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Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 2 Jul 1982

Vol. 337 No. 4

Estimates, 1982. - Vote 28: Environment.

I move:

That a sum not exceeding £400,164,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1982, 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, subsidies and grants including certain grants-in-aid.

In presenting this Estimate to the Dáil, I propose to outline some of the major activities of my Department and how these activities, guided by the Government's policies, contribute to the economic and social benefits of the community. As Government policies and programmes in the traditional areas of my Department have an influence on all sectors of society in all parts of the country, the House will appreciate that this Estimate will have an interest for the population as a whole. The services and activities which arise from the funds provided through this Estimate contribute to everybody's daily wellbeing through the provision of houses, roads, water and sewerage services and many other matters affecting the physical environment.

The net total of the original Estimate for the Environment Vote is £400,164,000. It will be further increased by a Supplementary Estimate for £44,170,010 for which I shall be seeking the approval of the House at the close of the debate. The Supplementary Estimate has already been circulated and I understand the arrangement is that it will be discussed in the general debate on the main Estimate. This extra amount arises mainly from the additional funds allocated by the Government in the budget to my Department and I will be expanding on the various items later in the speech.

The provision in the Environment Vote is part only of what will be spent this year on the services of my Department and the local authorities operating under the aegis of my Department. Money for the services also comes from some other Votes, from the local loans fund and from local authorities' own resources arising from rates and miscellaneous items of income. When all these are reckoned, the Department and the local authorities will, it is estimated, spend some £1,250 million on current and capital account in 1982. This figure compares with about £1,000 million in 1981. The local authorities will have almost £1,200 million to spend this year and they will themselves raise about £300 million of this amount.

Whenever I speak to this House comprehensively on matters concerning my Department, I invariably focus on the building industry. I have said it many times before and I say it again — the building industry in this country is exceptionally important, because of its key role in national development, its huge employment generating capacity and the enormous spread of its activities. It is true to say that national development, progress and prosperity depend in a singular way on an efficient, able and thriving building industry. In order to illustrate its importance, I should point out that, in 1982, the value of output in the industry is expected to exceed £2,100 million, while total direct employment is of the order of 95,000.

It is particularly important that, during a recessionary period, the industry should get additional support from Government to counteract the reduced private sector investment and to maintain output and employment to the greatest possible degree. And here again, I would like to assure the House and the industry of the continuing support of the Government. I do so because we fully recognise the key role which the industry must play in stimulating economic development, providing employment and promoting confidence.

Of the additional £87.45 million development capital provided in the March budget, £64½ million is going to the building industry, for housing, roads, sanitary services and other key programmes which had in many cases experienced reductions in real terms in the finances provided by the former Government. This extra money will boost public capital spending affecting the industry to an estimated record £1,335 million in 1982, representing a rise of 19.5 per cent in money terms and about 4 per cent in real terms over 1981. These extra provisions are a measure of the Government's commitment to the maintenance of a healthy building industry in the face of difficult times, which will enable the industry to play its full part in the process of recovery when the lift-off in the economy arrives. The extra money is expected to cut job losses in the industry by about 2,000.

I would now like to turn the attention of Deputies to some of the housing elements of my Department's estimates.

As regards local authority housing construction, the Government on assuming office found that the programme had fallen to its lowest level for many years. Completions in 1981 fell to 5,681, the lowest since 1972. More disturbingly, the level of employment at the end of January 1982 had dropped to 5,274, as compared with the impressive figure of 7,163 in June 1981, before Fianna Fáil left office. The Government are determined to raise the level of the local authority housing programme to a level commensurate with the attainment of a target of 6,000 annual completions and a substantial improvement in the overall employment position. I recognise that a completions figure of this order is unlikely in the current year, having regard to the fact that there were only 7,186 houses in progress at the end of 1981.

As you are aware, the Government have provided £18.5 million — £14 million of which is for Dublin Corporation — over and above the original provision of £167.5 million, making a total provision for the programme this year of £186 million. Actual expenditure on the programme this year, taking account of incoming and outgoing debit balance on accounts, will be 26 per cent higher than in 1981. Local authorities, who have already been notified of their initial allocations, have now been allocated £2.488 million towards the financing of further new work which they propose to commence this year. These extra allocations will raise substantially the level of work in progress and employment on the programme. By the end of the year, I am confident that there will be about 8,000 houses in progress, a considerable improvement on the position obtaining at the end of 1981.

The new works allocations have been issued at an earlier date this year than for many years. The local authorities will, thereby, be facilitated in programming the new schemes which have been provided for in the allocations and they can ensure that work gets under way to improve the level of employment.

During the course of the budget debate, I indicated the additional schemes in Dublin which will be undertaken on foot of the extra £14 million provided by the Government. In all, the corporation hope to commence more than 2,000 houses (553 of which are in the inner city area) this year. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the corporation on the strenuous efforts which they have been making in getting work commenced on the new schemes. Given the favourable building weather in recent months, rapid progress on these new schemes can be expected this year. As I have stated before, the cost of the corporation's programme will be substantial; however, we are committed to making available all that is required and can be spent on the corporation's overall programme this year, up to a maximum of £91 million. The additional capital will enable the corporation to boost work in progress to about 2,300 houses at the end of 1982 and, by then, employment will have risen by almost 500 bringing the total work force on their programme to just under 2,000. This Government's unprecedented investment in the inner city will make a major step in the revitalisation of this area.

The Government are particularly anxious to achieve the maximum amount of employment from their substantial additional investment in local authority housing. I am confident that a recovery in employment will gather momentum as the new work provided for in the Government's capital injection gets under way. Fianna Fáil have always recognised the construction industry as being an invaluable source of employment. Government investment in local authority housing, as well as increasing direct employment on the programme, has a significant "knock-on effect" in other ancillary industries, such as the manufacturing and supply of building materials, etc. In order to maximise the amount of jobs which will be created as a result of this Government's additional investment in local authority housing, I would urge local authorities to give the maximum amount of support to native contractors and materials within the constraints imposed by our membership of the EEC. The creation of extra employment is vitally important, requiring a high degree of co-operation from the various parties involved.

The Exchequer recoups to the local authorities loan charges incurred by them on the provision of houses for letting. The provision in subhead E.1. for this subsidy in 1982 is £96.584 million, an increase of nearly £18.0 million over the amount expended last year. This sum includes £1.3 million being provided under the supplementary estimate and which arises from the decision of the previous Government to increase the local loans fund interest rate from 12 per cent to 15 per cent as from 1 February last.

Local authorities are responsible for the maintenance and management of their rented estates and retain all rental income for this purpose. Under previous Fianna Fáil administrations, the authorities were also permitted to use a proportion of the proceeds of sales of their rented houses for maintenance and management costs, but the Coalition Government withdrew this arrangement earlier this year. I am glad to say that I have reversed that decision and the authorities may, as in 1981, use 40 per cent of the proceeds of their house sales for eseential maintenance — the overall amount involved is of the order of £7 million.

A sum of £1.5 million has been provided from the Public Capital Programme to enable local authorities to finance schemes of improvement works to their rented dwellings. These schemes include the provision of fireplaces in dwellings with central heating but no fireplaces, provision of extra accommodation and amenities for the mentally or physically handicapped, water/sewerage facilities, fitted bathrooms and hot water systems in houses which do not have these facilities and additional accommodation to relieve statutory overcrowding. These schemes of improvement works will, particularly in older dwellings, help to bring them up to acceptable standards. In Dublin, arrangements have been made for the abatement of the 1982 rent increases on substandard houses. An additional capital allocation of £1 million is also being made available to Dublin Corporation this year for the provision of shower units in central city flat schemes built without bathrooms.

The local authority house purchase loan scheme provides mortgage finance for persons not catered for by the commercial lending agencies. The initial capital provision for the payment of these house purchase loans in 1982 is just over £103 million. The previous administration took a number of decisions which, if put into effect, would have been very disadvantageous to borrowers under the scheme. Firstly, they restricted ordinary loans to persons who were married or about to marry. This discriminated unfairly against single persons not about to marry, irrespective of the urgency of their housing needs. The Government have now removed this restriction and a single person, not about to marry, may apply for a local authority loan in respect of the purchase or construction of a house where the contract to purchase was signed or the foundations completed on or after 25 March 1982. An additional £2 million was made available under the Budget to meet anticipated requirements arising from this decision. The Government also decided that all local authority house loans shall be advanced at a fixed interest rate of 12½ per cent, and authorities have been notified to this effect. The effect of the decision by the previous Government to increase the interest rate would have been to increase the rate payable by borrowers by 3 per cent to 15½ per cent as from 1 February last, and this would have increased the monthly repayment by £33 on the normal maximum loan of £14,000.

The building societies continue to provide the bulk of house purchase finance in this country. In 1981 and despite the relatively low rate of inflow of funds in the early part of the year societies advanced a record total of £321 million in respect of mortgage finance, divided between £135 million for 7,000 new houses and £186 million for 9,900 other houses, which represented 71 per cent of the total mortgage finance provided by the main lending agencies for private houses in 1981.

In the course of discussions which I had with the societies in April last I indicated that the Government would be prepared to increase for this year from £15,000 to £30,000 the limit on individual investments which attract the present composite rate of income tax. In order to provide a stimulus to employment and activity in the building industry, I also proposed that the societies examine the possibility of borrowing abroad to the extent of £20 million, this borrowing to be subject to a State guarantee against possible exchange losses. The societies agreed to explore this proposal. Arrangements were made for a further meeting between representatives of the building societies and myself early this month for the purpose of reviewing the situation in the light of prevailing conditions. In the meantime the societies, for their part, have agreed to defer until 1 September any increase in home loan rates for existing borrowers and until 1 August any increase for new home loans.

I want to take this opportunity to express the Government's appreciation of the major contribution to housing which the building societies have made over the years. I am fully confident that this contribution will continue to expand over the coming years to the benefit of aspiring house-owners, the building industry generally and the national housing programme.

Subhead E2 contains a provision of £15 million for housing grants of which £8.25 million is for the £1,000 new house grants for first-time owner-occupiers and £6.75 million for house improvements grants. In the case of new houses about 10,500 grants amounting to £10.3 million were paid in 1981 as compared with about 9,100 grants amounting to £8.4 million in 1980. The additional £2 million, provided for in the budget, is included in the Supplementary Estimate to allow for the expansion of the existing improvement grant scheme.

A new scheme of house improvement grants was introduced by my predecessor in October, 1981. The scheme allowed grants for the provision of basic amenities — water, sewerage, bathroom and chimney — where those were lacking and a grant for an extra bedroom for the relief of overcrowding. The scheme, however, provided no assistance or encouragement to householders to conserve their houses by carrying out necessary repair or renovation works. The Government recognised this to be a serious deficiency in the light of the obvious need to conserve the housing stock. Deputies will be aware that we have now rectified matters by expanding the scope of the October, 1981 scheme to make grants available for the inclusion of necessary conservation works to the basic fabric of the home. I think most Deputies will agree that we now have, what is on the whole, a sensible and balanced improvement grants scheme.

The mortgage subsidy scheme was introduced by me in April 1981, as part of the housing package. The scheme was designed to ease the burdens of first-time owner-occupiers of new houses by making a subsidy of up to £3,000 available to eligible applicants over a period of three years. The subsidy applied to mortgages executed on or after 10 April, 1981, and both single and married people were eligible. However, in July, 1981, the Coalition Government introduced restrictions which had the effect of confining eligibility for the subsidy to married people or people about to marry. This discriminatory and widely unpopular restriction has, I am happy to say, been removed by me and eligibility has been restored to single people not about to marry. An extra provision of £1 million was set aside in the budget for this purpose in 1982. The original provision of £10 million in Subhead E3 is therefore being increased by £1 million in the Supplementary Estimate. In 1981, 3,500 applications amounting to £10.5 million were approved. I am confident that the restoration of the subsidy to all first-time owner-occupiers, together with the very substantial level of assistance now being made available to purchasers, will help to restore confidence in the house building industry.

