Deputy Durkan has 56 minutes remaining.
Estimates, 1984. - Vote 28: Environment (Revised Estimate) (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That a sum not exceeding £656,924,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1984, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for the Environment, including grants in lieu of rates on agricultural land and other grants to Local Authorities, grants and other expenses in connection with housing, and miscellaneous schemes, subsidies and grants including certain grants-in-aid.
—(Minister for the Environment).
Before Question Time I was speaking about the reluctance in some quarters to pay the charges required by local authorities to meet their commitments and continue their various programmes. I do not accept that the charges, as they have been introduced, constitute an ideal system to deal with the problem, but something had to be done within a short space of time and hence the introduction of charges for specific services. What amazes me most is that this campaign is being motivated by people who should know better, by some politicians, some ex-politicians and others who see themselves as politicians at some time in the future. Those people would be doing society generally and politics a lot better service were they able to stand up, speak to the people and tell them that if we are expected to provide services then they must accept that they must be paid for or do without them. No local authority will provide services people do not want. If people do not want to pay for them by way of general taxation or other charge, then no Government or local authority will force them to pay. They must realise that if they want those services, they will have them and must pay for them, or if they do not want them then they will not have them. That should be made perfectly clear now because that kind of ambivalence has continued sufficiently long. It is even more amazing when one considers that local authorities were responsible for the spending of £1.4 billion and the provision of 35,000 jobs in 1983. At a time when jobs are at a premium surely we should all recognise the importance of endeavouring to keep the local authority system working effectively and efficiently, doing the job for which it was first established.
That brings me to the revision of the local authority system. While 100 years ago that system would have done a good job, today, unfortunately, because of various developments it is now creaking, is completely overloaded, overburdened and ineffective in the sense that it does not have the ability to raise within the administrative sphere the necessary funds to carry out the various programmes and the expenditure of those funds through its elected members.
Again, reverting to reluctance to pay for such services, I might add that of all Government Departments there is none where the expenditure of money should and could more readily be seen than on the environmental services by local authorities under the aegis of the Department of the Environment.
We must all accept that the system as it has operated for the last couple of years needs revamping and that we need a new financing system. Whether that is done by means of a new type of charge which would take account of an individual's ability to pay, and in respect of which there might be an allowance against income tax, or whether we must cream off a certain amount of VAT or income tax generally, collected in each local authority area to be spent in that area, some effective system must be devised to ensure that the demands on any given local authority area are matched by funds collected within that area to be spent in that area. Otherwise it simply will not work. There is no sense in people who should be reasonable telling others that that is so, that the Government are fooling them, that it can be done in a less painful fashion, or that if another Government were in power it would not be necessary to adopt this role at all.
The virtual disappearance of what was known as the county council worker, the person responsible for cleaning up our streets, open spaces and generally for keeping our towns and villages tidy, is one reason I see for the need for reorganisation of local government. Those people seem to have disappeared gradually because local authorities did not have the funds to continue the programmes. It was senseless economics to allow that situation to develop because now our road networks are disintegrating and we have few if any employed on clearing roadside drains. Many local authorities are consequently paying less attention to this area.
I hope that the review which undoubtedly is taking place will be comprehensive and far-reaching. It will be dealing with a most important matter and it must provide for constructive changes but not changes which will impose more administration and more bureaucracy and red tape. For instance, at one time there was a proposal for a greater local authority in the eastern region, based on Dublin and extending to adjacent counties, including Kildare. We need more administrators like a hole in the head. What we need are more people who would carry out the work on the ground in the administrative areas. During this overhaul of the local authority system there will be consideration of the setting up of town commissioners and councils and perhaps urban councils in various areas. That is a good thing because it is important that people in any area, whether rural or urban, will have an opportunity to elect people to whom they will have access when they feel they need to say that something should be done, but the most important part of the proposal to give more power to the people is the provision of a proper financial structure to go with it. Otherwise, such a proposal would be a waste of time. In the past, local authorities have realised the problems confronting them, but if we set up a new administrative fabric to solve these problems we will be wasting our time unless there is a proper financial structure which will enable authorities to implement decisions.
