Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 9 Mar 1978

Vol. 304 No. 8

Vote 29: Environment (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That a sum not exceeding £201,684,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on 31st day of December, 1978, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for the Environment, including grants to Local Authorities, grants and other expenses in connection with housing, and miscellaneous schemes and grants including a grant-in-aid.

—(Minister for the Environment.)

Mr. Quinn

Before we adjourned for Questions, I was talking about how I saw the Department being really concerned with roads, builders and messy things rather than with the environment. Specifically, in the area of housing, I was attempting to indicate, and there are constraints on my time as well as on my ability which prevent me doing this comprehensively, that where the Department and the Minister have a choice between aiding the builder, in most cases the speculative builder, or attempting to enable people to house themselves they appear by their action to have come down in favour of the builder. I recognise the Minister and his party were under quite extraordinarily heavy pressure before the election and during the election but I do not hold the view that the construction industry votes in its entirety in one particular way or is entirely in the pocket of one particular party. However, I know considerable pressure was put on the Minister's party by certain sections of the construction industry. I would ask him, however, to recognise that he is not the Minister responsible for the construction industry or the provision of employment in that context. He is not the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy. He is the Minister for the Environment and he is responsible for enabling people to house themselves before he has any semblance of responsibility for the building industry. If he can manage both together he has my full blessing but I disagree fundamentally with the way in which he and the Government are processing their objectives and I disagree fundamentally with the way in which they are allocating resources because the resources will obviously not help people to house themselves but will rather help the building industry. There is nothing wrong in helping the building industry. I have no objection to my own industry being aided and supported but the whole position needs to be re-evaluated.

I would like the Minister to turn some of his attention to the impact of the £1,000 grant on the housing market. I was attempting earlier to turn the Minister's attention away from exclusive concern in the provision of 25,000, 27,000 or 28,000 new dwellings a year to the entire housing stock. That may sound unfair because he did improve the house improvement grants and I recognise that, but these grants are small beer in terms of the task involved in a great deal of the housing stock. The Minister indicated there are still 75,000 units—three years' production—without piped water at the moment.

I would ask the Minister to reevaluate the line of policy adopted to date in two areas. The first is in the provision of capital sums for people wishing to buy houses for the first time. Nakedly and unashamedly that was the great stroke that won them the election. I have no argument about that. All is fair in love and war but, without any hint of sour grapes, I do not think it is having the positive impact it should have for first time purchasers, the impact many people last June believed it would have, many of them committed members of the Fianna Fáil Party. In my limited experience and judgment based on the access I have to information, it seems to me to have done two things. It has undoubtedly helped to increase the cost of housing and I would be interested to see how the Minister relates the working of the CRV with the application of the grants system. In increasing the cost of housing it has increased the mortgage repayments to which house purchasers are committed. Obviously many people have benefited partially from the £1,000 grant, people who were ineligible to get any kind of grant prior to the last election, but those who were not eligible got a grant which is now absorbed in the increased cost of the house and they have to meet this through a higher level of mortgage repayments running into £120 or £150 a month.

Are we not here locking people into a system where the financial commitments are really quite heavy? Answering questions the Minister for Economic Planning and Development told us great miracles are to come if we continue to hold faith. Inflation will come down. Prosperity will rise over the landscape in a fashion previously unknown in any earlier generation. We have not changed the economic engine that will pull us over this landscape and while not wishing to dampen enthusiasm, there must be some doubt. There is no doubt about the concern economic commentators now have about the lag in world trade, about the lag in the world economy, about the consequences of either protectionism, as instanced by Ken O'Brien in yesterday's Irish Times, or about an increase in energy costs. We know that from 1973 energy costs had a dramatic impact upon interest rates.

Coming back to my point about people, because of the cost of housing, having to get a higher loan at a comparatively low rate of interest now of 9 per cent, there is a real possibility—I hope it will not occur—that interest rates could begin to go up again. We know in the building industry interest rates are variable vis-à-vis market conditions. I do not believe that God is necessarily on the side of the Arabs. I sometimes think the Arabs are on the side of Fianna Fáil. They manage to pull out the boats and the armies every time Fianna Fáil go out of office but it is quite possible Fianna Fáil could be in office over the next few years and the Arabs might abandon their previous allegience and there could be constraints in that area.

Mr. Barrett

It is coming down now.

Mr. Quinn

I know. I will return to that later. Maybe the Arabs are on the Minister's side. I just do not know. All I am simply saying is that the logic of increasing the grant to £1,000 suggests that, if things move, that should be indexed and the grant should go to £1,500. That, in turn, would suggest that house prices will rise and so will loan repayments. If the Government and the Minister are committed sincerely—I think they are —to the objective of everybody owning his own house I would suggest there is a greater need for helping people with mortgage repayments than there is in helping them to purchase through the medium of a grant. I would suggest that there is in the low rise mortgage scheme a model which could be utilised to enable people to get over the first ten years of mortgage repayments because it seems to me that is where the real cost threshold actually arises and not necessarily in the grant factor.