The Supplementary Estimate contains a new provision in Subhead E4 of £1 million by way of grant-in-aid to a task force which has been set up to undertake an emergency programme to improve the living conditions of old people living in insanitary or unfit accommodation. It is clear that some elderly persons in the community are living alone in conditions that are not acceptable. They can be found in urban and rural areas alike. Many of these dwellings lack proper sanitary facilities, are often in a very poor state of repair offering only minimal protection against the elements, offer no comfort to the occupants, and normal standards of cleanliness and hygiene are impossible to maintain. In these cases the people concerned have neither the financial means to pay for the remedial works, nor the capacity to arrange them.

Under-investment in sanitary services with a consequent shortage of serviced sites can be a significant factor contributing to high prices for serviced land and consequently to the escalation in the cost of constructing factories, houses and community buildings, including schools and hospitals. The record of the Fianna Fáil Government in financing sanitary services investment speaks for itself. Between 1977 and 1980 alone we almost doubled the overall public capital programme provision for public water and sewerage schemes — from less than £25 million in 1977 to almost £47 million in 1980. In 1981 we provided £66 million as part of the Investment Plan, 1981. The sum of £76 million provided for public water and sewerage schemes in 1982 by the Coalition Government represented a reduction in real terms in sanitary services compared with last year, when allowance is made for increased construction costs. This capital provision was not adequate to allow a substantial volume of major new schemes to start.

I am therefore very glad that the extra money injected into the overall capital programme in 1982 includes £7.8 million for sanitary services. As a result, I recently gave the go-ahead for the commencement of work in 1982 on a number of new sanitary services schemes which are of the highest priority for economic and physical development. I have divided the £7.8 million as to £6.4 million for loan finances for public schemes, £1 million for grants for public schemes, and £400,000 for grants for group water schemes. Subhead F3 of the original Estimates contains a provision of £4 million for grants to local authorities for public water schemes in the western areas which is being increased by £1 million under the Supplementary Estimate, while Subhead F2 contains a provision of £7.5 million for grants for group water supply and sewerage schemes which is being supplemented by £400,000 under the Supplementary Estimate. The revised Public Capital Programme figure for loans for public schemes is £82.4 million as against £66 million for 1981. These borrowings of local authorities are subsidised from subhead F1 for which an initial provision of £21.225 million was made — this is being increased under the Supplementary Estimate by £500,000 to meet the cost of extra subsidy arising from the previous Government's decision which increased the Local Loans Fund interest rate charged to local authorities from 12 per cent to 15 per cent as from 1 February. The overall capital provision for sanitary services, as increased by Fianna Fáil under the Budget, is therefore £95.3 million — an increase of almost 30 per cent on the 1981 provision.

The rural piped water supply programme received a major boost following the introduction of a new scheme of grants under the Western Package of aid from the FEOGA. As a result, I was able to announce increased grants in 1981 for private group water schemes in the western areas. These grants generally cover 80 per cent of the cost of the scheme instead of 66? per cent as heretofore. The maximum grants have been doubled from £300 to £600 per house and from £200 to £400 per potential farm supply respectively. At the end of 1981, work was in progress on the installation of water in 6,300 houses and 175 schemes had been designed to serve a further 5,700 houses.

An adequate road network is of major importance to our efforts to attract new industrial development as well as serving existing needs. In recognition of this fact and as part of the Government's programme of increased capital investment to boost activity in the construction industry, I have been able to provide an additional £10 million for road improvement works over the amount proposed by the previous Government for 1982. The extra £10 million is included in subhead L of the Supplementary Estimate. These supplementary grants have been allocated with the aim of intensifying the on-going programme for major works as identified in the road development plan and for the improvement generally of the national route network. In addition, the grants will finance a special programme of urgent reconstruction works on roads other than national roads.

On foot of the full provision of £101.5 million in 1982 being provided under subheads L.1 and L.2, roads grants totalling £104.43 million have been allocated to road authorities. Of this total, almost £40 million has been allocated for major improvement works which are listed in the road development plan. Among the major schemes for which grants have been provided in the Dublin region are a new road from Whitehall to the airport; a by-pass of Swords; a new road linking Clontarf Road with the East Wall Road; a new bridge adjacent to Heuston Bridge and a by-pass of Palmerstown on the N4 to the west. Outside the Dublin region, grants have been allocated for three new bridges over the Lee and a new ring road in Cork; a ring road and a new bridge over the Shannon in Limerick; new bridges in Waterford, Athlone and Galway and inner relief roads or ring roads in Dundalk, Drogheda, Kilkenny, Tralee and Clonmel.

Apart from major works, the plan also provides for an extensive programme of normal improvement works designed to bring all sections of the national primary routes and significant sections of the national secondary routes up to a specified minimum standard. Grants totalling £22.6 million have been allocated for this programme in 1982.

Subhead L4 of the Supplementary Estimate includes an additional provision of £2 million for recoupment to local authorities of abnormal costs incurred as a result of the blizzard conditions which occurred in January this year.

Money invested in our road network is money well spent. It yields a realistic rate of economic return in terms of improved transport mobility, efficiency and safety. It also has the added advantages of utilising materials and equipment of Irish manufacture and it has a high labour content. I expect that the full provision of £101.5 million for road works this year, together with the considerable investment which will be made by local authorities from their own resources, will provide direct employment for 10,200 road workers.

Apart from public roads, there is a substantial network of "non-public" roads which feed into the public road network and which are of particular benefit to the agricultural community. The local improvements scheme has catered for such roads since 1968. This year a sum of £3.1 million has been provided for in subhead J compared to £2.714 million in 1981. The scheme has received added emphasis with the introduction of the western package. Under the terms of the package, EEC aid is available for both local roads, that is county roads used mainly for agriculture and forestry, and for farm roads. In so far as local roads are concerned, the block road grant allocations to the western counties include sums specifically to finance a programme of works on eligible county roads. As regards farm roads, the local improvements scheme has been adapted to take account of available EEC aid. In the current year the western counties have been asked to devote specified minimum amounts from their allocations to eligible farm road projects. These measures, which have the approval of the EEC authorities, are designed to ensure that the £15 million approximately in EEC aid available for local and farm roads over a ten year period will be fully taken up.

In regard to drinking and driving the level of activity against the drinking driver will be maintained. Amending legislation is being prepared, which will clarify and rectify some of the existing provisions of the law on the subject, so that enforcement measures can take their full effect. The scourge of the drinking driver and the level of accidents in which the abuse of alcohol is a major factor are well known. Subhead L3 includes an amount of £343,000 for the Medical Bureau of Road Safety. The work of the bureau is a vital element in the enforcement of the law against the drinking driver. Last year the bureau received 8,295 specimens of blood or urine for analysis from the Garda Síochána.

This year I was able to allocate from subhead L3 £405,000 to the National Road Safety Association to enable them to maintain their activities. In addition to Exchequer funding, the association have been also able to obtain valuable sponsorship from the commercial sector. I congratulate the interests involved for giving practical effect to their concern for road safety. I hope that this interaction between public and private sectors in the promotion of road safety continues to develop.

I come now to subhead O for which the provision is £138 million. This grant is designed to compensate local authorities in respect of the relief given to domestic and other ratepayers under the Local Government (Financial Provisions) Act, 1978. The size of the grant is related to the amount of the relieved valuations and rate in the £. In respect of 1982, my predecessor notified local authorities on 15 January 1982, of an upper limit of 15 per cent on rate increases for 1982. The provision made by the Coalition Government in the Estimate for the Department of Environment fell short of what was estimated to be needed to recoup local authorities the full cost of rate reliefs based on a 15 per cent in the rate in the £. The amount of that shortfall is now estimated to be about £12 million.

At the stage we assumed office the broad thrust of budgetary strategy was already determined and our room for manoeuvre in relation to public finances as a whole was limited. I was, however, able to persuade my colleagues that the situation facing local authorities in regard to the funds available for their day to day services required special attention. As a result I was able to notify local authorities of two separate measures which would be of direct benefit to them.

The first of these measures was the limitation of statutory demands on local authorities in respect of the cost of arterial drainage and supplementary welfare. These demands had in recent years been increasing at a faster rate than increases in local rate revenue. This had an upsetting effect on local finances and generated a good deal of resentment among the local authorities who had no control over the demands. The positive measures I was able to take for this year placed an upper limit on increases in the demands to keep them in line with limits in the rate increases. This had the direct effect of reducing by £3 million the demands already served on local authorities

The second measure of direct benefit to the financing of the ordinary day to day services related to the disposal of the proceeds of sales of local authority dwellings. The position facing local authorities when I assumed office was that the entire proceeds would have to be directed towards the house building programme in order to reduce the burden on the Exchequer. This would have led to a direct reduction in the money available to local authorities for their day-to-day services, in particular, the maintenance of existing local authority houses would have been affected. I could not allow this situation to continue. I am pleased, therefore, to say that I was able to reverse my predecessor's direction and allow local authorities to continue the practice which had obtained for many years of applying a proportion of the proceeds of sales to local revenue purposes. The direct benefit to the day-to-day local finances is estimated at about £7 million this year.

These two measures taken together will benefit local authority finances by an estimated £10 million in 1982 and will go some way towards offsetting the shortfall which local authorities would otherwise have had to face in the financing of their day-to-day services. In addition they will help to remove a major obstacle to effective management of their finances by the local authorities.

There is provision in subhead V9 for an appropriation-in-aid in the sum of £10 million as a contribution in lieu of rates. This contribution is intended to come from the Electricity Supply Board. At present there is an indirect subsidy given to the ESB by way of exemption from rates on their generating stations and certain other property under the Electricity Supply Acts. The Minister for Industry and Energy has at present before the Dáil legislative proposals to give effect to the decision taken by the former Government that the removal of the indirect subsidy should commence in 1982 and that this would best be done by obtaining a contribution in lieu of rates for the current year, thus reducing the net cost to the Exchequer of funds being provided for local authorities. The Minister for Industry and Energy is making the necessary arrangements with the ESB in regarded to the interim payment of £10 million.

The supplementary provision of £20.75 million for Dublin Corporation includes the £20 million, referred to in his budget statement by the Minister for Finance, to supplement the corporation's resources for their normal services in 1982. This general grant was found to be necessary to avoid far reaching and unacceptable cutbacks across the whole range of the corporation's day-to-day services. The size and severity of the problems affecting Dublin city distinguish them from such urban development problems as exist elsewhere in our country. I am happy that it has been possible to make provision for this additional injection of funds to complement the other more specific measures necessary to tackle in a positive and comprehensive way the special problems affecting our capital city. The balance of £750,000 is provided to assist the corporation's housing maintenance programme.

While on the subject of local authority finances, Deputies will note that £5 million has been provided in subhead N under which local authorities are recouped portion of their expenditure on malicious injuries compensation. The Exchequer meets in full the cost of the decrees in respect of damage caused by explosives and attributable to the disturbances in Northern Ireland and also that element of costs of other decrees in excess of the produce of a rate of 20p in the £. This ensures that no ratepayer will be called upon to bear a rate of more than 20p in respect of malicious injuries compensation. The malicious Injuries Act, 1981, which came into force on 6 November, 1981, allows local authorities more flexibility in dealing with claims. It is now possible for cases to be settled out of court and this should ensure that claims are settled at an earlier date than previously possible.