I welcome the proposals for local government reform. As I said, I hope they will be comprehensive and bring a better local authority system into being for future generations. Most important, we must ensure there will be money to pay for what will be decided.
In regard to housing, I should like to refer to the Housing Finance Agency who are doing a tremendous job. As a result, far more young couples are now being housed from their own resources and therefore they are less of a burden on the taxpayers. They are taking the opportunity to become independent, self-sufficient and self-reliant. They have got their mortgages, they are raising families and they are doing well.
All credit is due to the agency and I wish them well in the next few years. However, from the demand in my county the Minister will need to keep a careful eye on the number of loans being granted and be in a position to increase the allocation to the agency. It would be counter-productive to allow a situation to arise when in a month or six weeks of any year loans would not be available. That happened in regard to SDA loans a few years ago. I ask the Minister to bear this in mind.
I hope he will consider that the 90 per cent maximum loan which is available in relation to the value of the house creates difficulties particularly for young couples buying second-hand houses. It poses the problem of paying stamp duty on top of raising the deposit of 10 per cent of the value of the house. A combination of the two makes it difficult for them. They are inclined to get rather despondent, having saved for three to five years. If the limit was raised to 95 per cent of the house value, or to 98 per cent as was the case in relation to another loan, it would facilitate young people and at the same time take more families off the local authority lists.
Quite a number of young people under the age of 21 years have good jobs and many 20-year-olds, thank God, are working and in a position to buy their own houses, but they cannot because they are not allowed to enter mortgage agreements until they are 21. There has been an intimation that the age limit may be reduced, and I hope the Minister will keep it in mind because it will facilitate a number of young people who are willing to take on the risk of mortgages and who feel a little frustrated at having to wait from the age of 19 until they are 21. That delay could result in local authorities having to house them.
I welcome the increase in the SDA loan. In some counties, for example Kildare, there is not the demand for those loans that there was prior to the establishment of the Housing Finance Agency, but the SDA loans are still being used and are found to be good value. The only problem was the income limit. We should ensure sufficient funds in this area because it would undoubtedly be a considerable help to the building industry about which there has been talk of the need for revitalisation. This would be an indirect way of doing that. It would make finance available and this would mean that more houses would be built.
The local authorities are responsible for physical planning and development. On many occasions in the past as a member of the Eastern Regional Development Organisation we have been acutely aware of the need for proper regional planning. This has been spoken about many times in the past and will be in the future, but as yet little progress has been made in the area of firm regional planning and proposals which can be implemented. I am glad to note that the various regional development organisations are coming up with their reports. It would be very beneficial if funds were available to ensure that those reports, being produced, are not allowed to sit on shelves somewhere and remain unattended to for two or three years. That would be counter-productive.
Anybody who looks at the way Dublin city and some of its environs and neighbouring counties have expanded over the last few years will recognise that unless careful attention is paid to planning and development the social and economic problems that some parts of the city and suburbs are experiencing now will extend further and the problem will be exacerbated. Therefore, it is important that very careful consideration be given to regional planning as a matter of urgency and that in this context the provision of industry adjacent to or within easy reach of where housing development is taking place is important in order to ensure that we do not create further problems of having to introduce expensive infrastructure, such as other roads, to facilitate such development.
I have noticed that development seemed to take place only where investment had been made in major services such as water and sewerage. It might be economic to do that and all the economic indicators show that it was good policy to allow housing development to take place on that basis. However, surely criteria other than that of a developer acquiring a large portion of land, and using whatever influence is possible to ensure that a major sewerage or water scheme is introduced to facilitate his area should obtain. The decision should be taken by the people involved in planning, mainly the various local authorities. They alone through their elected members should decide where, when and how development is to take place.