I have to agree with what Deputy Fitzpatrick was saying with regard to the question of forcing wives out to work after they had reached the stage when many of them would be prepared to stay at home because of the size of their family or because they had started a family. We have placed millstones around the necks of a number of people because of the way house prices continue to rise. That was my first point on housing.

My second point which I was on the point of raising before Question Time dealt with costing. I thought we would have got an answer from the Minister for Economic Planning and Development. Unfortunately we got official gobble-de-gook. He did not attempt even minutely to answer a fairly straightforward and logical question. I would like to put on the record some of the components that can be quite easily measured in comparing costs of inner city housing, or housing which has an exclusive connotation that it is purely a Dublin concern. You could have inner city housing in Cork, Tullamore, Waterford, Galway and many other parts of the country. For purposes of clarification I would use the term "housing within existing built-up areas" rather than "housing in new suburban estates". If you provide houses in built-up areas, as distinct from new suburbs in addition to the average cost of the house—the Minister was talking in terms of £12,000—you have also to provide a parish church. The Dublin Archdiocese reckons that at least £120,000 is required for a standard, very utilitarian, parish church with none of the liturgical embellishments seen in the past. On a unit size of population which is taken as 1,200 families which is the planning module used, that works out at approximately £1,000 per family. The same planning unit is the base on which the primary school system rests, the local shopping centre and so on. It is not, surely, beyond the bounds of the ability of the Department of Economic Planning and Development, the two full-time brains that are permanently on the payroll and the consultant brains they have on hire, to calculate the cost, so that the nonsense argument built into the White Paper on National Development 1977-80 could be refuted.

I would like to pay the Minister the compliment that he was not responsible for that section. I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt because I do not think the people who have been operating from the Custom House and who are aware of the facts would make the kind of arguments put forward in the White Paper. Until I have reason to believe otherwise, I will accept that there were other hands in the Government responsible for that nonsense. I also suggest that that nonsense reflects somebody who has very little experience of the reality of politics and of people wishing to be housed.

A famous Welsh economist, Professor Kaim-Caudle, spent many years here with the ESRI. He used very apparently persuasive arguments about investment and finance in housing. He attempted to tell us that we put too much money into housing. It was a very simplistic and academic argument and was light years away from the kind of misery that is to be seen daily in the housing queues not just of Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council but throughout the country. That is visible misery. What about the other misery—the misery of people who cannot meet their mortgage repayments, the misery of the people who have to pay mortgages on housing that costs too much? I would ask the Minister to reconsider his priorities and assert his role as the Minister for housing rather than the Minister for builders and to come down strongly in favour of people who want houses.

I would like to use this opportunity to make this submission. Considerable consideration should be made in the revision of building by-law regulations for provision for the disabled in our community. By disabled I do not mean people who have the misfortune to be blind or mentally or physically handicapped. To my knowledge there are studies which are still tentative but which suggest that if you calculate it in gross terms up to 1,000 people a year die because of accidents or mismanagement in the home. Some of those figures are based on elderly people falling in their homes because of the structure, design or plan of the staircase. Subsequently these people may have contracted pneumonia and may have had to go to hospital, may have died and may have been certified as having died from natural causes. The same study suggests that at any one stage in each of our lives up to 20 per cent of the population can be physically disabled, whether from a broken arm from a football match, a temporary accident, natural factors of old age like arthritis and so on. The house can be quite dangerous in these areas.

I suggest the Minister as Minister for the Environment might have regard for the inter-connection between these factors and consider these matters. Once these building regulations are concluded it will be very difficult to amend them. This is the kind of opportunity the Minister uniquely has because he is the current office holder. He would be doing a great service for many people if he analysed accidents and changed the structure and design of stairs, electrical installations and so on.

I was very glad to hear the Minister's remarks about the travelling people. He is to be congratulated for his positive stand. I do not mean this in a snide way, but I hope that message is conveyed vigorously and strongly to all members of his party and to public representatives. I am not saying that his party, my party or Deputy Kelly's party have an exclusively good or bad image on this issue but we do have a responsibility of leadership. I know the pressures about settlement camps can be very strong and it is very tempting for local politicians to become involved. The Minister has given a lead here and as far as the Labour Party are concerned I fully endorse and support it. I hope that lead will be followed by all political party representatives who sit on local councils. If we do not have that lead we will not be able to settle the two-thirds of the 800-odd travelling people who according to the recent survey wish to be resettled.

I am very concerned about the future of local authority housing under the current Fianna Fáil Government. This is not to say I doubt their intentions or the Minister's intentions but there are other forces and factors in the Government besides the Minister. The attitude displayed in the White Paper, which is the only one we have to go on in terms of Government policy until such time as other documents come forward, is very alarming. Statements and assumptions are made without knowing what the cost of the provision of housing is within built-up and new suburban areas. On the foundation of no information, conclusions seem to be drawn in an academic ivory tower far removed from the real misery which lack of housing can provide.