I would like to refer here briefly to the audit of the accounts of local authorities. The local government audit is responsible for the public accountability audit of, in current terms, between £1½ and £2 billion annual expenditure. I am happy to place on the record the high professional competence and integrity of the local government auditors and the dedicated and efficient service they have given over the years. In this connection I would like to dissociate myself from the remarks made in this House by an Opposition Deputy during the debate on the Supplementary Estimate for my Department on 19 November 1981 when he said, "It is undesirable to have a Department of the Environment auditor working almost full time in Dublin Corporation because he can get close to the people working there and could easily accept the explanations given to him". The imputation in the Deputy's remarks is regrettable and unfounded.

This year, for the first time, my Department's Estimates contain a separate subhead for expenditure on fire services. I am fully committed to continuing a policy of giving increased priority to the needs of the fire service because of the invaluable role it plays in preventing loss of life and the destruction of property. We all recognise that increasing demands are being made on the service due to the growing level of industrialisation and urban development throughout the country, the introduction of new technology and the use of new materials and substances, processes and building methods. Various measures have been taken and others are in train to assist the fire service in meeting the demands being placed on it. Subhead T provides for current expenditure of £650,000 on the service in 1982 as against £272,500 in 1981.

The Fire Services Act, 1981 which came into force on 1 January 1982 updated and strengthened the legal framework and organisation of the fire service. Arrangements for implementation of the provisions of that Act at local and national levels are continuing. In this connection I should mention that I am pressing ahead with proposals for the establishment of the Fire Services Council which I see as playing an important part in the development of the fire service. I hope to be in a position to make a more detailed announcement in the near future. A token provision of £10 in subhead T for the Fire Services Council is included in the Supplementary Estimate.

An adequate level of capital investment in the construction of fire stations and the purchase of fire fighting, communications, rescue and other equipment is essential. There are nine fire stations currently under construction at various centres throughout the country, seven of which should be completed this year, including some in the Dublin area. A number of others are at advanced stages of planning. Since January 1978 some 23 fire stations or extensions have been completed and proposals for financing the purchase of 61 new fire applicances and other fire service equipment have been approved.

A capital allocation of £3.75 million for fire services was proposed by the previous Government for 1982. I am happy to have been able to get a further £1 million under the budget so as to ensure that funds are available to finance urgently-needed new projects which are now at advanced stages of planning and which might otherwise have had to be deferred. This expanded programme of capital investment has been further encouraged by a scheme of subsidy to local authorities which I introduced in March of last year. This subsidy is payable at the rate of 50 per cent in respect of loan charges incurred by local authorities on borrowings for expenditure on fire service projects and equipment. It should do much to encourage local authorities to provide and maintain the facilities that are needed. Subhead T.1 provides a sum of £500,000 to meet subsidy payments arising in 1982.

Provision is made in subhead T.2 for the payment by my Department of a grant of £100,000 to the Fire Prevention Council, and this sum will be matched by the Federation of Insurers in Ireland. The funds will enable the Council to provide a comprehensive programme of activities during 1982, including conferences and seminars, advertising leaflets and posters and a National Fire Safety week.

I should like to make a brief reference to the Tribunal of Inquiry into the tragic fire which occurred at the Stardust Club, in Artane, Dublin in February of last year. Deputies will, I am sure, have seen the statement issued yesterday on my behalf indicating that the report of the tribunal has just been submitted to me. Arrangements for the printing of the report have been put in hand. In the meantime, arrangements are being made for photostat copies of the report to be made available to the Stardust Relatives and Injured Committee, the political parties and the media. These will be available on Monday, 5 July 1982.

The essence of the Government's environment policy is that all decisions on development should take full account of the likely impact on the environment. The main aim of this policy is to protect and improve the physical environment side by side with economic and social progress so that there will be a better quality of life for everybody, now and in the future.

The detailed recommendations in the report of the Environment Council entitled "A Policy for the Environment" are being considered by the various Departments concerned. Progress on their implementation will be monitored by the Inter-Departmental Environment Committee which will report to me on the matter. The initial term of office of the Environment Council expired in June, 1981 and a new council was not appointed. The council did an amount of useful work and I am at present reviewing the question of appointing a new council, and of the role which it might be called on to fill. Work is now in progress on the preparation of a first report on the state of the environment, and I hope that it will be available for publication early in the coming year. Such reports will assist in enabling the Government to assess the effectiveness of environment policy and programmes and the need for further measures.

Local authorities play an important part in the protection and improvement of environmental resources and are responsible for the development of a variety of community and amenity facilities. In this connection, I am glad to say that I have recently made available to local authorities an allocation of £4 million under the Government's youth employment programme. This major financial injection, as well as providing useful and interesting work opportunities for young people in their own areas, will enable local authorities to extend these programmes for providing and improving amenities and recreational facilities. This sum of £4 million is in addition to the £500,000 which is included in subhead G in respect of grants for environmental works, community premises in non-Gaeltacht islands and dangerous places.

The budget provided an additional amount of £2.5 million for Dublin Corporation in 1982 for environmental improvement works. These funds will enable the number of people employed on this programme to be increased to at least 500 this year. The £2.5 million is included in the supplementary estimate in Subhead G.

As in 1981, I have asked local authorities to promote local environment campaigns and to undertake suitable programmes of work with the backing of the above allocations. In the campaigns last year, I asked for special emphasis to be placed on the active involvement of local communities and voluntary organisations in measures for the control of litter and the positive improvement of local conditions. I am satisfied that the 1981 campaigns marked an encouraging step forward in the fight against litter and environmental decay in many areas, and have asked that a very special effort be made to extend the campaigns this year to all areas, particularly tourist areas. I will make an environment award — a trophy and cash prize — later in the year to the area which makes the most positive response to my request. I will be asking local authorities to make full use of their new powers under the Litter Act, 1982.

The provision in subhead U for pollution control is £355,000 compared with £50,000 in 1981. The increase is for the acquisition and development of a site at which a national centre for the reception of certain industrial wastes is to be provided. The need for such a centre, in order to ensure that potentially hazardous wastes are safely disposed of, has become increasingly urgent in recent years. When the centre is fully operational I have no doubt that it will be a significant support for the Government's job creation programme, enabling industries which might otherwise have been forced to locate elsewhere to set up production in this country. I am very pleased to note the whole-hearted support being given to the project by industry in general and, in particular, by the Confederation of Irish Industries and the Federation of Chemical Industry.

I am aware that there has been some criticism of the project. The criticism appears to be based mainly on misconceptions regarding the nature and purpose of the proposed centre. There have been references to an industrial or toxic waste dump being established on the site. I should like to kill off this impression once and for all. No waste will be dumped on the site. The centre will resemble a small warehouse or factory complex at which limited quantities of industrial wastes, which cannot at present be satisfactorily disposed of on land-fill sites, will be taken under careful supervision, bulked up and stored, prior to export to approved disposal outlets abroad. Limited waste treatment facilities may also be provided at the site if the volume and types of waste forthcoming show this to be necessary and justified.

All appropriate environmental safeguards will be taken in the design and operation of the centre. Experts of international repute will be engaged by the National Building Agency which has been assigned the task of carrying out the necessary development. The normal procedures in regard to planning permission will apply.

It must not be assumed that the proposed centre will provide a solution to the problem of industrial waste disposal. The centre will deal essentially with relatively small quantities of special wastes. The great bulk of industrial waste can be safely disposed of, in association with other wastes, on land-fill sites which have been carefully chosen and are properly operated. There is an urgent need for development of a network of such sites in different parts of the country, and I am urging local authorities to press on with measures to meet this need. This is not an optional matter. Waste is an unavoidable by-product of industrialisation. If we are to have the industries and the employment which they provide, the necessary waste disposal facilities must be provided. The Government strategy is based on development of means of disposal which are widely recognised as being environmentally safe and acceptable. Local authorities must play their full part in giving effect to this strategy.

Serious problems still exist as regards the settlement of travellers, in spite of the substantial financial support which is given by my Department. These problems are especially evident in the Dublin area and in some of the other urban centres, and impinge not only on the travellers themselves, but also on the settled community. While some 1,300 families have been provided with accommodation, there are almost as many still on the roadside living in degrading conditions. In the Dublin area alone the number of traveller families living on unapproved sites is estimated to be over 400.

I should like to emphasise that the primary responsibility for providing accommodation facilities rests with the local authorities, and decisions to proceed with particular schemes have, of course, to be made at that level. Unfortunately, some local authorities, even in areas where there is great need for the provision of proper facilities, have been reluctant to take action. Opposition to schemes often poses difficulties but, in the long term, such opposition may well be to the detriment of all concerned as unauthorised encampments grow out of control. This has been illustrated in the Dublin area, where serious environmental damage has resulted from widespread unauthorised camping. The provision of accommodation and the protection of the environment go hand in hand, and I look to the local authorities to meet their responsibilities on both aspects.

My Department will continue to provide every possible support and assistance to local authorities in their efforts to achieve progress with the accommodation programme, including continued financial support. In the current year, £1.4 million is being made available under subhead R mainly to provide subsidy on loan charges for capital projects and also to provide a 90 per cent contribution towards the cost to local authorities of employing social workers. A sum of £1.75 million of non-voted capital is also being provided in the current year to finance new schemes.

What is clearly needed, of course, is commitment at local level. Without it nothing can be done and the problems both for the traveller families and the settled community will become intolerable.

I should also like to mention the Travelling People Review Group. This widely representative group was set up in January 1981 by Deputy Woods, Minister for Health, and myself to examine current policies and programmes in relation to services and support for travelling people and to make early recommendations. The Government are committed to act on the findings of the group, and I look forward to receiving their recommendations very soon.

I have initiated a review of planning legislation in the Department in order to identify any changes in the law that may be necessary to speed up decision making at both local and appeals levels. I feel that there is scope for improving the performance of the planning system, and that in view of the importance of job creation all avoidable delay should be eliminated. This review will take time, and in the meantime I will be asking each planning authority to carry out a review of their approach to planning control and to the processing of planning applications. My aims are that the number of planning applications finally determined at local level will increase while appeal numbers will be reduced, that avoidable delays and complaints from developers and other interests will be less frequent, and that a more productive deployment of staff and resources will be achieved by planning authorities. In the short term, the Local Government (Planning and Development) Bill, 1982, when enacted, will extend the duration of planning permissions, including those which ceased to have effect on 31 October 1981 and will establish a new procedure for extension applications to overcome the difficulties caused both for planning authorities and for developers under the existing law.

I believe that existing methods of tackling the special problems of physical redevelopment and urban renewal in inner city areas are inadequate, and I am proposing a new approach to this matter to allow intensive revitalisation schemes to be undertaken. Deputies will be aware of the Bill before the Dáil to enable a number of pilot projects to be launched at an early date. The areas selected for the initial projects are the site at the Custom House Docks in Dublin and the area covered by the medieval walled city of Dublin. The legislation, however, will enable parts of other urban areas throughout the country to be similarly designated at a later stage, if this kind of approach is considered to be necessary and suited to their needs. The Bill provides for the establishment of small ad hoc development commissions with responsibility for the regeneration of their areas and with appropriate powers and finance. The Supplementary Estimate includes sums of £10,000 for each of the above-mentioned projects.

