Cork is that in the case of ratepayers living half a mile up a boreen the roads will be brought up to standard under the local improvements scheme and will then be taken over by the county council and maintained by them. That policy has been operated for the past three years and I want a continuation of that policy but I do not want to have to tell the farmers in my area who have been paying rates all their lifetime and who are not fly-by-night tourists, that their roads cannot be brought up to standard or that for three years they cannot get any of the amenities of life to which they are entitled. That is what the present position means. That is my reason for raising this matter today and on the Adjournment. I realise my position and the responsibility I have as chairman of the largest county council. While I am in that position, I do not care what Party or what Government are here, I will do my duty by the ratepayers of the county.

Minister for Local Government (Mr. Boland)

The question the Deputy asked was answered today and I have nothing further to add.

The Dáil adjourned at 6.15 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 23rd October, 1968.