(Cavan): Fire-fighting has been mentioned here. A source of terrible irritation to the voluntary fire workers is the deduction of income tax from their allowances. I know this is a problem but in many cases income tax is deducted even though the people concerned could not possibly be liable for its payment. Such people have to go to the inspector of taxes for a refund. Perhaps some way could be found of taking a broad view of income tax in such cases and of not deducting it where income tax is obviously not payable. The members of the brigades themselves would go further and suggest that they should not be liable for income tax at all.
Fire-fighting is obviously a dangerous occupation. I met a disabled fireman recently who told me he had suffered serious injuries in the course of his full-time employment. The only compensation he was entitled to was workmen's compensation. He was not entitled to extra compensation. There is no scheme to provide for compensating such men for injury received in the course of their very dangerous occupation. We hear of danger-money and dirt-money but there certainly should be special compensation for injured firemen.
I feel there is much frustration among our people in relation to swimming pools. They are given great hopes of having swimming pools, but these hopes fail to materialise. At the annual conference of the Association of Municipal Authorities the Minister's predecessor devoted his entire speech to swimming pools. He created the impression that local authorities would not be doing their duty if they did not avail of the generous grants available for swimming pools. Some of the members felt ashamed that they had not been doing enough. Only ten schemes have actually got under way over many years. Deputy Tully was correct in saying that these schemes must be maintained. The maintenance of a swimming pool in a town is a proper charge on local finance. Local authorities are so crippled with charges which should not concern them and are not proper local authority charges, such as health, housing and other items which have been piled on to them from time to time, that they are not prepared to add further charges which can be avoided on to small urban authorities. I would refer to these as optional charges. This scheme would be difficult to operate even if there were grants available. The Minister has been candid enough from time to time to say that he wishes to get his priorities right and that grants like these will have to be put on the long finger. The Minister's predecessor encouraged all and sundry to avail of grants for swimming pools.
Anybody with a social conscience must be in favour of rehabilitating itinerants, getting them away from their present mode of life and getting them to form part of the normal community but this is not a simple problem or one that can be solved by speeches from the Custom House or elsewhere. It is a national problem and in my opinion these people must be rehabilitated or trained to a great extent before they are put into houses. Every member of a county council wants the itinerants settled but settled under present conditions away from him and on the doorstep of some other county councillor. Perhaps it is the fault of the local authorities concerned but the county managers and their advisers should consult closely and fully with county council elected representatives before planning itinerant settlements. They do not do that in all cases. Again it may be the fault of the county councils concerned but if so there are more of the Minister's party on the county council I have in mind than of any other party.
I knew of a case where an itinerant settlement was planned and the plan was circulated to county council members on the manager's orders and that was the first they heard of it. Then it was planned so that one settlement accommodating either 14, or six itinerant families, would be right opposite, and within yards of a residential area where people of modest incomes had built their own houses costing from £2,000 to £4,000. The result was that the proposal did not last two minutes at the meeting of the county council; it was scrapped. Itinerant settlement can only succeed if you get both the local people and the itinerants themselves satisfied. That is difficult. I suggest that itinerant officers should be appointed, something like children's officers, who would devote themselves to working for these people. As Deputy Tully suggested, perhaps they could get them jobs some time before they are settled. There, also, local authorities could play a part. In most parts of rural Ireland the largest employers in any county are the local authority. Who are better equipped to provide suitable jobs for itinerants than the local authority? Do they do it? Has the Minister encouraged them to do it? I have never heard of local authorities employing these people before they have been housed. They could be employed on various schemes suitable for them. Let the local authorities give the example.
Although it is not related to what I am discussing it occurs to me that physically-handicapped people should to some extent be absorbed in local authority employment. Girls who have been trained as switchboard operators or trained to a limited degree in schools in Sligo, or in other physical handicap institutions, and who cannot, perhaps, stand up to competition should find some employment in local authorities.
However, I believe officers should be appointed to talk to, train and advise itinerants and that local authorities should show good example by employing itinerants, one or two on this scheme or that scheme, and tolerating them until they come round to a normal way of life. It is a bad thing to put ten or 12 or 14 families together. While that is being done it will be more difficult to get them around to our way of thinking. I know they prefer to live together in large encampments because they like their present way of life but that makes it more difficult to get them away from their present habits.