Earlier today Deputy Fitzsimons mentioned something which is very dear to my heart, namely the possibility of a special allocation for those counties which are near neighbours of our capital city. This must be very dear to the Minister's heart also because it would apply to County Wicklow as well as to Counties Kildare and Meath. There is a very good reason for this which perhaps will not be recognised readily by some of our colleagues from other counties, but when they drive to and from this House a couple of times a week they cannot but recognise the vast volume of traffic which we have to bear and which is not created by ourselves. In fact, we are glad to have so many people passing through. We record the traffic count fairly regularly to ensure that we can make a good case to the Department in due course for further allocations of funds.
The concentration of vehicular traffic in the eastern regional area in those counties Wicklow, Meath and Kildare is abnormal and some provision over and above that made elsewhere must be made to ensure that the road structure is maintained and that the increasing traffic is catered for, otherwise in a few years more we will not have a road structure. I am not censuring the Minister in any way. I am trying merely to encourage him to inject funds into his own county in the hope that some of them might percolate to his good neighbours.
The area of repairs to local authority houses requires a good deal of examination. It is an absolute scandal that two or three years after a tenant goes into a local authority house the local authority are asked again and again to do repairs to that house, some of which are major structural repairs which should never be required in the first place, having regard to the fact that the housing scheme was built only recently. I cannot understand why local authorities are asked each year to set aside greater proportions of their funds to carry out this work and why far more attention is not being paid to supervision when these houses are being built in which case it would not be necessary to involve themselves in this kind of expenditure. In County Kildare a couple of years ago we spent £40,000 in this way. Last year we spent £60,000 and this year we require about £130,000. Next year we will require something in the region of £300,000 and obviously we will not have that kind of money to spend.
It seems that a far greater degree of supervision is required in the provision of local authority houses than exists at present, where contractors are carrying out this work on behalf of the local authority, the National Building Agency or whoever — I am not referring to any one of them in particular. There is no excuse whatever for the need for major structural repairs within a five-year period. I can understand it but I cannot tolerate it.
The schedule sent to each tenant accepting the tenancy of a local authority house includes a general provision for repairs, but the tenant should also be expected, having become a tenant, to treat the house with some degree of respect and be prepared himself or herself to spend a little money on it to keep it in good repair and make sure that the ordinary maintenance which any household requires is carried out. The various local authorities might themselves employ a little more supervision in that area also. A tenant might occupy a council house for perhaps ten years with very little ordinary maintenance done on it in that time. Of course, the local authority have a certain responsibility but in these straitened times we should consider that in our local authority housing schemes are many people with incomes which render them capable of carrying out basic items of maintenance.
In the allocation of local authority houses consideration should be given to the incomes of the proposed tenants. A husband and wife with three children and an income of £5,000 or £6,000 per annum are entitled to a local authority house without any question and they should be considered for local authority housing even if they are living in a house, if their income renders it impossible for them to provide a house from their own resources. What I find difficult to accept are the cases — there are a number of them throughout the country — where a husband and wife with one or maybe two children have an income of £10,000 or more and have succeeded in obtaining a local authority house. I am referring only to cases of which I have knowledge. These people are well capable of building their own houses. Agencies such as the housing agency and the SDA loan system are there to cater for them. This should not be tolerated either by the local authorities or by the Department of the Environment.
I add my support to the joint venture housing programme undertaken in various parts of the country, including my own county of Kildare. It is very useful and will prove to be of even greater benefit as people observe its success and approve of it. More people will thus be encouraged to become involved in this. The local authorities and the Department of the Environment also provide the disabled persons' grant scheme. There are a couple of variables, but the grant in general is one of £4,000, or two-thirds of the cost. I know of a number of cases in which such applications have been handled by the local authorities in a rather restrictive manner in the sense that the local authority valuations would seem to make it almost impossible given the amount of the grant, for the unfortunate disabled person from his or her own resources to carry out the necessary extensions to houses, such as providing the necessary sanitary services and so forth. Local authority engineers should apply a realistic valuation to the work to be carried out, keeping in mind the financial constraints which apply generally. They should not under value the work to be done to such an extent that it will not be carried out with consequent hardship caused to the disabled people in whose interests these grants are available.