I now turn to the very severe problems that beset the inner city area of our capital. The major problems associated with the area are well documented — unemployment, particularly among the young, sub-standard housing, widespread dereliction, vandalism and poor social opportunities, to list but a few. Although effort and money have been devoted over the years to tackling these problems, a huge task remains. It is this Government's intention to undertake the concerted action needed to overcome these problems in the inner city. A start has been made already. A massive injection of funds was provided in the budget to enable an all-out effort to be made to revitalise the inner city. I have already referred to some of this expenditure, the extra capital for new housing, the special provision for the improvement of sub-standard housing and the extra money for housing maintenance. I have referred also to the special allocation of £20 million to Dublin Corporation to enable them to maintain their level of services and to the provision of £2.5 million for environmental improvement schemes. The inner city will benefit in due course from this substantial injection of funds.

In addition, however, it is my intention to further the work started by the Fianna Fáil Government in 1978 when they established the special inter-Departmental committee to make recommendations to deal with the problems of Dublin's inner city. This was followed by the establishment of the inner city group which operate at present under the aegis of my Department.

Since the group were set up in 1979 they have made allocations totalling £1.3 million from the Dublin inner city fund. The provision for the fund in this year's Estimate is £300,000 in subhead P of the Estimate. Support from the fund has been given for a variety of worthy projects. I would like to mention particularly the Dublin inner city employment programme which encourages the employment of inner city residents through the payment of premiums to employers who take on employees who are resident in the inner city. Under the programme 374 employees were taken on in 1981. The programme is to be continued this year, and I am glad to note that support for it will be forthcoming from the EEC through the European Social Fund. While all the projects that have been supported from the inner city fund have been worthwhile, the Government intend to extend the work and to put it on a more formal basis. I intend to introduce legislation which will provide for the setting up of a Dublin inner city development authority which will take over the functions of the inner city group.

The proposed authority will have the wide co-ordinating powers that are necessary to enable them to promote the co-ordination action required to overcome the problems of the inner city area. In order to improve the employment prospects and social opportunities of residents, it will have wide powers to enable them to encourage development and the provision of jobs in the area. The authority will have their own special fund to enable them to make grants to achieve their aims and objectives. A sum of £1.7 million is included in the Supplementary Estimate for the new authority in 1982 in addition to the £300,000 for the inner city group included in my Department's original Estimate.

I must stress that while these initiatives relate to Dublin, because of the urgency and special nature of the problems of the capital, the Government's intention is to see that the problems of run-down inner urban areas are tackled more vigorously and more effectively in other areas, particularly the larger ones, as well. To this end an examination is being undertaken of the operation of existing policies and practices relating to the promotion of urban renewal in order to see how they might be made more effective, as well as considering the scope for new approaches. The Minister of State, Deputy Brady, who has a special responsibility in this matter will be consulting with local authorities so that account may be taken of their views and ideas in the development and implementation of policy for the restoration and revival of urban centres which have gone into decline.

In 1981 I introduced a scheme of grants to assist local authorities to complete unfinished housing estates where all efforts to have them completed by the developer have failed. My predecessor recognised that this was a worthwhile scheme and proposed an allocation of £500,000 in 1982. I propose to honour this commitment in the hope that it will enable the backlog of uncompleted estates, which meet the criteria of the scheme, to be completed.

I should like to take this opportunity to export planning authorities to use to the full the very considerable powers available to them under the planning Acts to ensure that developers meet their obligations by completing estates to a satisfactory standard and that the terms of planning permissions are precise and enforceable in this respect.

I have spoken of the major items of expenditure in the Department's Vote and the more important services of the Department. The Vote includes many other items which though important in themselves are relatively speaking smaller in amount. I just have not had time to go through these items one by one, since to do so would unduly restrict the time available for other Deputies. The purpose of the various expenditures will be clear from the descriptive material in Part 3 of the Vote. Should a Deputy wish to obtain additional information about any of these items, I shall endeavour to provide it in my reply.

(Cavan-Monaghan): I should like to congratulate the Minister on the speed with which he got through his 34-page brief, but I regret that there my congratulations must end. The Minister read his brief quickly so as to not use up too much of the limited debate, but he read it in a manner which would suggest to a stranger that everything in the country and in his Department in particular was fine. We all know that every local authority is starved of finance. We know, too, that the building industry, with which the Minister dealt in the early part of his brief, has come to a halt since Fianna Fáil were returned to office. The building contractors, particularly those in the house-building industry, are letting off men at an unprecedented rate. The builders' providers are on short time. When I asked the other day as to what was the cause of all this I was told that the reason is lack of confidence. But we know that the lack of confidence has been brought about by the Government of which the Minister is a member.

We are being asked here to agree to the provision of £400,164,000 plus a supplementary amount of £44,170,010 and we are dealing with local authorities who will be spending in this year £1,200 million. We are being asked to deal with all of this in a matter of three hours. Notwithstanding the fact that the Minister obliged us by reading his speech in as little time as possible, this is a national disgrace. If the Leas-Cheann Comhairle were in the Chair he would probably suggest that I should talk to the party Whips about this, that they had agreed. Yes, of course we had agreed to a three-hour debate today because the alternative was no debate. That was the sort of choice we had. I do not know whose fault it is, but to deal with this Department and this sort of Estimate and devote this amount of money in that time is nothing short of a national disgrace.

We wasted the day yesterday.

(Cavan-Monaghan): Perhaps we put in a good day yesterday.

A Deputy

We wasted a day.

(Cavan-Monaghan): We are prepared to stay here as long as it is necessary to stay here to do the country's business. We are prepared to take Estimate by Estimate and go through them. At any rate, I suppose the wasted day yesterday was like the time that we spent in Dublin West. It could do a lot of good.

We think the result did a lot of good.

(Cavan-Monaghan): It could do a lot of good. It would be just impossible for me or for this House to deal with this Estimate in the time available. Accordingly, I propose to confine my remarks mainly to the most important aspect of local government, that is finance. Money makes the mare go, and if local authorities have not got money, schemes are no use. A change in the method of financing local authorities was introduced in 1978. Private dwellings were de-rated and an assurance was given by the then Minister for the Environment that the revenue lost by the de-rating of private houses would be made good by a grant from the Exchequer. That has not been done. The grants are now not based on any estimates prepared by local authorities, they are not based on the requirements of local authorities. The grants are based on a system of taking 1977 as the base year and adding a percentage, whether it is ten per cent, 11 per cent, or 15 per cent as in this year, without any regard to increased services, new services such as water pollution or extended services such as the fire brigade. The result is that allocations to local authorities each year are grossly inadequate. Furthermore, local authorities are given a percentage increase to cover certain expenditure which rises each year by far more than the ten per cent, 11 per cent or 15 per cent allowed.

I will give a few examples in the time available to me. The Board of Works act as agent for several local authorities in drainage matters and in the execution of other works, and they charge much more than the increase allowed to the local authority. The result is that the local authority is at a big loss there. The health boards — we know how they can spend money — act as agents for the local authorities in the payment of supplementary assistance to necessitous cases, and the increases which they charge the local authorities each year are far more than the amount of increase allowed to the local authorities. In these and other matters the local authorities incur big debts and deficits. The Local Government (Water Pollution) Act was not in existence in 1977; it has come into operation since. Local authorities are expected and exhorted — the Minister boasts about it in his brief — to operate that Act and they are not allowed anything for it. As a result of a number of disastrous fires involving loss of life and extensive damage the fire brigade service has come very much under the spotlight and local authorities are exhorted to improve and extend the fire services. Again the increase they got there is based on the base year 1977 and no allowance is made for an extended service.

Of course, all this means that the finances of the councils are running into a mess. It is no use for the Minister to come in here saying that the Coalition Government did that in preparing their Estimates. These Estimates are the Estimates of the present Minister and the Government. They adopted them. They voted down the budget of the Coalition in January last and they introduced a new budget. They could have changed the Estimates. They cannot get away from the Estimates, the Estimates are there, but, as the Minister knows and admits, this year the local authorities were not given 100 per cent of the loss in revenue incurred by the de-rating of private buildings. They were given something like 92 per cent, but they were given an assurance, I understand from this Administration, that legislation would be introduced and enacted in this House to enable them to make up the missing eight per cent. That legislation has not been introduced and we have heard nothing about it.

The Minister for the Environment and his Government should do one of two things. Either they should give the local authorities the full 100 per cent loss of revenue on private houses which was promised to them in 1978 by the then Minister for the Environment or they should go through the unpopular exercise of putting through legislation to enable the local authorities to get the money. There is no use in the Minister referring to book-keeping exercises in his brief suggesting how this loss of money is to be made up.

I said the finances of the local authorities are in a bad state. Time was when most local authorities had a credit balance. They have disappeared, for the reasons I have given. It does not end there. Even if local authorities were prepared to borrow for current expenditure, as Fianna Fáil Governments do, they could not do so because the commercial banks, presumably in accordance with a Government direction or a Central Bank direction, refuse to lend money to local authorities beyond a certain level. They refer them to investment banks which are associates of the banks concerned. Investment banks will lend money to the local authorities, but not at the favourable rating ordinarily charged to local authorities but for an extra three or four per cent.

Some of the local authorities have loans of up to £1 million. I am sure that is chicken feed in the city and county of Dublin. Some of the more humble local authorities have loans of that order and are paying excessive interest on them. I am told that some of the services for which local authorities have to pay agents have increased in cost by as much as 65 per cent and, against that, local authorities get an increase this year of 15 per cent. I want to go on record as saying that all this is a recipe for disaster and for a breaking down in the local authority system and the local authority services.

What suffers? We know that when Fianna Fáil were in office before, roadmen were laid off. In my county they were, and others were put on a three day week in other places. When Roscommon County Council thought about it they wrote to the Department suggesting that the money should be transferred from the Department of Social Welfare to the Department of the Environment and the men kept on fulltime and paid. They got an answer from the then Tánaiste, who was consulted as Minister for Finance. His answer was that wages alone did not make jobs. Presumably he meant that there was no use in having men employed if you had not got tar, gravel, shovels and barrels, and there was not money to get or maintain them.

I posed the question: what suffers as a result of starving the local authorities of the necessary money to provide ordinary essential services? I gave an example of what happened when Fianna Fáil were in power before. I am informed that the permanent staff and the engineers have to be kept on. It is crazy economics to starve the local authorities of finance and have expensive staff marking time. That is what happens. The major item of expenditure on which local authorities have discretion is the county road network, with which Deputy Fitzsimons will be familiar, although Meath is far from being the worst county in that regard. The county roads are neglected. Because the county council have discretion they can be repaired, improved and maintained, or they need not be repaired, improved and maintained. They are allowed to run down, and the result of that exercise is that we are mortgaging our future. We are building up huge debts for future years when these roads will have to be repaired.

Most local authorities also are housing authorities, and they have a discretion in regard to housing repairs. These are neglected. Repairs are put on the long finger and houses are not repaired as they should be. Again huge debts are building up. Every Deputy knows the number of representations he gets about local authority houses which need to be repaired. He is invited into houses when he goes on the canvass and asked to look at the state of this, that or the other. Very often he does not have to go into the house because windows, or doors, or roofs need to be repaired. This is a scandal and a waste of money. I notice in the Minister's speech today that one of the new found methods is to sell houses and apply the proceeds to current expenditure. That is eating seed potatoes. It is mortgaging the future. That is capital and it should be treated as capital. I suppose it is better to provide the money than not to provide it but, in my opinion, it is foolish.