Let me talk for a moment about that misery. We have had such a long history of combating bad housing that we seem to think we can relax now that we are down to the stage where only one- and two-children families are on the waiting lists in the large urban areas. Does the author of that paper understand the extent of the misery a young couple living in a two-or three-bedroomed corporation dwelling as sub-tenants with perhaps one or two children have to undergo living in such crowded accommodation?

Does the author of that paper understand the extraordinary damage that is done to the very base and foundation of a relationship which should in a socially just environment have the right to flower and develop like anybody else's relationship? The greatest anguish is caused to young couples. The family of three or four children on the waiting list have, virtually by definition, found themselves some form of independent accommodation. It may be extremely substandard and without basic facilities like an indoor toilet or bathroom, but it will be their own. At night they can close the door of their own place and can have their own private conversations. This is denied to a subtenant in an over-crowded dwelling who could be using the same bedroom as a brother or sister. To suggest that we have some cause for relaxation or easing of the effort because we are down on the waiting list to families with two children is to give an indication that the authors of the paper are a long way removed from the cold face of human misery in this country. I would urge the Minister to disregard that kind of thinking. I put forward a case which can be readily substantiated by any local authority. He does not have to take this from me; he can ask his colleague from Dublin South-East who knows as well as I do the pressure for housing in the built-up areas.

I will not describe the abolition of rates as a stroke because it was coming for a long time. It was a very popular measure; the giving of free beer would be a very popular measure. In some cases it was a very just measure but in macro-economic terms I wonder on whose side did it come down in favour. This is the question which runs through my mind every time I look at Fianna Fáil in Government. Given the choice, on whose side do they really come down?

Mr. L. Lawlor

On the people's side.

Mr. Quinn

But which people? Perhaps Deputy Lawlor belongs to the category of those who benefit from the abolition of the wealth tax.

Mr. L. Lawlor

No.

Mr. Quinn

I would not be in a position to say that or to measure it. I would suggest that the abolition of rates was, in the short term, a popular measure and in the mid-term highly redistributive in a negative sense in that the people who hold wealth and property benefit far more proportionately than the people who do not. Various studies done when the Minister's party was previously in Government by various economic and social institutes have all shown that there is a strong correlation between rateable valuation and household income. The Minister knows this, as does everyone else in the House. Previous Governments lost the opportunity to reform the way in which the rates were paid. There was nothing worse than getting two bills, one before starting the summer holidays and the other before going out to buy Christmas presents. They were murderous. They came in a peremptory fashion with the shotgun barrel visible at the end of the page. This is the reason they were abolished. There were many people paying rates who felt that it was the greatest burden on earth but they were paying far more for the rental of their colour television or, in some cases, for their electricity supply and they did not reckon that the State sector was driving them to distraction by unfairly putting the burden for energy provision on their shoulders.

The rates have all but gone. I recognise that the Minister has many problems, administrative as distinct from political or ideological, in funding local authorities. It is in the interests of democracy that we get an effective system of local democracy and local government. My party do not believe that such a system can work if there is any ambiguity about how it is financed. The Minister said that an enormous sum, £530 million, was distributed by local authorities and that money comes from central Government. The present system, as a result of the abolition of rates, is highly unacceptable. The Minister's colleague in Government has come up with the clever formula that increasing rateable valuations in growing urban areas will take account of urban growth and will equalise out. The same Minister was unable to correlate the costs of housing in built-up areas and areas which are not built up. The Minister is taking a hunch on an enormously complex and difficult area and if it goes wrong it will do so very savagely.

We saw some of the difficulties in financing with regard to the health boards. The Labour Party urged the Minister to move at full speed towards the reform of local government, which by definition, must take some account of the way in which local government is financed. Perhaps he should go the whole way and abolish rates entirely and come up with some new form of property tax which is equitable and related to something better than the Griffith valuation. I know it will not be an easy task and will not be done quickly, but if it is not done difficulties will be created, not just for the Fianna Fáil Government but for the whole country. As far as the Labour Party are concerned, the Minister has the benefit of an enormous amount of goodwill in this matter, provided we see some action coming quickly.