A number of my colleagues are anxiously awaiting an opportunity to contribute to this debate and I shall not delay the House. Mention has been made of private sector investment in roads. Every opportunity should now be availed of where private sector funds are available for investment in infrastructure, particularly with regard to regional roads and national primary routes. Ways and means should be found to harness such funds and put them to work in improving those roads. One must be impressed at the fantastic continental road networks and we here should be paying a little more attention to the availability of private sector funds for this purpose. If that means setting up a roads finance agency, the sooner the better. I would welcome that. It might overcome the delays in carrying out the work, but I am not criticising local authorities or the Department. Past procedure has been taht one planned two or three years ahead and, with luck, the money would be available when the time came to carry out the work. If not, there could be a serious problem. A roads finance agency might solve that problem by creating a continuous flow of cash for this necessary work. I am not going to bore the House by mentioning again the roads in my own county. Suffice it to say that they are of a pivotal nature, being in the path of most vehicular traffic travelling to or from the capital city and we should pay very careful attention to them. The longer we hesitate in investing in that roads structure the more expensive it will be.
On the subject of water and water charges, there has been some discussion of late on the quality of the water in some parts of this city and of County Kildare. The same distribution network serves north Kildare and the north part of the city. Pollution has taken place in a number of instances and there is extreme concern. The culprits in each case must be detected and brought to justice and the public generally must be made aware that any type of pollutant in the region of a water scheme is likely to end up in the domestic water supply, causing very serious problems. Particularly in the Leixlip area of Kildare — although this applies also to Maynooth and Celbridge, largely built up areas with big populations — the water has been somewhat objectionable recently from the point of view of taste, colour and odour. One instance of pollution has been rectified, I understand, but there is still an aftermath. The Minister indicated yesterday in the House that improvement works to the Leixlip plant would be carried out and completed by some time in 1985, but notwithstanding that there may be a necessity to do something further. The quality of the water in that area is not good at the moment and, while I support the idea of paying for services, I do not believe that any member of the public should be expected to pay for an inferior service. Until we improve the quality of the water supply, we will be a little at a disadvantage in asking people to pay for such services.
With reference to the travelling people, Deputy Andrews made a very constructive submission. Everybody agrees that there is a serious problem with regard to the resettlement of the travelling people. I have never heard anybody say otherwise. However, the general principle of having these unfortunate people housed or catered for in the housing sector in some way through the local authority system invariably brings a reluctance on the part of people near whom, it becomes obvious, some of these people might be housed. Some of the greatest advocates for the housing of these people in the first place are those who may be living in an area where there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of travelling people being housed in the immediate vicinity. It is easy to be magnanimous in that situation, to be generous and to call for others to make the sacrifices.
At a local authority meeting some time ago I proposed that all should accept their social obligations and play a responsible role in meeting this problem. Every town with a population of 2,000 to 3,000 should be prepared to accept a temporary halt where the local authorities could provide services for the travelling people on a temporary basis prior to their introduction into the local authority housing system and integration into the community in the area generally. It is very important that these people be given a chance to settle down. I am speaking here specifically about small numbers — not about vast numbers of 30 and 40 families converging on an area and turning it into a rural slum. I am talking about small numbers which can be controlled and where educational facilities can be made available in local schools and health services by local community care. Local authority, health boards and central government can co-operate in providing the necessary structures to overcome this problem.
For quite a long time we have had a problem with itinerants parked on both sides of the road outside our towns and villages. It does not do anything for the particular towns and villages and does not help to resolve the problem. It does not endear the travelling people to the people living in those towns and villages. That is why it is imperative to have a general policy implemented so that every town can have an opportunity of playing a role in resolving the problem.
There are probably some people who will say that they do not want such people near their town or village. We are a Christian country noted for our zeal in such matters and I believe it would be very unusual if we did not find people who had the Christianity and courage to accept that kind of interim resolution. The next thing is the integration of the travelling people into the community. That is the only way they will be accepted. If there are large concentrations there will be prejudice against them and we will have the kind of problems we have in the Tallaght by-pass and elsewhere. My own town of Maynooth is a typical example.
Various people referred to the cut in money available to local authorities. Most of the references came from the Opposition benches but there was little reference from those benches in relation to the considerable increases for housing, road grants and all the other services local authorities provide.