This Dáil and the public representatives of today have a serious obligation to see to it that the infrastructure which has been built up over the years in the form of roads, water services, houses, and so on, is not neglected at the cost of building up huge debts and bills to be paid in the future. There is no use in talking about reforming local government until we reform the method of financing local government. Until such time as we do that, the Government should honour the undertaking they gave in 1978 to make good revenue lost as a result of de-rating houses.

I said I would deal mainly with finances, and other Members, Deputy Bermingham and Deputy Cosgrave, will deal with other aspects of the Estimate. As a rural Deputy I would like to say a word about housing reconstruction grants and the chaos that prevails in the Department. Since shortly after the State was founded until January 1980 reconstruction grants in one shape or another were available. From 21 January 1980 all reconstruction and home improvement grants of every description, shape and make were terminated. It is true there were some abuses of these grants but there was no necessity to take a sledgehammer to kill a vicious flea. I obviously over-stated the case when I said that every grant of every description, shape and make was terminated, but if there were a few left I would like to be told about them, because they were negligible.

The Department gave a week or ten days after 20 January 1980 for applications to be sent in for work already started. The Minister of State charged with responsibility for housing repairs, who is a fair operator in this House — I think I would even put him in front of the Minister for Agriculture——

He is good, but he is not that good.

(Cavan-Monaghan): He admits that in those two weeks 40,000 applications for reconstruction grants came into the Department and the Department never recovered from that avalanche. There is a big injustice being done to people all over the country. If I had time I could spend an hour on this point alone. Rural Deputies make representations for payment of housing grants for people who have already made applications. One person who got in touch with me is the personnel manager of a big company, another is a senior officer in the Post Office, and both were told they never made application. Deputy Fahey from Galway had a question down about one of his constituents and was told no application had been received. Deputy Gibbons also had a question down about one of his constituents in Kilkenny and he too was told no application had been received. I got the same reply when I made representations for one of my constituents. This is nonsense. There are probably thousands of applications that have been lost, destroyed or mislaid, and these people are being deprived of these grants. It is not fair. They have a genuine grievance.

I appeal to the Minister of State to accept affidavits from these people so that they will be paid their £600. The fault lies with this Government who terminated the grants, and created the confusion, and it is up to them to sort out the genuine cases. Most of the cases are genuine. I do not think people are manufacturing cases, imagining they sent applications or acting fraudulently. I got two different answers to a question to the Department about the same case. There is confusion and chaos there. I do not know what exactly is involved but it would not be any more expensive to solve this problem than it was to give Deputy Gregory-Independent what he asked for, and it would please more people. I ask the Minister to grasp this nettle and try to solve this problem.

The way we are dealing with these Estimates is completely unsatisfactory. Deputy Bruton has proposals to change the system, and I think the system should be changed. I urge the Minister to face the question of finance for local authorities because he is building up trouble, and running up bills and expense that will have to be dealt with sooner or later.

The debate on this Estimate has been confined to a very short period. I understand I am entitled to one hour. Is that correct?

(Cavan-Monaghan): If the main speakers took one hour there would be no time left for anybody else to contribute.

I have no intention of taking an hour and I propose to be very brief. The Minister read his speech in his uniquely rapid style. I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate.

As Deputy Fitzpatrick said there is a great deal of meat in the content of this Estimate and it is not possible for us to deal with it in a comprehensive way in the time available. Therefore I do not propose to try to do so. We need to get away from this kind of farcical parliamentary procedure where we are debating money that has already been committeed and therefore has to be spent without any qualitative investigation or attempt at a cost benefit analysis inside the walls of this Chamber. The proposals put forward by the previous Government in regard to Estimates debates taking place in advance of the money being committed should be looked at seriously.

We tend to talk at the problem in a general way knowing well that none of the money committed in this Estimate can in reality be changed or significantly modified. In other words, we have an open season debate on the activities of the Department and not a qualitative examination of how much money is being spent, where it is being spent, and, most important, how effective and cost-efficient that expenditure is. I do not know the Minister's view on that proposal, but the Fianna Fáil Party in general have been very slow to introduce parliamentary reform. This system places too much political responsibility on the shoulders of any one individual, irrespective of which Government are in power, and we are beginning to reap the cost of that.

The present system of local government financing is breaking down. It is now manifest to any resident in any part of the country that the abolition of rates and the way in which the Local Government (Financial Provisions) Act, 1979, proceeded to operate, did more damage to the environment and local authority services than any other single act since the foundation of the State. Because the abolition of rates was a politically popular package at the time, politicians have been slow to criticise it. This is at a time when many people are homeless and local authority services are breaking down, and the Estimate bears out that fact. The public should realise that there is something fundamentally immoral in the idea that people who live in large houses, who have good incomes with very low mortgages, should expect local services such as public lighting, drainage, refuse collection, road sweeping and so on in addition to such items as library services or the lollypop man to be free. I find the suggestion that these services should be free to such people an immoral suggestion, and the Labour Party are opposed to it in principle. In the context of the enormous outcry against the unfair burden of tax on the PAYE sector in particular, we have to look again at the question of some form of revenue from the owners of large properties and houses. That is open to the political charge that the Labour Party will reintroduce rates on every small labourer's cottage in the country. Certainly I am not accusing Deputy Brennan of such low practice, but the charge will be made elsewhere by others and I make the statement in the full knowledge that it will be used in that sense. However, the fact remains that we are short of money and it is not acceptable that the owners of large houses, people who have good incomes, should not pay their way.

The present system of local government finances does not work adequately, and for two reasons. The first reason is that it is not controlled by the Minister for the Environment but by the Minister for Finance. The figure of 11, 12 or 15 per cent is an arbitrary figure based not on the needs or requirements of the local authority but related exclusively to the overall economic requirements of the State. The concept and reality of local Government no longer exist. The logic of what we are doing at the moment is that we should abolish every local council, abolish the time-wasting and costly exercise of local authority debates, simply appoint the managers, as the French did under de Gaulle, and have them as prefects in each county, and do away with the trappings of democracy because in reality there is none at local government level.

The Labour Party are opposed to such a logical extension because we are firmly committed to the idea of local democracy. However, there cannot be local democracy without some control and autonomy over finances. For that reason we will be introducing in the House next autumn radical proposals to restructure totally local authority finances. This would do away with the present system of grants-in-aid and payment in lieu of rates, whether it be the agricultural rate relief or others, and divising a system based on each local authority, by statutory right, obtaining a percentage of the PAYE and VAT returns for their area. That would be their money by right. It would be published and would be known and it would not be subject to the discretion of the Minister of the day or the Government of the day.

In addition, we propose that each local authority would be required to produce a minimum level of functions and services and that beyond that the restriction on what a local authority can or cannot do would be removed. Subject to the normal laws of the land they would be able to undertake whatever functions they believed their community needed and they would be able to raise funds in a number of ways at local level, in addition to the central grant I have outlined. We believe this would reintroduce into every community a sense of realism in terms of what the community needed and what it was prepared to pay. It would introduce diversity in that some authorities at varying stages in their development would opt for a certain range of services that would not necessarily be the same in other areas. The needs of Donegal are totally different from the needs of Leitrim or Offaly. Even in large built-up areas the same applies, and the needs of Raheny or Clontarf are totally different from the needs of Swords or Blanchardstown. At the moment there is no flexibility at local level to take account of this factor.

My second point is in relation to local authority and local government reform. The Minister's speech referred to the moneys he is making available for the Dublin inner city authority and for the two commissions proposed under the urban areas legislation currently before the House. The Labour Party opposed the legislation dealing with urban areas. We accept there were good intentions in the proposals but we regarded it as a step away from the process of local democracy, participation and control which we believe to be essential.

Based on my reading of the Minister's speech, it appears that the function will be to establish legally in a statutory form the inter-Departmental inner city group. This will be another kind of half-way house, quasi-legal, quasi-consultative and quasi-democratic. It will be anything but a straightforward democratically elected body. It will be another blunting of the process of local democracy and control, another layer of bureaucracy at a time when we cannot afford it and we do not want it.

I am very perturbed at this persistent trend, which I have criticised frequently here and elsewhere, that seems to pervade the Custom House and which seems to affect every occupant of that premises irrespective of what party they belong to. If the Department of the Environment and the Government of the day do not trust local people to make decisions for themselves — and implicit in that is to make mistakes of a monumental order — then they should come out openly and say so and abolish entirely the system of local democracy. They should appoint managers as prefects as was done in France. Alternatively, they should rationalise the system and establish a system of local government reform. In the autumn we hope to introduce a local government reform Bill for the greater Dublin area based on the proposals I set out in the debate on Second Stage on the Bill dealing with urban areas and we will be looking for the kind of support that seems to be in this House for some radical and progressive measures.

I am somewhat upset, but not too surprised because I realise it is not relevant to an Estimates speech, that the legislative programme of the Department of the Environment has not been stitched into the Minister's speech. In particular I am concerned at the lack of progress in reforming the law in relation to compulsory purchase legislation. Much of the money that has to be spent on local authority housing in the Dublin area will have to go in the form of land acquisition. If we persist on the inner city programme it will have to go in a substantial way on land acquisition, and at the moment that is extremely expensive. It could be removed or reduced if the the compulsory purchase legislation was improved and speeded up in such a way that it would enable the process of acquisition to be speeded up.

We have, on the surface, a national roads plan a document which I think was published about two-and-a-half years ago, and we have a timetable set out in that of works to be carried out over a period of time. I am not satisfied that that road programme plan is sufficiently finely tuned to get the improvements we need. My criticism is that, for understandable political reasons. the money is being spread too thinly and too far. The net effect, in terms of tangible benefit, is being reduced as a consequence. It would be unfair of me to suggest that because the Minister lives in the constituency of Dublin North County that the road from Dublin to the airport and on past Swords has been improved dramatically, but it will not hurt if I draw attention to the fact that these improvements have been made, but——

These improvements were badly needed for generations.

——the Minister is so shy he would be slow to emphasise this——

I am grateful to the Deputy for mentioning that.

There are other key roads which, if improved, would dramatically reduce the travelling distance between major points in the country. Because they are the difficult sections, the link from Chapelizod to Lucan and so on, and because it is difficult to acquire the land because of the high cost involved, they have been postponed. It has been easier to undertake roadworks in the middle of the country, but the net result is that the travelling time, and therefore the cost in commercial terms and, consequently, to the economy and the community, between points A and B remains unchanged because what is gained on the long improved stretch out in the country is lost in the increasingly blocked-up congested outskirts of towns and cities. I am surprised that the Minister and the present Government, with their desire to introduce private capital into the public sector programme, have not made more use of the toll roads legislation with a view to promoting actively the provision of toll roads as urban by-passes. There are only about 25 major towns which effectively cause delays, and toll road by-passes could be financed in conjunction with the pension funds and provide improvement to the national primary route system in a very dramatic and self-financing way. Perhaps the Minister or the Minister of State will respond to that suggestion.

The Minister frequently has a schizophrenic role to play too in this House by being Minister for the Environment on the one hand and effectively being Minister for the building industry on the other, because it is alleged that there is a conflict between developers and the environment. It is essential to recognise that the building industry in its multifaceted way, is a most important industry for which the Minister for the Environment has responsibility. There are numerous problems confronting the industry at the moment, which the increase in expenditure alone will not resolve. I hope that the proposed improvements in the planning and development legislation which I hope this House will pass next week will remove some of the obstacles and difficulties that are unnecessarily there and causing delays in the development of the city and country generally, with consequent losses to the community at large and, specifically, to the building industry workers at all levels. I suppose I should declare some interest in that as I am a professional architect and I have a direct interest in it. It is an interest which is shared by thousands of others and upon which many other people depend also.