I am glad to see that the Minister issued a circular in October, 1967, urging greater flexibility in planning. I would advise the Minister to continue with that attitude and to encourage local authorities to do so. While he is in the position, which I do not think he should occupy, of being the sole tribunal on appeals, he can get this flexibility into planning by "knocking" local authorities who have rigid, one-track minds about planning. For example, some authorities seem to think that under the new roads scheme announced — I do not know exactly what it is called — the grade 1 road is the most important road. That road runs, we shall say, from Dublin to Enniskillen or the Fermanagh border and the general opinion is that no new building is to be tolerated on that road at any point. I think that is ridiculous and that outside each town — some towns will expand; I suppose the smaller ones will fold up — there should be an area which would be regarded as a built-up area where building should be permitted especially in the case of towns where building sites are practically unobtainable and can only be procured at fancy prices and where the cost of development is sometimes prohibitive due to the nature of the ground around these towns. That is one of the factors adding to the cost of housing and development.
I believe building should be permitted within a reasonable distance of each town. The speed limit should be extended, if necessary, if that is the reason for prohibiting building. I do not know whether it is because of a misinterpretation of circulars from the Department or not, but certain authorities have taken a very rigid line in this matter. In one case there had to be a stand-up fight to get a factory built on the outskirts of a town. I am all in favour of flexibility. The circular regarding prohibition of building on these arterial roads needs explanation and clarification. It is all the more difficult to understand when it is being interpreted one way in one county and another way in another.
As the Minister knows, I am totally against the appeal system of planning. The people have no faith in it. I think the Minister himself has accepted that it is unworkable. He introduced a Bill several months ago but it has not yet come before the House for Second Reading. The sooner it is brought before us the better. I shall not go over ground that has been covered, but I feel that the present appeal system is rotten. It is open to abuse. Instead of justice being done and being seen to be done, the contrary is the case. There should not be these unreasonable delays. I know of one case — perhaps it is the exception but I do not think it is — where there was a delay of about 12 months between the end of the oral hearing and the decision. That is absolutely unreasonable.
The derelict sites scheme is working in a reasonable way and fairly good work is being done. Perhaps the amenity grants scheme applies only to seaside or tourist resorts, but I think it must have gone into cold storage, too.
The breathalyser test under the Road Traffic Act presents a difficult problem because it simply is not working. It has been introduced but cannot work because there is a row going on between the medical profession and the Department of Justice. That is an unbecoming situation. It is unbecoming that a law should be put on the Statute Book, that the Minister should make an order bringing it into operation but that the machinery to operate it is still not there. If a law is there, it should be operated.
Some time ago I put down a question to the Minister about tractor driving licences. I requested that the driving age for light tractors should be reduced from 18 to 17 years. I pointed out to the Minister that a boy of 17 could get a driver's licence for a light motor bicycle, which could travel up to 50 miles an hour, and drive it all over the country but he is not permitted to take his father's tractor from one field to another. This is causing considerable trouble; it is something on which the Minister has received representations from many quarters. I have a driver's licence here from England. In England boys of 17 are permitted to drive light tractors. If that is so in a highly industrialised country like England, where the roads are heavily trafficked, I certainly feel that the concession should be granted here. The Minister told me he had looked into it and did not intend to change it. This English licence which I have been given also applies to Northern Ireland. Across the Border in Fermanagh a boy of 17 can drive his father's tractor, but on this side of the Border he cannot. It is very necessary to keep a percentage of young fellows on the land. If they are not acclimatised to agriculture and agricultural activity when they are young it will be impossible to keep them on the land. A young fellow would be driving a tractor at 13 or 14 if he could, but that would be going a bit too far. I strongly appeal to the Minister, and I am doing so in a responsible way, to see to it that this matter is reconsidered very carefully. It would be in the interest of agriculture in general for boys of 17 to be allowed a licence. It would have the effect of getting boys, when they are young, accustomed to farming activities. Boys are permitted to drive motor bicycles on bad roads and no reasonable case can be made for the present regulation.
The Minister availed of this Estimate to announce that he was recruiting more driver testers. There were something like 16,000 people awaiting the test about 12 months ago. This is outrageous. It is another example, like the breathalyser, of introducing a scheme and not having the machinery to work it. This scheme has been in operation for several years and there should not be a delay of a few months in giving a man a test.