The new system has worked for the first year and will probably work for the second year but what will happen in three or four years if the Department of Finance decide to give the local authorities something far less than 11 per cent? Perhaps the present incumbent will be more persuasive in his dealings with the Department of Finance than his predecessors. I wish him well in that task. This is where the risk emerges. This is the danger for local democracy. The signals for constraint are printed in capital letters and underlined in red in the budget speech of the Minister for Finance. He said that borrowing of this kind cannot go on forever, that the private sector must expand. This indicates the consistent line of conservative thinking within Fianna Fáil, according to which if the balloon does not fly after a lot of puffing we will run out of air and there will be no money for social purposes. What happens then? Do the managers decide where the breakdown is? How are the estimates to be arrived at? Do local representatives become involved in trying to decide how £1 can go as far as £1.50? These issues are not the exclusive concern of the Government; they genuinely concern all parties because no Government will ever be in the position of being in simultaneous control of the local authorities. There are certain areas of the country where the local composition of election is such that the local authority will be under the control of a party other than that in Government. There is an example across the water where local politics can be used as a stick to beat central Government and we see the farce that British local Government has become in this regard with the ups and downs and the violent swings of policy. I am pointing out to the Minister that there are genuine pitfalls in this area but it is in the interests of the country to have them resolved properly and from the pragmatic point of view it is in the interest of any Government, irrespective of party, to have them resolved. By using the cheap popular option of abolishing rates in the way we did we could be setting ourselves up for something far more messy and from which it will be difficult to extricate ourselves.

I wish to express formally my disappointment at the absence of any comprehensive environmental thinking on the part of the Minister with regard to roads and the provision of a roads system throughout the country. I have been accused of misnaming the Department of the Environment as something else. That Department, in a description of their functions as distinct from their official title, could be more accurately described as a Department of part of the environment. If one excludes transportation in the way it has been excluded yet leaves in responsibility for roads in the traditional way it was encompassed in the Customs House and leaves the local authority with responsibility for roads, the responsibility for transportation will be split between two Government Departments at national level. It will be confined to a local authority subject to the constraints of local administration and public representatives and a semi-State company that is not amenable to democratic representation or involvement and which, because of its formation and structure, has difficulties that are plain to see.

The result of this is that there is a large gap that is getting bigger and bigger in the area of delivery of a proper transportation service. In attempting to plug it, local authorities are responding in the only way they can, namely, to build more roads. I do not have to go further than my own area of Dublin where the pressure is greatest. Here the concentration of population is growing and the movement of goods and services depends very much on a transportation service.

The Minister for the Environment has dodged the issue of a policy for roads and for road construction, not just in his speech today but since he took office. I am referring to the whole question of urban motorway systems in built-up areas. The Minister effectively hedged on the question of the motorway system for Dublin until the local authorities make up their mind. He did this using the rather nice, democratic excuse that local authorities should make up their minds and that he did not want to influence their decision. His attitude was that it would be improper for him to do anything until they made up their minds. I should love it if that were the case with every other item of local expenditure. The Minister did not wait until local authorities had produced their estimates before he decided what would be the amount of rates increase. Local authorities were told what they would get and it was up to them to decide how they wanted to carve it up. I do not think it is fair for the Minister to hide behind the excuse given, because that is what he is doing, when he states it would not be appropriate for him at this stage to make any comment beyond indicating that pending receipt of the views of the local authorities he was having the report examined in his Department in a preliminary way.

Mr. Barrett

I also said that there is a roads plan in operation.

Mr. Quinn

That is a very good try but it is not coming off with me. The Minister has the responsibility to tell us his Government's attitude with regard to road transportation. He has not been shy about it in other areas and there is no reason why he should be shy here. I know there are difficulties regarding cost. I realise there are great pressures from proper vested interest groups, such as commercial interests and others, who have a legitimate right to say the system is not working, that transportation is overloaded and so on. However, there are other pressures and constraints and the Minister has responsibility to take them into account also.

As recently as last week Dr. R.J. Nicholl, Deputy Director-General in the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards read a paper to the Chartered Institute of Transport on the question of the motorway programme. It was a very interesting paper and I recommend the Minister to get a copy if he has not got one. The paper was presented on 1 March 1978. His conclusions in a reasoned and well-argued document are that transportation plans have put little weight on factors such as air and noise pollution. He stated that the effects of air and noise pollution are not fully understood but there is growing evidence to support the view that they must be considered as major constraints in present and future planning. He also stated that the whole basis of current planning needs to be revised in the light of diminishing oil resources. The Minister has heard me argue frequently enough in the past to know how I would fill out that kind of argument and I shall not bore him or the House by doing so again. As Minister for the Environment he has responsibility to indicate his Government's attitude on the major implications of road transportation planning. To do what is being done at the moment, to hide behind poor, little Dublin Corporation or Dublin County Council who do not have the resources, the capacity or technique——

Mr. Barrett

That is only one part of Ireland.

Mr. Quinn

That is where the motorways are planned for——

Mr. Barrett

Is it?

Mr. Quinn

That is where the major cost will be borne in the first place. I would ask the Minister to move positively on the matter of roads and road transportation. I do not know how it works between the Custom House and Kildare Street, but until we have a rational interaction between those who provide transportation services and the people who build the roads we will not have a transportation programme that makes sense. It may be people living in rural Ireland who want the right to have reasonable mobility, to get into a town to do shopping. During the Christmas holiday I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Cloghane near Dingle, which is not unknown to the Minister of State, Deputy O'Leary. I was horrified to learn how isolated people can be without an adequate rural bus service. It is fine for the people who have cars and fine for people who do not pay car tax any more. Not everybody can drive a car, even if he had the money to own one.

