Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 11 Nov 1969

Vol. 242 No. 4

Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate: County Cavan Local Improvements Schemes.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): On Wednesday, 5th November, I had the following question on the Order Paper directed to the Minister for Local Government:

To ask the Minister for Local Government if he is aware that there is a large accumulation of schemes awaiting attention under the rural improvement schemes in County Cavan; and if he will sufficiently increase the grant for these schemes for the current year to enable the county council to clear the arrears during the coming financial year.

It is necessary to say that the local improvement scheme operated under the Local Government Roads and Drainage Act is a scheme under which rural people may have lanes or boreens serving a number of houses repaired with the assistance of a grant from the Department plus a local contribution and minor drainage works may also be carried out. It is a very worthwhile scheme if it is properly operated. Some hundreds of schemes involving repairs to lanes, each serving a number of houses entitled to attention under the scheme, cannot even be considered in my constituency because a backlog of applications which were handed over to the County Council by the Department on 1st April, 1968, and which have not yet been cleared. For that reason I put down the question. In his reply the Minister said:

The sum already allocated this year to Cavan County Council under the local improvements scheme represents that county's full proportionate share of the available funds, and it is not proposed to increase them.

It will be noted in his reply that the Minister, very fairly, did not deny that there was a large accumulation of schemes awaiting attention in my constituency, but he refused to increase the grant of £30,000. I consider this question sufficiently important to each of my constituents to warrant my bringing the Minister here at this late hour and doing my utmost to impress on him the hardship that is being endured by many lane dwellers in County Cavan in an attempt to persuade the Minister to increase the grant substantially over £30,000 so that these hardships may be relieved and the long list of applications be attended to.

I do not consider this is a political issue. I hope, whatever I have to say, will be said in a constructive way in an effort to convince the Minister that there is a genuine grievance involved here and one which deserves top priority. The Minister has said on a previous occasion that the total sum allocated to this scheme last year—and, presumably, this year—was £469,000, less than £½ a million, to cover the entire country. I would submit that that is a very insignificant sum when one considers the way that money can freely be found for other less deserving and less pressing purposes.

Let us look briefly at the recent history of this scheme. Up to the 1st April, 1968, it was operated by the Department of Finance and for a short time by the Department of Local Government. As from 1st April, 1968, the scheme was handed over to the various county councils under the Local Government (Roads and Drainage) Act. As far as Cavan County Council is concerned this scheme did not come to it with a clean slate, so to speak. Cavan County Council inherited with the scheme 112 projects which had not been attended to by the Department of Local Government or its predecessor, the Department of Finance. My information is that the cost of doing these 112 schemes amounts to approximately £70,000, or considerably more than the total grants allocated to Cavan County Council for the years 1968-69 and 1969-70. It is important to realise, and to point out, that this legacy of 112 applications did not accumulate in the Department of Local Government. Practically all these applications—if not all of them—were in the Department of Local Government or the Department of Finance much earlier than the 1st April, 1968, when the scheme was passed to Cavan County Council. In fact, they had been received by those Departments a considerable time before the 1st January, 1966, because as from 1st January, 1966, the Department of Local Government refused to issue any further forms as it was not in funds to do the work and it was candid enough not to hold out false hope to these people. The fact of the matter therefore is that people who filled up application forms to have their lanes repaired under this scheme long before the 1st January, 1966, have not had there lanes attended to yet.

What has been the position since 1st January, 1966? Requests for application forms to Cavan County Council have accumulated and the best information I can get is that the grand total of such applications with the county councils at the present time is 500. It is true that the county council, following the precedent set by the Department of Local Government, are not issuing application forms because they see no hope of doing the work in the immediate future. I know from the best information I can get that at the present rate it will take ten years to clear the 500 applications that are awaiting attention. The enormity of the problem will, therefore, be seen and appreciated.

I have been talking here about lanes only in relation to the scheme but let us not forget that this scheme is supposed to and is intended to deal with minor drainage problems as well as boreens or lanes. Of course, Cavan County Council cannot consider the question of drainage having regard to the backlog of lanes. I also wish to put on record that over the last two years Cavan County Council have not even been allowed spend £30,000 per year. The total amount spent by the council in the two years in round figures is probably £50,000. Admittedly £10,000 was not spent because of a dispute or a controversy which went on between the Minister and his Department on the one hand and the manager for County Cavan and his technical advisers on the other. It took some time to iron that out but I think I am not being unresponsible if I say the lane dwellers in County Cavan should not be held responsible and should not have to suffer for the teething troubles in this new scheme. At any rate, the result of the matter is that the lane dwellers in County Cavan are suffering intolerable hardship. Women and children have literally to wade through slush and mud to get to their homes. The cars which bring creamery cans to creameries refuse to traverse the lanes to collect the cans. The result is that the cans have to be wheeled or carried to the roads.

The Minister will appreciate that the many amenities which are now enjoyed in rural life have to be brought by motor vehicles but the owners of those vehicles will not come up those lanes. The net result of all this is that the people living in the lanes are being treated as second or third class citizens and I do not think that is good enough. To add to their frustration those people see what appears to be vast sums of money spent on arterial roads and main roads in their immediate vicinity. I am not against better arterial roads but I say that, when such large sums of money can be spent on arterial roads, much more than £500,000, which is the amount allocated for this scheme in the whole country, should be allocated.

