Deputy Leonard has been given permission to raise on the Adjournment the allocation of funds for the local improvement schemes. The Deputy has nine minutes and the Minister has five minutes.
Adjournment Debate. - Local Improvements Scheme.
The local improvements schemes took over from the rural improvement schemes in 1968. The allocations we have received range from £2,750,000 in 1979 to £3 million in 1983. The 1984 allocation has been reduced to £2,150,000, which is 71.7 per cent of last year's figure. The criterion under which those schemes operate varies from county council to county council. Some of them do the complete road work, fencing, drainage, reinforcing pavements and black topping and others only do the black topping. We have less funds this year for this.
I am mainly concerned tonight with the unfair allocation of funds over the last few years. I raised the matter on an Adjournment Debate on 20 March 1975. When I told the Minister, then Mr. Tully, that the schemes related to the period from 1963 to 1968 under the rural improvement schemes he said:
In 1973 I changed this. The criterion now relates to the applications on hands and there is no reference to what a local authority got under the special employment schemes in the allocations now made.
I took it that from then on they were allocated against the number of applications in each county but I found out in reply to a parliamentary question recently that in Monaghan, where we have a backlog of 423 applications and a delay in handling them, we are now only dealing with the 1974 applications and we got an allocation of £122,000 last year. If we got the allocation on the number of applications, as the Minister said in 1975 — we believed since then it was under those conditions — we would have received £174,000.
In Monaghan we have 5.8 per cent of the total number of schemes of 7,272 but we are only getting 4 per cent of the total number of applications. We have a shortfall of £50,000. When I asked the Minister for the Environment a question about the criterion used in the allocation of the funds he said that the local improvements scheme partly replaced schemes of grants provided for under the former employment and emergency schemes, from which the western counties benefited the most. Accordingly, the practice over the years has been to allocate the major share of funds available under the scheme to those counties.
However, last year eight counties outside the 12 western counties got a higher allocation on their backlog of allocations than did the western counties. I ask the Minister to refer to the serious situation when some of those counties got 12 times per scheme, considering the waiting list, more than Monaghan. The three counties which fared very badly out of this were Monaghan, Mayo and Donegal, and Mayo fared worse than Monaghan.
I want to give part of my time to Deputy Conaghan to enable him to make a case for his county. I mentioned the western measures. In 1981 when the programme for development measures for the west came in it was stated that deficiencies in road systems must be overcome as a prerequisite for further development. Under the measure, £15 million FEOGA aid over a ten year period or approximately £1.5 million per annum would be available for farm roads, accommodation roads and local roads and approximately £0.78 million would be available annually for farm roads and the balance, £0.72 million, for county roads. The FEOGA aid was to be supplemented by State funds of £20.5 million. We did not get the allocation when the scheme came in in 1981 and now instead of being supplemented we find it is to be reduced in 1984. I ask the Minister to look at that and to give the allocation in accordance with the backlog of applications and to be fair about it. The allocation may be reduced but at least each county should have a fair share in the distribution of it.
The Minister must conclude at five minutes to nine.
I share Deputy Leonard's concern in relation to the application for moneys for the local improvements scheme. Donegal is getting a very small proportion of the entire moneys distributed throughout the country. Donegal has 24.6 per cent of the schemes but we got only 12 per cent of the total allocation in 1983. That year a total of £3 million was allocated for local improvements schemes. According to the Estimates this year there will be only about £2.15 million for this type of work and if the same criteria are applied in the distribution of the money Donegal will come in short in relation to the demand there. This scheme is used very extensively in County Donegal particularly in the development of bog roads. No moneys are available for the making of roads into the bogs and this allocation is the only means we have of getting moneys in order to provide people with means of access to their turf. It seems that the present system of allocating the moneys discriminates against the western counties, particularly the counties which could benefit extensively from the schemes. I ask the Minister to think again about the distribution of this money throughout the country. I ask him to tell the House tonight how he arrived at the figures for allocation. The allocation made, as I have said, discriminates against the county I represent and against the counties on the western seaboard.
In relation to the charge that three counties have done particularly badly under this scheme, let me say that for 1983 Donegal received a total allocation of £363,000, Mayo received £371,000 and Monaghan received £122,000. From my observation of the allocations I can say that Mayo got more money than any other county with the exception of Kerry which received the same amount. Donegal received £8,000 less than those two counties which put it in third place on the total allocation for 1983.
The Minister must relate it to the waiting list and the need.
I am stating that of the moneys given Mayo and Kerry received the largest amount and Donegal the second largest. Undoubtedly Monaghan received less, and I take into account the applications that were available to the Department from the various counties in the allocation of the scheme. I would not like it to go out that two counties which were at the top of the list in allocations were somehow left much shorter than any other county.
Two of them together got practically half the allocation for the Twenty-six counties.
In considering this scheme Deputies should note that about 85 per cent of expenditure under the scheme related generally to non-public roads. In 1984 the Government are providing some £125 million for roads compared with £120 million last year, when the ordinary road grants and local improvements schemes are taken into account. In other words, we are providing an extra £5 million for roads this year.
On a point of order, it is unfair that in the five minutes the Minister has he is waffling about roads. He should stick to the LIS and tell us if he is prepared to relate the number of applications to the allocation and give a fair allocation in 1984.
The Minister has three minutes to conclude.
The Deputy is entitled to make his case and I am entitled, I am sure, to make mine.
Not in talking about roads.
I wish to talk about roads because when it comes to talking about roads the whole picture must be given.
No, it relates to houses.
The overall approach is based on the general principle of getting value for money and making the best use of our limited resources in the present difficult economic situation. In 1984 the Government provided £2.15 million for grants under the scheme in respect of farm road projects eligible for EEC aid under the Western Package. This compares with an expenditure of £3 million last year. The 1984 scheme does not apply to projects such as drainage schemes and works on bog roads which do not come within scope of the package. EEC aid is conditional on a minimum local contribution of 10 per cent from benefiting landholders and is confined to the western counties. Local authorities were notified by circular letter to this effect on 19 December 1983. The authorities concerned will be notified of the 1984 allocation shortly. The provision of £2.15 million compares with a previous provision of £2.14 million last year for the Western Package element of the scheme.
I have not time to develop the point, but I can say that we can show that this represents an increase over the allocation made when the Deputies' party opposite were in power. A sum of £2 million was given in 1980 and that was a drop from £2.75 million——
(Interruptions.)
The provision in 1979 was £2.75 million for the whole country. That was reduced to £2 million in 1980. We are trying to build up our national primary roads, at the same time giving value for money by increasing the Road Fund and getting full value from the EEC for money spent under the local improvements scheme. That would be regarded as the best possible policy for any Government in a time of stringency such as we have at the moment.
I have one question to ask the Minister. Will he in 1984 relate the allocation fairly to the waiting list for each county? We were told here that in 1975 there was a change in the system of allocation.
That is one of the factors I will take into account.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 9 February 1984.