Both Ministers who represent rural areas, or areas with large rural sections, know far better than I do that many elderly people are effectively isolated by virtue of the transportation system and are relying on this neighbour and that delivery service to exercise normal rights of mobility. The Fianna Fáil manifesto devotes a page and a half to local government. Obviously they did not know it would be changed to the Department of the Environment. Knowing which side their bread is buttered on they said:

Fianna Fáil recognises the importance of encouraging people to remain in rural Ireland and will provide adequate funds for effective Local Improvement and Amenity Schemes.

The best drainage system in the world will not keep people in rural Ireland if they cannot move around. I am attempting to make an argument which is fairly self-evident. The Minister has the job. He has enormous resources. Until such time as he gets some lien or hold on transportation, he cannot really call himself the Minister for the Environment.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We can deal with roads but we cannot deal with transport on this Estimate.

Mr. Quinn

We are dealing with the environment.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister has no responsibility for transport. The Deputy is well aware of that. We can deal with the roads on which the transport travels, but not with transport.

Mr. Quinn

I accept that I am straying somewhat. I am straying to make a point. I think the point has been made and I will leave it at that. Let me stray into another area. I am moving from roads to other services. I do not want to say much about the range of services. I do not want to say much more than what the Minister said, which was simply to itemise them and go through them. This is not a cheap or a snide comment. The Minister has not been in office for a year and his Minister of State has been in office for an even shorter period. I should like to see a coherent environmental policy emerging from the Custom House which will attempt to bring in some rationale between the co-ordination of various services which fall under such things as registration of electors, local environment improvement schemes, the whole question of fire fighting, environmental improvement and that whole area. There is room for modernisation and rationalisation and improvement. I encourage the Minister specifically in that area to try to tidy up all these services which cause great confusion to the ordinary person who tries to relate to them. That is self-evident and not contentious.

The area of noise, air and water pollution is very important specifically if one takes into account the effects of road building programmes in certain areas. Without taking up too much time, I refer the Minister and his Department to the paper prepared and delivered by Dr. Nicholl in this regard. There are implications regarding the building of major roads, such as urban motorways, through residential areas which I do not think, from my experience when I was a member of the local council in Dublin city, were taken into account by the planners. On the basis of that inadequate information proposals are now being put to the Minister.

New information is to hand, information which is specifically the responsibility of the Minister for the Environment, information relating to noise and air pollution, over which he has full responsibility, and over which there is some legislative control. To say in an otherwise long speech that our standards of air pollution are slightly better than those of the rest of Europe, as some form of consolation, is not enough, but something had to be said under that heading. We could equally say our standards of remuneration and income and our standards of industrialisation are much less than those in other parts of western Europe. There is a connection.

It is early days yet. A lot of work has to be done. It is critical because we are urbanising rapidly. I agree with the Minister when he says he believes environmental protection and improvement can take place simultaneously with industrial development. I support that view. I and my party support the view that the environment is there to be exploited for the benefit of humanity, but not to be destroyed. To the extent that the 1978 version of Luddite reaction to progress and development will be manifested by people who are genuinely motivated— let me cast no aspersions on their motivations—by fears for the environment, the Labour Party will come down positively in favour of exploiting the environment for the benefit of the community and humanity.

Air, noise and water pollution can be measured and controlled and properly taken in tow so that they do not do the kind of damage they did in the past. In the past the environment was exploited by the few for private gain. For a variety of reasons, largely ignorance in most cases, the community were not aware of the effects of such exploitation. April 1 will see the coming into operation of the Water Pollution Act. I read with satisfaction the Minister's comments on the actions taken by his Department in this regard. I should like to encourage him and his officials. I hope this work will proceed and set a precedent for similar legislation dealing with air pollution which will provide that it would be illegal to build a motorway through part of Dublin city. We all have our own concerns.

I want to talk briefly about tourism. We have dealt with this in the House before and I will stick to the Minister's Estimate speech. As Minister for the Environment de jure and de facto the Minister has control over the environment either directly or through the local authorities. Consequently, he is in control exclusively of the basic resource upon which our tourism industry rests, that is, the environment. In the recent development plan prepared by Bord Fáilte they state that if you take away the scenery, the Irish people, and the culture which is a product of those two components, you have no tourist industry. We have no sunshine as Spain has. We have no beaches and we have no other attractions like snow. Whether the Minister has departmental or political responsibility for tourism, he and his Department control the resource upon which tourism rests.