The Estimates speech and debate have a degree of artificiality about them. We are unable to evalute, subhead by subhead, the value for money which is being expended. We can only draw attention to those items which we consider to be important. I have given my views to the House on roads and environment generally but, specifically, on the question of local authority finance and local government reform. I hope, at a later stage, to be more specific about these matters.

I would like to thank the Minister for his co-operation in recent weeks in relation to the building land Bill which is still before this House and on which this House has agreed to establish a select committee. It is my understanding that that will be in full line with the honourable commitment made by the Minister to have it established before the House rises for the summer recess. I appreciate the support that the Minister and the House in general have given to this.

I agree with Deputy Fitzpatrick when he said it was a sad reflection that an Estimate as vast as this, of over £400 million for the Department of the Environment, should be rushed through the House in such a short time. If the Opposition had been more considerate and more constructive over the last few days we would have had more time to discuss it. We wasted a very valuable day yesterday. I want to speak on a number of issues concerning the Meath constituency. When we talk about Meath we are in the suburbs of Dublin, or Dublin is in the suburbs of Meath, whatever way one likes to put it. The Minister for the Environment, the Minister of State, the Ceann Comhairle, Deputy Birmingham and Deputy Brennan are all from Dublin so I am taking a chance on saying that.

It is well to be in good company occasionally.

Thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. Planning in general in Dublin city and county should harmonise with planning in surrounding counties. I include Wicklow and Kildare as well as Meath. Over the last 30 years there has been a trend of movement of the population towards Wicklow. In more recent years there has been a move to Kildare and in the latter years it has moved to County Meath. There are many problems related to the Department of the Environment, such as the provision of roads, water and sewerage. There should be more flexible arrangements between local authorities and Government so that the plan for Dublin will include counties contiguous to the metropolis. In other words, there should not be planning just for Dublin city and county without consideration of the surrounding counties.

In Meath our roads have been taking a terrible battering from traffic to and from the city. There is traffic from the west and the north, and Meath County Council and the General Council of County Councils have been asking the Department to give special road allocations to such counties as Meath and Kildare which carry the traffic to and from the city. Not many years ago Kildare and Meath boasted about having the best roads in Ireland. The roads in both counties were laid through flat land, their surfaces were known as flat tops, but the foundations of these roads were not laid to carry present volumes of traffic.

In this context I would mention the enormous number of articulated trucks going to and coming from Europe which are traipsing, grossly overloaded, through our roads. I suggest that the Department of the Environment should have close liaison with the other Departments concerned in regard to such commercial traffic so that there would be checks on the laden weight of these trucks. The Garda have enough on their plates already. These trucks are knocking lumps off our roads in Meath and Kildare.

You, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, will be familiar with the road from Clonee to Blanchardstown. Clonee is now a satellite town and it connects with the national primary road through Navan to the north and the west. Dublin County Council are concerned with that road but they have not done anything about it for 30 years. They have straightened the Dublin-Bray and the Dublin-Swords roads, and I suggest that this road at Blanchardstown which leads to Clonee, connected with the national primary to Donegal, which is a disgrace, should be looked after by Dublin County Council. The Navan road has been the scene of many fatal accidents, and much of it may be due to the frustration of drivers because of bad road surfaces.

In his 34-page speech the Minister covered a vast amount of ground, and I shall deal with a few points that concerned me. We have a terrible problem in Meath about water supplies and sewerage facilities. Being adjacent to Dublin, the population in Meath in the past ten years has increased from 71,000 to almost 100,000. Apart from the naturally prolific tendency of our people, that is mainly due to migration from Dublin — many people who work in the city have come to live in Meath.

All this has resulted in a desperate water and sewerage problem. In Meath we proposed a water scheme called the East Meath Regional Supply Scheme which would cover an area adjacent to a line from Clonee to Navan. At the moment we are depending on a water supply from Drogheda Corporation from whom we are supposed to get 1.6 million gallons a day. As recently as the bank holiday weekend half of east Meath did not have any water because we were getting only 1.1 million gallons a day, a supply which was totally inadequate. There is a scheme before the Department costing £1.3 million for a regional supply of water. The county council are having to refuse planning permission for houses because there is not enough water to supply them. I appeal to the Minister to sanction this scheme as soon as possible.

Pollution of our rivers and lakes is a national disgrace. Generally the blame is laid on farmers, industries and local authorities. Fish life is being destroyed, and sooner or later people will begin to suffer from hepatitis and other diseases through contamination of drinking water. Some time ago Lough Sheelin was very badly polluted and some of those responsible were brought to court and fined £50. Certainly the law is not strong enough, and fines of such amounts do not constitute a deterrent. One of the best trout rivers in the country was destroyed by pollution.

(Cavan-Monaghan): They were operating housing structures prepared in accordance with plans approved by the Department of Agriculture and grant-aided.

That may be so. During the bank holiday weekend I was in Gormanston College, which is close by Gormanston Camp and the village of Stamullen. Local anglers were furious because several buckets full of beautiful trout had been removed from the river, having been killed by pollution caused by farmers in County Dublin putting silage into the streams feeding this river. The local reservoir which is used to augment the normal water supply could not be used on this occasion because of pollution. If this pollution continues enormous problems will be created.

There was much talk recently about the low percentage poll in Dublin West.

(Cavan-Monaghan): A lot of people came out.

Some of ours did not come out on the last occasion but they will come out next time.

It was the highest poll in a Dublin by-election in 25 years.

I do not know about that. Deputy Quinn said that only 50 per cent of the American people voted in the presidential election. We should examine the French system of holding elections on a Sunday. They vote on two Sundays but I am suggesting that we vote on only one.

There are some people who would still manage to vote twice.

I do not think any of us need be anxious about the electoral position at present — at least, I am hoping we do not.

(Cavan-Monaghan): Wishful thinking.

Deputy Fitzsimons to proceed. I am reluctant to remind the Deputies that whatever private arrangement exists about time, it is hoped that the Minister will get in at 3.45 p.m.

If Deputy Birmingham is aware of any cases of double voting it is his duty to report them. By looking at the way other countries operate, we can sometimes glean much information and perhaps we should consider changing our elections from mid-week to the weekend.

I will try to match the brevity of Deputy Quinn, if not perhaps the colour of the last contribution. It is my intention to confine myself, with one exception, to some of the problems facing urban areas. The Minister referred to the problem of drunken driving and indicated his intention to introduce legislation in this area. Unfortunately our parliamentary procedures are such that when legislation emerges the opportunity available to the Opposition to influence the content of it is some what limited. If the Minister is thinking about such legislation, I would make one or two suggestions for his consideration.

He mentioned that he hoped to rectify problems in the present legislation, but if he sets out with the intention of plugging loopholes he will fail. He will succeed for about six months and then somebody will find another loophole. That is the way it has been since the introduction of breathalyser legislation and mandatory disqualifications for drunken driving.

I suggest that the problem arises from the fact that the courts have little or no discretion in this area, justices and appeal judges of the Circuit Court are reduced almost to rubber stamps when it comes to the question of penalty, and people have concentrated their ingenuity on finding loopholes and technicalities in a way which does not happen to legislation in any other area of the criminal law. If legislation introduced contained a provision making disqualification the norm, but providing that in wholly exceptional and extraordinary circumstances a discretion would rest on the district justice, one might find that much of the fun would go out of the game for the legal profession and that the legislation would, in fact, work very much better. One thing the Minister should consider is the possibility of a scale of different lengths of disqualification depending on the limit, perhaps the shortest disqualification of six to 12 months where the limit recorded is only marginally in excess of the legal limit and much longer disqualification as people go up the scale. I do not want to pursue that matter at this stage and I am only mentioning it now because if and when the Minister introduces legislation, if I were to speak then and be faced with a fait accompli, nothing that I could say would have the slightest impact, in all probability.

Other speakers have commented on the rather inadequate — the mildest word that one can use — approach which we adopt to discussing Estimates. It is really quite absurd that we spend an afternoon analysing, in theory, how hundreds of millions of pounds are to be spent, when the money has already been spent or, if not, has already been pledged. It is about time we caught ourselves on. People elect representatives to the Dáil and expect them to fulfil a number of functions, but I suspect that if one were to ask people in O'Connell Street what they thought was the most important thing that a public representative could do for them, they would say ensure that they got value for money. As a legislature and an Oireachtas, we devote little or not time to that. There is no serious attempt or opportunity to go through the subheads of the Votes and see whether our money is being spent wisely or if we could get better value for it. The time just is not available. Even the Minister himself, in asking the Oireachtas to sanction large sums of money, was not able to go through them paragraph by paragraph and even outline what some of the expenditure was for — thankfully, because had he been allowed to, nobody else would have had a chance to speak. I would like to think that, at this stage, some sort of consensus might be emerging around the House that our present procedures are inadequate and that this might be the last occasion on which we spent our time on a Friday afternoon discussing the expenditure of these gigantic sums of money when, in truth, we have no opportunity to influence how that money will be raised or spent.

Yesterday, Deputies were provided with an opportunity to vote confidence or no confidence in this Government. I was in the minority in the House in voting no confidence, and I voted no confidence with the greatest possible enthusiasm. However, if there is one area in which the Government are deserving of praise and credit, that is in the appointment of a Minister of State with particular responsibility for urban affairs. That was a worthwhile innovation, something which should have happened before now, and the Government are worthy of support for that initiative. Urban areas have particular problems, a particular identity and present a particular challenge. Those problems are not confined to the inner city, although, for obvious reasons, there has been a definite concentration on those problems during the lifetime of this Dáil, and certainly the problems which parts of the inner city face are truly terrifying.

Almost every major urban area, the newer parts as well as the old, faces very serious problems. If we take a brief overall look at the situation in any of the bigger cities we will find that, while the hard core commercial centre has managed to thrive and prosper, once one moves away from that one is immediately in an area of decay, an area where a decade-and-a-half ago there was intense commercial activity, servicing its immediate area. The people have moved out and the industries and services which once thrived have died. All one need do is walk along the quays and try to remember it as it was 15 years ago and one will see exactly what I mean.

We all know the difficulties that follow from that decline in population in the inner city. Those who remain in appalling housing conditions have particular problems with education, unemployment and social deprivation. In the other suburbs one finds a situation of sprawling, unplanned suburbs, lacking even the most basic amenities. The problems facing those two areas are not unrelated. They have this in common — the problems in part stem from the fact that each has a wholly unbalanced age structure. In the inner city, young people move out and those left behind are the least capable of invigorating their environment. In the outer suburbs, again, there is a wholly unnatural age structure, everybody the same age, young married couples with large families of young children.

If we are serious about getting to grips with the problems peculiar to our urban areas, we must look at that very striking imbalance in age structure and specifically ask ourselves whether some of our policies and some of the policies promoted by the Department of the Environment do not contribute to that situation. One area which springs instantly to mind is the way we assist people to purchase houses. Very considerable assistance in one form or another is provided for first-time purchasers of first-time houses — £1,000 grants; interest subsidy; obvious advantages in terms of exemption from stamp duty for buying new houses; in general, legal fees likely to be lower. All the incentives exist for buying a new house. If a young couple wish to buy a new house they must buy it in the outer suburbs, thereby forcing young people to migrate from the inner city out to the outer suburbs. We must see what we can do in this situation to make it possible for young people to buy second-hand houses and remain in the same community as their parents grew up in and keep that community alive.