I am glad to see that some regulations are being made about fluorescent paint on the back of large lorries because they are an absolute death trap.
I dealt with the local improvements scheme in adjournment debates in 1968 and 1969. I made no apology for dealing with it on either of those occasions, nor do I make any apology for spending a few minutes on the subject now. My primary objective in this House is to represent my constituents and this matter of the wretched lanes where many people in County Cavan reside is the principal problem I have come up against in the course of my constituency work in the last few years. County Cavan is a county of lanes — the records will show that there is a greater lane mileage there than in practically any other county in the country. A number of families — ranging from two to perhaps 20 maximum — reside on these lanes and it is impossible for the people on them out of their own resources to repair them or to bring them up to an acceptable standard. The county council will not take them in charge unless they are brought up to an acceptable standard. The only method by which they could be improved was by means of a State grant under the former rural improvements scheme or the present local improvements scheme, with the aid of a local contribution.
This problem is more acute now than ever before. There is much more traffic on those lanes; people have more tractors, there are travelling shops, milk is brought to the creamery by means of tractors, the veterinary and creamery services mean the attendance of veterinary surgeons and representatives of the cattle breeding societies at these houses. The result is that the lanes have become absolutely impassable. The people residing there have become more sophisticated and require better standards than those obtaining in the last 50 years. As the Minister knows, and it is necessary to put this on record again, the rural improvements scheme was operated by the Department of Finance up to 1966 and, at the time of the credit squeeze at that time, it ceased to function and was handed over to the Department of Local Government in 1967. However, during the 12 months when it was operated by the Department of Local Government nothing was done in my constituency. I shall read a letter I received from the Cavan County Council on the 15th November, 1967, in regard to the local improvements scheme:
I am to acknowledge the receipt of your representations on behalf of (named person) in connection with the carrying out of improvements to (named) lane under the above scheme and to state that this scheme does not come into operation until the 1st April, 1968. A considerable number of applications which were not dealt with by the Department of Local Government's Special Employment Schemes Branch have been referred to this office for priority under the council's schemes. Consequently it is not possible at this stage to state when this application can be considered. An official application form will be forwarded to you in due course.
(Signed) County Secretary.
I have sent in scores of applications and representations and I received a letter from the county engineer over two years later, dated 30th January, 1970, which reads as follows:
Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick,
I acknowledge with thanks your letter of the 28th January, 1970, in which you made representations on behalf of (named person) and a number of others residing on (named) lane. I regret to inform you that this lane was not included among the schemes forwarded to Cavan County Council by the Rural Improvements Scheme office in Dublin. We are, however, treating your letter as a request to have the lane included in our requests for official application forms which will be sent out to you in due course. However, as there are a considerable number of requests on the list it is unlikely that any progress will be made with the above application within the next few years.
(Signed) County Engineer.
Am I unreasonable in hammering at this at every opportunity I get? The Minister does not appreciate the enormity of the problem. It is certainly very serious in my county, as any of the Minister's supporters in County Cavan will tell him. Yet the Minister, in his introductory speech, dealt with the matter in ten lines. He was in one of his more sarcastic and less co-operative moods when I last raised this on the Adjournment and he gave the impression then that Cavan County Council was out on a limb, that it was the only council that did not avail of the full grant in 1968-69. A sum of £30,000 was to be sent down but it was only possible for the county council to avail of £20,000 because there was a row going on between the Minister's Department and the executives in County Cavan about financing the work and the scheme did not get under way.
Being the good politician he is, the Minister during the Adjournment debate convinced me that Cavan was out on a limb. I was considerably relieved when I read the Minister's speech which stated:
The Local Improvements Scheme was introduced on 1st April, 1968. Progress during 1968-69, the first year of operation of the scheme, was disappointingly slow and most counties did not use their full allocation.
They did not get the co-operation from the Department who said this was a new scheme. It was not a new scheme, it was a scheme that had been in operation for some 20 or 25 years. I know that the Local Authorities (Works) Act was in operation at one time but the Minister's party dropped that. In 1968-69, most county councils were not able to avail of that grant and the Minister and his Department took back any moneys that were not expended on the 1st April, 1969, and made some other use of them. That was a disgrace.