I bitterly regret that the Taoiseach saw fit to reverse his earlier decision. That happened. Governments make decisions and we live with those decisions, and there is no point in being mealy-mouthed about them. The decision has been taken, but the responsibility still rests with the Department of the Environment. I am not happy with the fact that there is virtually no mention of tourism in the Minister's speech. There does not seem to be an adequate recognition of the Minister's extraordinary responsibility and that of his Department for the protection, consolidation and development of this resource which is enormous in terms of its potential to this country.

How the Minister responds to that is a matter for another discussion, but because the Minister now has overall responsibility for environmental matters—and that should be strengthened and extended—some form of co-ordination should take place to link the activities referred to in the Supplementary Estimate with the tourism development plans of Bord Fáilte. For example, will they be co-ordinated with designated tourist areas? Will there be any relationship between tourism projections and these programmes? These are administrative questions and are subject to all sorts of pressures. I am aware that every TD and county councillor will want to get a local environmental scheme going in his or her area for obvious reasons, but the Minister could cover two things at the same time. I suggest that he should recognise by action how important his Department are to the tourist industry, because the Department of Tourism and Transport, apart from bringing tourists into the country and making recommendations, have little control over their own main resource, which is tourism.

I should like to make a brief reference to planning, which logically takes us back to the scale with which the Department are concerned. Before the Department can consciously act in a responsible and constructive manner with limited resources we need two things. We need a positive regional plan for the country, but until we have a White Paper on population policy here we cannot have a regional plan. We had more nonsense at Question Time today, with all due respect to the House, from one academic to another about counting heads and trying to get figures for whether there was emigration or not. As a community we are totally in the dark about the way population is going and where it hopes to live or wants to live. It seems to be impossible for the Department to attempt to plan or to vet, as they are required to do, the development plans of all local authorities without some picture of demographic movement and population change. I am not talking about family planning; I am talking about a population policy. How many people will we have in the next ten or 20 years? Where are they likely to live? What age structure are they likely to have? From that base what are the logical needs that arise?

In the absence of that information we can go nowhere. I want the Minister to take that into consideration. A census is not enough. We need a Government policy. The only Government policy we have, and it is to the shame of the previous Government, is one on regional migration. It is contained in a statement issued in May 1972 to the effect that the population of Dublin should contain its own natural growth and that there should be no migration to Dublin. It is extraordinary that this is the only statement we have had from any Government. It is a disgrace.

I should like to conclude with the question of the environment and attitudes to the environment. I was disappointed at the absence of any philosophy in the Fianna Fáil documentation on the environment and in the Minister's speech. Fianna Fáil did have an attitude to and a policy on the environment. It goes back to a concern for what might be loosely described as rural Ireland, the official ruralism as announced by former President de Valera. That was a concern for a certain way of living and a certain relationship with the environment. Even that seems absent, apart from the statement about the commitment to people living in rural Ireland. I do not think the environment is neutral. The environment is important. It is a primary resource for tourism, agriculture and for some industries. It is the base of our rural and urban settlements. The environment and what happens in it affects every one of us, collectively and as individuals.

The environment under our present social system is neither owned nor controlled by us. Instead individuals, be they landowners or single private industries, have exploited the environment for their gain and at our expense. The environment is not neutral because it is not neutrally controlled. The use of the environment for industrial and communal purposes can determine the way in which we physically live our lives. The use or abuse which is made of our environment by individuals or organisations can and does determine the quality of our homes, our jobs and our community facilities. Control of the environment is too important to be left outside the control and desires of the community. We have learned that the environment is highly complex and interdependent. The flow of heavy traffic along our roads, the noise of new machinery in our plants, the building of dwellings in certain areas and the loading of water and drainage systems all directly and immediately affect our environment. I suggest to the Minister, the first Minister for the Environment, that an unjust sociey produces an unjust environment. The exploitation and distortion of the environment for private gain has come from our society, which enshrines private gain above community need in the de Valera Constitution and so on. To change the way in which society relates to environment it is essential to change society. Minor reforms may provide partial improvements in the level of air pollution or in the traffic systems within our settlements, but they can only do that and no more. A socialist society can and will create——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am afraid that the Deputy, in the last minute of a good speech, is seeking to spoil it by getting out of order.

Mr. Quinn

We have briefly touched administratively on the minor and major points of the Department but unless there is a philosophy and ideology underpinning and holding all of those together there will be no comprehensive environmental approach. The Government have a political ideology, a philosophical position, but they will get nowhere in an environmental policy on housing, roads, water or air pollution until such time as they develop a systematic and comprehensive approach to it, which must at the base have a value system and which must in turn be related to a philosophy. The Labour Party know that the environment should and can belong to the people and that if it does belong to the people it can produce a socially just environment. It cannot produce such an environment at the moment because we do not have adequate control.

Mr. L. Lawlor

I should like to compliment the Minister on the way he has presented his Estimate. It is most enlightening for Members to be able to measure the programmes the Department have set for the coming financial year. The amount of money the Department propose investing in many different functions is a major challenge and task. The Minister has announced that he is increasing by 11 per cent the amount to be given to local authorities, and with the financial experts in the Department of Finance forecasting a drop in inflation that is a real increase in the finances of such authorities. The fact that 9 per cent of GNP will be spent through this Department is an indication of the task facing the Minister.