That is the net effect of our policy at present. We talk about a desire to keep the inner city alive, to keep communities alive, but with the exception of local authority housing — which is obviously welcome — there is not the remotest possibility of the community staying alive. There is no possibility whatever that young people will be able to find houses in the areas in which they grew up, purchase them at a reasonable cost, remain there and bring up their families in that area. If they do decide to buy a house then all the incentives are for them to move out as far as they possibly can go; that is the only way they can afford it. I assume that in the past the justification for this discrimination in favour of new houses as distinct from older, secondhand ones, has been that it was in aid of the building industry and, for that reason, was justified. I understand that argument but, when that has become now so wholly contradictory to what is meant to be the central plank of this Government's policy — the regeneration of the inner city — then it seems to me to be time to think again. I believe we have reached a stage at which discrimination between the would-be purchaser of a new house and a secondhand house serves no useful purpose and is in fact destructive of the Government's legislative intentions.

I said that I thought the appointment of a Minister of State with particular responsibility for urban affairs was a wholly commendable initiative because the situation now obtaining is that we have over half the population living in urban areas. My authority for that is An Foras Forbartha's review for 1980-81. Indeed, they anticipate that towns with populations in excess of 4,000 are likely to double in size and that as much as 40 per cent of the total population may be concentrated in the eastern region by the year 2000. Those sorts of statistics and that sort of project demand a response which has not been forthcoming so far.

The appointment of a Minister of State is to be welcomed but we remain in a situation in which our major urban centres are denied any form of local government in truth. We have local authorities local in name only. We have an extraordinary situation obtaining in that part-time councillors are elected for areas in many cases as big or certainly almost as big as Dáil constituencies. There is no possibility whatsoever of any local input into the deliberations of such an authority. Even that authority are circumscribed in their functions. There is a quite bizarre hotchpotch of people with responsibility for what happens in our major cities: gardaí concerned with traffic control, the local authorities concerned with the roads and the Department of the Environment have a finger in the pie. It is all expected to work. Yet it palpably is not working at present because we have no local democracy in truth in any of our major cities. It really is time that we started to say that enough is enough, that we examined the possibility of a regional authority for all our major cities and, to that regional authority, central government must be prepared to cede real power. That means that the Custom House must be prepared to open up and shed some of its responsibilities to an enhanced regional authority. Under that regional authority there is need for community councils, town councils, to represent what are clearly identifiable communities, communities at present denied any effective voice because of the inadequacy of our local authority system. This has been a hot potato passed around this House for God only knows how long. Everybody pays lip service to the idea of local government reform yet nothing happens. We have had Green Papers, White Papers, discussion documents and I do not know how many seminars on the subject but no legislation has emerged. Every year that passes, the structures become creakier and creakier, less and less adequate.

There are others in the House who want to speak, at least two other Deputies, and as the Minister is to speak in half an hour I shall make just one other observation. This relates to the problem of unfinished estates for which I know there is provision in the Estimate. I know that the 1976 Planning Act considerably enhanced the power of local authorities but it just is not enough. Every Deputy spent a fair amount of time this session wandering around the Dublin West constituency. If any of them did not know of the scale of this problem before going there, he certainly knows now. It is intolerable that people are allowed to play the three card trick under the Companies Act and escape. That is what is happening. Certainly I had the experience when canvassing in that constituency of walking a mile or perhaps a mile-and-a-half and found what everybody knew to be the same people building houses under three or four different labels so that, if things should go wrong, they could drop the company and, as they hope, emerge unscathed. There is real need for discussion of this problem between the Minister for the Environment and the Minister for Industry and Commerce to curb what are obvious abuses of the Companies Act. It is being used to deny would-be house purchasers the protection that is their due and to defeat the objectives of the Planning Acts. I would ask the Minister and his Minister of State to tackle that problem energetically. It seems to me that if the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment couples his declared commitment to the inner city with an attempt to do something for our increasingly characterless outer suburbs he will be doing a very good day's work.

Thank you Deputy and for your consideration for other Deputies.

Deputy Fitzpatrick said there was a lack of confidence in the Government and in the building industry at present. I do not want to sound too political but the best thing that ever happened was that there was a change of Government particularly for the building industry. Strange as it may seem there are four Deputies on the Housing Committee of Dublin Corporation. Therefore I am satisfied that this Estimate will be regarded as of the utmost importance. How Deputy Fitzpatrick can come in here and say there is a lack of confidence in the Fianna Fáil administration — indeed yesterday's vote proved that there is not — when Dublin Corporation have a housing waiting list of 7,000 people and when the house building programme in 1982 under the last Government dropped to 1,350 houses—I cannot understand. We are endeavouring to increase that number for 1983 to a figure of 2,300, constituting a major step forward. The Government have put a sum of £91 million into local authority housing in Dublin. That in itself is an indication of the Government's commitment in this field. There is no use in ex-Ministers or others coming in here endeavouring to score political points on an issue like this. Housing is a basic human need. Any Government with a social conscience would be prepared to pour money into it. It is an important industry. The Minister emphasised this in his remarks today. The Coalition Government's contribution to housing in Dublin was £52 million. Dublin has one-third of the entire population and therefore one-third of total housing needs. Contrast that with Fianna Fáil's input of £91 million.

Some speakers mentioned urban development and the appointment of Deputy Brady as junior Minister in charge of this. The Opposition voted against some of Deputy Brady's proposals a few weeks ago. I have grave doubts about their intentions with regard to inner city development. I do not care what deals are done as long as inner city development takes place. The infrastructure is there, the shops, schools and so on whereas if we build houses out in the country we must provide those also.

I am surprised at the staggering cost of inner city housing. Houses are now costing between £40,000 and £44,000. Perhaps the time has come to invite in the private sector and so have a twin effort to try and solve this problem. The Opposition cannot say that they are all in favour of inner city development and then vote against legislation to deal with it. We must not be parochial in our outlook but Dublin has one-third of the entire population and so should have one-third of the budget for the local authorities.

There has been a lot of talk about reform in local government. In Dublin there are three local authorities — Dublin Corporation, Dublin County Council and Dun Laoghaire Borough Council. Dublin is not that big a county. I speak as a councillor who has attended many meetings and read umpteen documents dealing with reform of local Government. The time has come to have one central authority looking after Dublin city, Dublin county and Dun Laoghaire. The time has come for this to be done if there is to be any progress. We have become bogged down with red tape. Those involved in the three different local authorities are very jealous and have a what-we-have-we-hold attitude. They are not prepared to hive off any of their responsibilities. They live in a little world of their own and are not prepared to co-operate with each other to serve the community better. I hope commonsense will prevail and that the Minister and Minister of State will have a good look at this. It does not matter whose toes they tread on. We cannot cod around with this anymore. It must be tackled. Dublin city, Dublin county and Dun Laoghaire should be run by one central authority. There is too much duplication. If one wants to obtain planning permission one has to go to a different room for each of the areas. It is becoming a joke. The impression I got from Deputy Birmingham was that we would all be at one on this. However, the problem is to try and get this through to the political entities that make up the authorities.

Legislation must be brought before the House. Both the Minister and the Minister of State have experience of local authorities and know what I am talking about. There is a chronic housing shortage. Dublin Corporation build 20 houses to the acre on their land. In county Dublin we cannot build any more than ten. The land is not being utilised to the best advantage. The Department should look at this area but at the end of the day it is the politicians who make the decisions.

In relation to planning, as Deputies who are members of local authorities know, there is an undue delay — sometimes it can be as long as nine months — in granting by-law approval to people who want to go ahead with development in the city and parts of the county. This delay is totally unacceptable to those in the corporation, to Deputies and to the people who are frustrated waiting for approval. Steps should be taken to deal with this. The time has now come when a certificate should be issued from engineers or architects to say that a building has been built in accordance with building specifications and is satisfactory from a planning point of view. Perhaps that will be included in the new Bill dealing with planning. There are too many delays in planning departments. I often spent many hours looking for very small items in planning departments. Every councillor realises that whether he is on the planning committee or not.

I should like to refer to the famous Gregory deal about which we heard so much criticism. Dublin Corporation built about 70,000 houses over the last 20 or 30 years. The question of housing maintenance has always been a sore topic. During the Coalition's reign of office one could not get the price of a beehive from the corporation much less have maintenance carried out. The Gregory deal has resulted in the recruitment of 150 tradesmen to carry out this work. Before, when a constituent wanted some repair job done, we were told there was no money in the corporation available for this and there were no tradesmen. Now these extra tradesmen have been employed and there will be a substantial advance in the amount of repair work carried out. People who rent houses are guaranteed maintenance. The Coalition Government never put any money into that area. I hope to see a decided improvement in this area over the next five or six months. We are all at one on that. Everybody knows that there has been a serious shortfall in tradesmen and a serious cutback in housing maintenance. Unless this input of £91 million, which we hear so much about, takes place about 400 or 500 men will be made redundant by Dublin Corporation. That is another story but all those facts are quitely pushed aside when some people are talking about those schemes.

I feel more attention should be paid by the Minister and the Minister of State to the problem of unfinished estates. There are many of those unfinished estates in Raheny, Donaghmede and other places in north County Dublin. They are an eyesore to the people living in those areas. I know of one which is there for ten years and nothing has been done about it. When planning permission is given to builders I cannot understand why a certain amount of money is not kept back to make sure that if those builders fall down on the job there is sufficient money left to finish the job. There are many unfinished estates in other cities and towns as well as in Dublin. Politicians feel the breeze when they go to canvass in those areas where estates are left unfinished for up to ten years. Those unfinished estates should not be tolerated. The law should be tightened so that they can be dealt with.

Deputy Fitzsimons spoke about the water supply. It is hard to believe that there is a shortage of water in Dublin. Most Saturday nights when people in different areas in Dublin go to have a bath they cannot have it because there is no water. There must be something wrong when this water is not available. I believe we use 75 million gallons of water every day in Dublin. There should be no excuse, with all the rain we have, for a shortage of water. I have heard of people who turn on their taps in Raheny, Kilbarrack, Donaghmede, Artane and many other areas in north County Dublin and there is no water for them. Something should be done about this.

I welcome the Minister's statement regarding the resettlement of itinerants. It is a national scandal the way itinerants are being treated. I am on an itinerant settlement committee in Dublin Corporation, Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire borough. Despite all the efforts of the officials of those councils, no satisfactory solution can be found to this problem because the political will is not there. Councillors come to meetings, pass resolutions and then go to residents' associations and community association meetings, do a somersault and say something else. The result of all this is that no progress is made. A sum of £140,000 was spent on an itinerant halt at Belcamp and those people would not be let in on the site when it was completed. People picketed the site to prevent the electricity being switched on. If there is any Christianity in the country something should be done for those people. They are our people. There is a great deal of talk about treating all the sons and the daughters of the nation equally but that is not the case with those people. Itinerants are entitled to a place in the sun if such a place is to be found. They are entitled to have their children educated and have them settled into society in proper housing. There is a high mortality rate among itinerant children. This is possibly due to the hard life they lead sleeping in the wind and rain. I would like to see jobs being provided for itinerants. I have been given many documents in relation to the resettlement of itinerants but I have never seen anything about providing jobs for them. I believe, if the men are given jobs and are given a base, they will work from that base and those itinerants can be settled into society. I will not delay any further because I know a few more speakers wish to get in.

The Minister will be called at 3.45 p.m.

I intend to be brief to allow my colleague in and to allow the Minister in. When one sees the large amount of money in the Minister's Estimate one feels one should welcome this but when one examines it and one looks at the building trade and realises how much of this money will filter into the building trade, one becomes alarmed. We welcome the money that is provided but when one looks at builders' providers and builders who are on a three-day week and because of the lack of money and the lack of contracts they cannot keep on their staff, one realises how bad things are. They are losing staff and the building trade is in a terrible mess.