I ask the Minister in all sincerity to say whether I am being unreasonable in appealing to him to use his influence to get this grant increased this year so that this backlog can be cleared up. I earnestly appeal to him not to treat this as a political stunt because I can assure him that the people in County Cavan who are concerned with it treat it as no such thing. They treat it as a very serious matter and if they have ten years to wait many of those elderly people will have passed on and will not be living when their turn comes.

I would ask the Minister to tell us exactly the amount of the grant that will be made available. If he approaches this as a Minister for Local Government concerned with truly local problems at their lowest level, surely he will see that this money should be increased and he will have no trouble in convincing his colleagues in the Cabinet, and especially the Minister for Finance, that this grant should be stepped up in order to make life for the people living in those lanes more bearable. I feel very strongly on this as I represent a rural constituency and I have been associated with rural Ireland all my life. I did not come in here to throw mud and I hope the Minister will accept that. I made my case for those people and I trust the Minister will accept that I have made a good case for them and that he will do something to alleviate the trouble I have spoken of.

Minister for Local Government (Mr. Boland)

This apparently is becoming an annual event by Deputy Fitzpatrick, or, perhaps, I should say an annual performance. It is almost a year ago to the day since he last raised this question here on the Adjournment. The difference, I think, between his contribution today and this time last year is that last year he spent practically the full 20 minutes giving reasons why in his opinion the £30,000 allocation to Cavan County Council for this purpose should not be spent. Probably as a result of that only half the amount of money was, in fact, spent last year. The allocation to Cavan County Council last year was, as it is this year, £30,000 and of that £14,995 was not spent. I cannot agree with Deputy Fitzpatrick that the alleviation for this purpose of £469,000 is an insignificant sum. It is part of the annual budget which has to be raised by taxation, and I think with all the conflicting demands and the very important demands there are on available resources this is quite a substantial amount to be allocated in one year for this purpose.

Needless to say I am well aware of the importance of those schemes and the contribution they make towards providing better living conditions for the people and I will lose no opportunity to have this amount increased whenever it shall be possible. I fully appreciate the importance of the work that is done and the necessity to maximise the amount made available for the purpose. I think, however, it is quite clear from the figures that in the allocation of this amount of money Cavan County Council have been treated quite well. With £30,000 they are the sixth highest allocation, being exceeded only by Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry and Leitrim. As Deputy Fitzpatrick pointed out, the present local improvements scheme is a new scheme which has followed on from the previous schemes which were administered by the Special Employment Schemes Office—the minor employment, bog development and rural improvements schemes.

Being a new scheme, we had to devise some manner of allocating moneys to the different county councils because it was being dealt with for the first time by local authorities. I think the method decided on was a fair one. We based it on the average amount spent on those other schemes during the previous five years. On that basis, Cavan County Council came out quite well, the figures for the previous five years for Cavan being: 1963-64, £17,206; 1964-65, £23,192; 1965-66, £28,023; 1966-67, £19,430 and 1967-68, £30,024, an average annual allocation of £23,575.

That was an average of 6.06 per cent of the total allocation for these schemes during the five years. This year we have allocated to County Cavan, despite the fact that only half of the amount allocated was spent last year, £30,000 which is 6.39 per cent of the total allocation on that scheme. I think that was a fair way to allocate the money. After this year we shall have had two years experience of the new scheme and it is the intention to review its operation. There may, as a result, be adjustments in the percentage allocation in future years.

As I have said, I am quite satisfied that the method we adopted for allocating the money was the fairest that could be devised in the circumstances. Deputy Fitzpatrick said that money can be freely found for less meritorious projects but of course he did not specify what the less meritorious projects were which, he said, could be scrapped.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): Luxury office blocks in Dublin.

Mr. Boland

The Deputy cannot point to one luxury office block in Dublin built by the Government.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): Built for the Government and occupied by the Government.

Mr. Boland

This is public money we are referring to Deputy Fitzpatrick refrains from giving examples of the less meritorious schemes. I think I should congratulate the people of Cavan on the manner in which they have responded during the past few years to the urging——

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): I thought the Minister was about to say that they put me at the head of the poll.

Mr. Boland

——to take advantage of this scheme because a few years ago County Cavan was not taking advantage of it. As the Deputy well knows, a lot of promotional work has been done in Cavan with the result that during the past few years the amount of work done under these schemes, which preceded the local improvement schemes, has been increasing and the result is that now that the new scheme has been instituted, Cavan County Council, on the basis of their performances during the preceding five years, were entitled to this increased allocation. It clearly indicates that a major effort was made by bodies whom Deputy Fitzpatrick knows to promote this scheme in the county.

It is a good thing to see that people are now rushing to take advantage of the scheme. I hope the result this year in County Cavan will not be the same as last year when, possibly partly due to Deputy Fitzpatrick's exposition of the reasons why schemes should not be carried out at all in County Cavan, only half of the money was spent. On 29th October last year Deputy Fitzpatrick spent 20 minutes explaining why County Cavan should not operate the scheme at all.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): Because they had not started it.

Mr. Boland

Consequently, only half of the £30,000 was spent. We should all hope that this year, unlike last year, the full £30,000 allocated will be spent. It will enable schemes to the total value of £39,088 to be carried out in Cavan this year and this will confer corresponding benefits on a number of people living in these lanes at present. If this happens this year I have no doubt that in future years the position will be similar and that we will have a general improvement in conditions for these people in County Cavan. I ask Deputy Fitzpatrick to co-operate with those who have been promoting the use of this scheme in Cavan in the future and I urge him to make every effort to see that this year the full allocation of £30,000, the sixth highest in the country, will be spent.

The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 12th November, 1969.