The fact that the Fianna Fáil Party have recognised the need for a change of name is the first major step forward in dealing with the environment and the many complex areas with which this Department now have to cope as compared with the original structure established many years ago. There can be a good deal of political comment about the lack of a census but such information in the case of the Department of the Environment is basic and necessary for their everyday working. As a Deputy representing a constituency which, together with surrounding constituencies, in the past 12 or 18 months has seen some 25 per cent of all the houses built in the country I can fully appreciate the need for accurate information and figures.

The allocation of £530 million in toto in 1978 to local authorities will enable those bodies to deal with the many pressing problems they have. The fact that central Government is providing £375 million can be taken as an indication that the Government are very concerned that local authority will remain with the local authorities. There has been Opposition comment in the past on the shift to central Government. The abolition of rates was cited as one of the moves in that direction. In allocating £375 million the Minister has put that comment in its proper perspective.

On the building section of the Estimate, on the private side the Minister has pointed out that he foresees 6,170 new jobs and these are very welcome. The public capital programme of £458 million is a major boost to the industry which suffered greatly because of the previous Government's methods and attitudes towards the private sector, I can confirm that in my own constituency both private and local authority development is pressing ahead and in the second half of 1977 after a slow start, thanks to the new Minister's drive and enthusiasm, major improvements were made in private and local authority housing.

There is the comparison between planning for housing at the end of 1976 at the figure of 15,833 houses and the figure of 18,563 to which the figure had risen under the Minister's stewardship at the end of December 1977. Houses in progress have gone from 8,281 to 8,962 at end of December 1977. The housing capital allocation for the year exceeds £140 million. In 1978 the Minister is programming the completion of 26,500 houses, private and local authority. We look forward to the publication of the Green Paper which the Minister has promised in the first half of 1978. This will give us the opportunity to project into the eighties in this very complicated key sector of the overall environment and the economy.

I welcome the major move forward in the standardising of metric measurements to coincide with the move to meet EEC regulation requirements. With a background in the engineering and construction industry I fully appreciate the importance of and the necessity for standardisation. This transition has been very complicated for the professional authorities in the construction industry. It also causes great difficulty to the man on the site who for the most part served his time with the old system of measurement. I note that the Minister has made available technical assistance grants in this respect. This is a welcome and forward-looking attitude on the part of the Minister and the Department and is something positive and constructive.

The Department of the Environment is basically the nerve centre for development. It must provide basic facilities and services so that the country can go forward. We see from the Estimate that the Minister has quickly grappled with his very large Department. With the projections which other Ministers have for employment and advancement in industry and construction generally the Minister must move ahead and provide the services and facilities. I have full confidence that he will meet the needs of this key area.

Obviously the House anxiously awaited the Minister's statement in respect of the roads section. Probably in no other developing country was there such a deterioration in any area of Government during the National Coalition's term of office as in the case of our roads. I can say without contradiction that in my own constituency the state of the roads when Fianna Fáil came back to office was deplorable. Comments from other Deputies seem to confirm that throughout the country great deterioration had taken place. The Minister has rapidly recognised this and in 1978 he is increasing the figure to be spent on roads to £37.4 million, an increase of £10.8 million or a staggering 40 per cent more than the 1977 figure allocated by his predecessor. The Minister intends to have over 10,000 men working on the roads in 1978. Particularly in rapidly growing areas such as Dublin and the other cities where industrial development is taking place, because of the immeasurable cost involved because of the inadequate road system which the Minister inherited there is a tremendous challenge. With the increase of 40 per cent, hopefully, a major move forward in this area is forthcoming.

The Minister has given a commitment to construct a new bridge across the Liffey on the site of the existing Sean Heuston bridge. This is another indication of the positive action being taken by him. We have had studies of the Dublin road network and this bridge has been talked about for years without any action being taken. At the moment there is a weight restriction on that bridge and it is good to see that the Minister has taken action to have it replaced.

During Private Members' Time in the past couple of days we have been debating motor insurance and I am glad to see that the Minister this year is investing £418,000 under the National Road Safety section. This type of recognition will be welcomed. We have discussed the tremendous spin-off in death and injuries to our road users and anything done to improve the situation deserves high commendation.

On the question of pollution, I have had cause to contact the Department to make representations in respect of my constituency and I was pleased to have been able to report back to those concerned that the Department have among their staff some of the foremost experts in Europe in this field. The information I got was specific. Historically we have been proud of our environment and it is good to know we are keeping abreast of EEC and UN programmes in this respect. The Minister has indicated his seriousness and that of the Department in this entire area. We have a number of new industries whose employment content we welcome but we must ensure that there will be no danger of long-term damage to our environment. There must be strict monitoring of all industries particularly those involved in chemical processing so that there will not be any long-term effects on the environment, visibly or invisibly. In seeking to advance agriculture, industry and tourism there is a great need for co-ordination to combat pollution and damage to the environment. Such co-ordination would, at the same time, ensure that no development will be held up.