Dublin Corporation recently advertised for carpenters and they received 300 applications for ten posts. This gives one an idea of the state the building industry is in. There is a cure for all this. The Minister has dragged his feet in relation to it. The Housing Finance Agency, which was set up by this party when in Government, was set up to enable people to get houses of their own without having to pay very large deposits. Confidence in this scheme has been eroded because of the action of the Minister.

I received a letter from a constituent of mine a few days ago who looked for bridging finance after he had received sanction from Dublin County Council. This man was told by his bank that they were not confident the cheque would be paid over within a certain time. The bank said this man would be on a bridging loan for so long he would not be able to afford it. The solicitor acting for this man and his wife pointed out to me that because of the uncertainty in the contract which was drawn up and because of the uncertainty of the instructions they received from the Incorporated Law Society about the type of building lease, confidence in the scheme was eroded. The solicitor informed my constituent that in the Dublin county area there were at least 500 applicants who were sanctioned for this loan and to date the Department have not given the necessary equipment to the local authorities to enable them to pay out the cheques and allow those people to go into their houses.

I believe, if this scheme was properly administered it would solve the enormous problem for the 700 people on Dublin Corporation housing list. This is an excellent loan scheme and I cannot understand why the Minister should drag his feet in relation to it, erode confidence in the loan and put people who are anxious to purchase their houses in this position. This loan scheme was brought in to help young married couples and to help people in corporation houses to surrender their houses and buy other houses elsewhere. This would generate more employment in the building industry. As a person left a house, another person who was on the housing list would be able to move into that house. I ask the Minister to have a serious look at this excellent scheme which we introduced while in Government. The Minister could argue that it is dear money but there is no such thing as cheap money nowadays. The Minister should now restore that confidence. He should communicate with the local authorities and convey to them his confidence in this scheme going ahead and that it will have his full backing. The local authorities are just waiting for the Minister to do that.

The Minister referred also to the question of the materials used in the building industry. I would remind the Minister that cement is being imported from Germany on a large scale and is being sold cheaper than is the case of the cement manufactured here. This is a shameful situation. We have also a good native timber industry. This timber could be used to reduce our imports of this commodity. This would be helpful too in the context of the "Buy Irish" campaign for which the Minister had responsibility at one stage.

Reference has been made to the taking in charge of estates. In my constituency there are at least 13 unfinished estates. As public representatives we find residents and representatives of residents' associations coming to our advice centres on this matter. Very often I am called to residents' association meetings where the problem is being discussed. We need to make every effort possible by way of our local authorities to have unfinished estates taken in charge. In respect of the Grange Abbey estate in Raheny I tabled a question to the Minister but the Ceann Comhairle wrote to me to say that the question was not being accepted as the matter was one for the local authority. On that basis I approached the local authority to be told that they would take the estate in charge if the Minister would give them the necessary money to do so. Following that I rephrased the question to ask whether the Minister would make money available to have this estate taken in charge. The reply I got was that the matter was one for the local authority. This debate gives me the opportunity of asking the Minister to give consideration to providing the local authority with the necessary finance to take this estate in charge. Incidentally, the Minister represented that area once.

There are decent people there and they were very kind to me.

They have a high regard for the Minister. In Baldoyle there is an estate known as Sea Grange. This estate was built under the guaranteed order scheme of some years ago but because of the type of materials used in the 307 houses concerned, the roofs are in a deplorable condition. People have made several representations not only to the Minister but to previous Ministers and on the eve of the last election they received a letter from a member of the Minister's party promising that new roofs would be put on their houses. The IIRS were called in and it was found that there was strawboard deck on top of timber and that on top of that there was felt. The problem is that the felt has worn with the result that the people have no confidence that these roofs will last. Consequently, I am asking the Minister to include, if possible, in his Supplementary Estimate, enough money to put the roofs of those houses in proper order.

By way of helping the building industry would the Minister be prepared to give some consideration to the small builders' scheme which was operated by the various local authorities? Under this scheme some very good small builders were allocated sites by the local authorities at a reasonable charge. The sites were serviced and the builders concerned built some very good houses on them. However, that system seems to have broken down. There are not enough sites being made available. Perhaps the Minister would reactivate the scheme so as to encourage small builders who are the backbone of the building industry.

Again, I appeal to the Minister to give consideration to the Housing Finance Agency with a view to having them stop dragging their feet and to restore the confidence which people are seeking in that agency. If the Minister makes the necessary moneys available in this area, it will make a lot of people happy. It would take a lot of people off the housing list and would ensure employment for many people in the building industry. I should like the Minister to make some comment on this matter.

I shall be brief. I welcome the moneys being voted here today but as my colleague has stated while the amount seems huge, it will be dented very much by reason of inflation. The money that we are getting from the local authorities in rural Ireland is not adequate with the result that some of our by-roads, for instance, are in a very bad condition. This situation is harming the tourist industry. I met an American recently and he expressed great disappointment with our roads. We are not being fair to ourselves by allowing this situation to develop. I am sure that we could do better.

A scheme that is very important in rural Ireland is the group water scheme. Six years ago I had the pleasure of being party to the formation of such a scheme. The cost involved to the individuals concerned at that time was about £100. I am involved now in another such scheme and I find that the contribution is £700. To someone living in a cottage in rural Ireland that is a lot of money. We are talking of people who for years have had to draw water across fields and who have been looking forward to the day when they would have a proper water supply in their homes but that day is seen by them now as being a long way off.

If we are to develop in the way in which we should develop, local authorities will have to assume responsibility for those schemes. This will involve quite an amount of money. Somebody has said that the majority of our population are living in the cities. I acknowledge that the cities are bursting at the seams. The day will come when we will not be able to develop rural Ireland. The Minister introduced what is known as a western package under which £600 is available. We need that in rural Ireland, particularly in places where the county councils will never have an opportunity of servicing those areas.

I must stop the Deputy now.

I am sorry to have to interrupt Deputy O'Brien. I share the frustration expressed on all sides of the House at the fact that we have had to have such a short debate on such a large Estimate involving such a vast sum of money and a Department that I know every Deputy in the House is interested in because of the many problems that arise at advice centres, and many Members here are members of local authorities.

Deputy Fitzpatrick raised the question of local authority finance and made various comments which I feel should not go unchallenged. The limits on rate poundage increase were singled out for special attention. There is no doubt that I, in common with every Deputy here, would like to see local authorities get more money for their services. Local authorities, like all other organs of the public service, must be prepared to take a new look at their priorities and expenditure patterns so as to make the best use of the resources available to them. Having said that, however, let me repeat that I do not regard the limit on rate poundages as being unduly restrictive. It has been suggested, for example, that local spending will be restricted to the same levels as the rate poundage increases. Nothing could be further from the truth. Local rates are but one aspect of local authority finance.

I have already dealt in this debate with the wide-ranging improvements I expect to flow from the additional £73 million our budget provided for local authority services, capital and non-capital. On non-capital spending there is scope for considerable buoyancy due to increases in valuation, Government grants and other sources of income to local authorities. Perhaps I can best illustrate this by saying that last year a limit of 12 per cent applied on rate poundage increases. Nevertheless, taken together, local authorities were, because of the buoyancy factors I have mentioned, able to budget in total for a 25 per cent increase in current spending. The local rates estimates for 1982 have not all yet come in, but I am confident that the generous extra allocations we provided in the budget will enable local authorities to maintain their services at a satisfactory level in 1982 and in many areas to make significant improvements.

The effect of the limits on the freedom of local authorities was also mentioned. I make no apology for the limits. I see them as essential to hold a reasonable balance between the needs of local authorities and the calls on the Exchequer to meet those needs. The limits also afford a measure of protection to shopkeepers, farmers, industrialists etc. from excessive rate increases. The limit on rate poundages is a general one and it leaves local authorities as free as they were before to order their priorities within the overall limit. This may mean that some services may not develop as quickly as some people might like, while other services will develop quickly. It is too easy perhaps to attribute the unpopular decisions to the effects of overall rate limits. If the decisions of individual local authorities seem to some critics to hit particular services hard, it may well be that the cause lies not in any real shortage of money but in the way those local authorities order their priorities. It is to this aspect that the critics should direct their attention.

Deputy Quinn was critical of the proposed urban development areas bodies and the inner city authority as somehow posing a threat to the traditional functions of local authorities. I thought that the position on this had already been made clear. These new bodies will be designed to complement and support the work of local authorities and to work in co-operation with them. I am surprised that the Deputy sees no need for these new approaches. It is clear that the existing provisions for the promotion of urban renewal have not been fully effective. The Government's aim is to test out these new types of bodies and to see how best they can fit into the overall system for promoting renewal in run-down areas. The local authorities will retain a major function in regard to renewal. Indeed, they will have more on their hands than they can hope to handle, and I would have thought that the inputs of the new development agencies in particular areas would be welcomed. These new bodies should be looked on as the allies of local authorities, definitely not as some kind of threat.

A number of other points were made and I intend to answer them on a personal basis to each of the individual Deputies because it would not be possible to answer them here. However, one in particular that I want to refer to is the question raised by Deputy M. Cosgrave in regard to the uncertainty about loans from the Housing Finance Agency. I would like to let Deputy Cosgrave and other Members of the House know the present position about loans under the agency scheme. Inevitably, a new scheme like this runs into teething troubles, but I understand from the agency that most of the problems will be resolved within the next four weeks or so. I understand that the agency will issue a circular letter to local authorities within the next week setting out information on most of the detailed aspects of the scheme. The agency expect to be in a position within about a fortnight to circulate to local authorities a form of agreement between the agency and the authorities. A draft agreement has been discussed with representatives of local authority managers.

The agency also expect within two or three weeks to have finance available to meet payments arising under the scheme over the next three months. The question of issuing bonds has been deferred by the board of the agency for about three months when the pattern of payments under the scheme should be established. Following discussions with the Irish Banks Standing Committee and the Trustee Savings Banks, I am glad to be able to say at this stage that applications for bridging finance in respect of loans under the agency scheme will be considered in the same way as house purchase loans from other bodies, subject to the receipt of the usual letter of undertaking from the borrower's solicitor.

The agency have informed me that local authority managers generally consider that where full-time legal staff are employed in local authority law departments, any work done by them in operating the new loan scheme should be covered by the terms of the 1979 counciliation agreement on engineers and cognate grades. My Department share this view. On 15 June the agency informed the Incorporated Law Society of these views. The society intimated that they had sought counsel's opinion in the matter, but accepted the fact that the point at issue must be resolved without delay. The society have just received this opinion and the agency are pursuing the matter with the society as one of urgency. In any event, local authorities have been informed that they should ensure that the services of all personnel necessary for the satisfactory implementation of the scheme are available, including the services of solicitors either on a full-time or taxed costs basis. In particular, the embargo on the filling of certain new local authority posts does not apply to this scheme. The borrower meets the local authority's legal costs relating to the loan.

I also understand from the agency that they have engaged a firm of solicitors to draft a form of mortgage deed which will apply to loans made under the scheme. The drafting of the mortgage deed has reached an advanced stage and the agency expect to be in a position to circulate the deed to local authorities within about a fortnight. In order to put the position in its proper perspective, I should point out that when the Housing Finance Agency scheme settles down delays should not be greater than under the SDA scheme. Indeed, I intend to ensure that that will be the situation.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the Deputies for their contributions. I regret that time does not permit me to give the sort of full response to all of the points that have been made that I would like to but, as I have said, I will communicate with the individual Deputies on the matters.

Vote put and agreed to.
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