Recognition of the need for conservation is forthcoming from the Water Pollution Advisory Council in which people from industry are represented. With rapidly developing dairying and general food processing there could be danger to rivers and lakes and watchfulness is necessary in order to minimise damage to the environment. We can rely on the Minister and the Water Pollution Advisory Council to monitor possible pollution.

I was glad to read that the Minister has taken positive action in regard to the employment of young people through the Employment Action Team. He is investing £5 million with which he hopes to create 1,000 new jobs. What better field could young people be engaged in gainfully than in the advancement of the environment? The Minister is to be congratulated on the type of schemes he intends to promote in this regard. The programme deserves support from all sides.

The Labour Party often display interest in the need to control building land prices. A positive way to do this is to develop and service more building land than is immediately necessary. When that has been achieved we will have arrived at a stage when building land will be value for money. The Minister is putting more funds into that area than was previously the case.

I should like to deal specifically with the needs of my own constituency, particularly the need for co-operation between the local authorities and CIE in regard to the western side of Dublin. There is tremendous growth in that area through the input of Dublin Corporation, Dublin County Council and private enterprise. The Minister has familiarised himself through visits with the growing pains of that part of Dublin. I ask him to bring together the appropriate interests—the local authorities and those responsible for transport—in an endeavour to coordinate efforts to provide the required housing, transport, communications and other essential services for that rapidly developing area of Dublin. Tremendous pressure is being put on the transport network and on roads. I know the Minister is aware of the problems and I ask him to try to bring about the type of co-ordination I have been speaking about.

There is no point in going back over the figures in the Estimate. The £1,000 grant for new house purchasers confirms the forward type policy adopted by the Government. Nowhere could a policy promote the Buy Irish campaign better than in investment for young people in their own property with its tremendous spin-off effects. The Minister is to be complimented on the far-seeing policy which the £1,000 grant has proved to be to date and promises to be in the future. The material content of any home in this country to a great extent is Irish produced and indirectly the Minister is promoting employment in many other industries. We are fortunate to have a wallpaper manufacturing industry, and electrical appliance manufacturers, and in all sectors of house building and furnishing there are Irish materials. The interest shown in this £1,000 grant indicates that this is a very successful and forward-looking scheme. In my constituency I find excellent reaction to the Minister's new scheme for home improvement grants. The figures are realistic and constructive. People can now move forward and make real improvements in their homes with the amount which the Minister has decided to allocate to them. There was an overlap in the implementation of the £1,000 grant scheme with some of the other schemes which the Minister's Department have introduced. The Minister was very forthcoming in recognising that overlap and rectifying the problems which arose as a result by providing £1 million.

Deputy Quinn has referred in great detail to the lack of and necessity for housing. It is encouraging—and he must take note—that there were 57,459 sites at 31 December 1977, which represents an increase of over 1,000 sites. The capital allocation is £80.77 million for 1978. The Minister for the Environment at this crossroads in Irish history faces a major challenge and has a major task on hand. The magnitude of the task, the size of his Department and the work they have to get through in 1978 in expending £201,684,000 is indeed an indication of the challenge and of the responsibility vested in the Minister. We on this side of the House have no doubt that the Minister is equal to the task, and as we turn the corner into the eighties we can look back on this ambitious programme as creating the foundation for the advancement of this country.

The change of name of the Department has been referred to by Deputy Kelly from time to time and he wondered what it meant. Did it mean anything? It meant that the Minister and the Government recognise that that whole area of local government had to be uplifted, and that the Department of the Environment was to be the cornerstone of forward movement. "Environment" itself is not a very simplistic word. The environment cuts right across the whole spectrum of our lives, and the Minister is charged with the responsibility of allowing industrial development to take place and also of protecting the environment. Local government will continue as before and the Minister, I believe, has attained the right mix in the allocation of funds in this Estimate and also in retaining the major infrastructural development which is so necessary and which must be taken out of local government.

There are also many benefits to be derived from our membership of the EEC in this area. The Minister must take due recognition of the great need for improving the infrastructure. If development is to come to many of the remoter parts of the country it can do so only through the Minister's Department. The demands on the Department are great. I represent a Dublin constituency through which there is tremendous movement from the rural regions of both commercial and domestic traffic, and the improvements necessary there will not be completed overnight. The major road network has to cope with the requirements of industrial operators in new types of vehicles needed for movement of huge tonnages every day on our roads. I therefore compliment the Minister on the details submitted, and I wish his Department well in their expenditure of this sum of money on the improvement of the environment and the carrying out of the ambitious programme laid before us.

Debate adjourned.