I would like to wish the Minister well in his Department. The Estimate presented for the Department of the Environment is the most important Estimate and has the most far-reaching implications. It affects all the local authorities. It affects the lives of communities and individuals in every town and village. It affects the quality and level of services that will be provided. This year, above any other year, it affects the security of employment of many of the staff, particularly the outdoor staff of local authorities.
It is easy to be critical of the Estimate for the Department of the Environment which involves so many services because the demand for services always runs far ahead of the financial resources available to meet the demands. I am sorry Deputy Durkan has left the House because, far from meeting the additional demands, this year we are only keeping pace with the demand for continuation of services at the level of last year.
The curtailment of the increase to .8 of 1 per cent in the grants made available to local authorities in lieu of the money lost through the abolition of rates on agricultural land and domestic dwellings is clear evidence that there has to be a fall off in the level of services provided by the various local authorities. I have first hand knowledge of this situation because I am a member of the local authority in my own county and I can outline briefly what it means for us. Our county manager presented an estimate which required an additional £2.6 million over last year's estimate in order to maintain services at last year's level. We got an increase of £75,000 which was the .8 of 1 per cent increase which the Minister said would be all any local authority could get this year.
There has been a clear change of course because since the abolition of rates the amount by which each local authority were allowed to increase their rates — they were restrained in the increase they could impose on the ratepayer — and the amount of increasing grants in lieu of the money lost through the abolition of agricultural rates and domestic rates bore some relation to the expected rate of inflation, but this year it does not bear any relation. It is freely admitted that the expected rate of inflation this year will be 9 to 10 per cent.
The Minister said this morning that the money made available for housing would maintain activity at last year's level. The money provided is a 10 per cent increase. However the money made available for road development and road improvement works does not keep pace with inflation. A sum of £6 million extra is provided for the whole country and when this is divided up among the different local authorities it will be very insignificant in dealing with one of our major problems in provincial areas because of the necessity for realignment and improvement of road surfaces. In my county we will be very severely restricted. The manager warned us that there will be a severe cut in the amount of money available for the maintenance and improvement of our roads.
There is one aspect of road development which applies to my county and other western counties more than it applies to the rest of the country, that is, the money made available through the local improvement scheme. I was very saddened to see that sum reduced. Last year it was for £3 million but this year it has been cut to £2.15 million. It was a mistake on the Minister's part not having ensured that that grant was not increased because it attracts an EEC grant and because of the very useful work it does. This was the only fund available for people to carry out improvements to their property. Communities of five to ten families often have access roads which are not public roads and this is the only type of grant available to improve those roads. These people deserve decent roadways leading to their villages and houses and it is a pity this grant was cut instead of increased.
The Minister should be encouraged to support the demand of local authorities to have statutory charges removed from the rates. These charges impose a crippling burden on my council's finances. I have here some figures which I will give the House. Until a few years ago it was relatively easy to meet the statutory charges levied on the council by the Office of Public Works for the maintenance of arterial drainage works and by the Department of Health for supplementary social welfare payments which have to be paid through the local health authorities, which in our case is the Western Health Board.
Over the past few years even though the council were prohibited from increasing the rate beyond a certain percentage — last year it was between 8 per cent and 9 per cent — we got demands from those bodies which bore no relationship to the rate of inflation. For example, the demand we got from the Office of Public Works one year exceeded the previous year's demand by 42 per cent and because we tried to meet those demands the council's finances went haywire. Over the last few years we could not meet those demands in toto and, as a result, on 31 December last our council owed the Office of Public Works £900,000 and £648,000 to the Western Health Board. This year the demand from the Office of Public Works is expected to be £889,000 and slightly over £1 million from the Western Health Board. It is our contention that these demands should not be presented to our council or to any local authority; they should be the responsibility of the various Departments. We have sent deputations to the Minister asking to have these adjustments made. I appeal to the Minister to take an interest in this matter and try to have these charges removed from the local authority.
My local authority have come under very unwelcome and unfair criticism in relation to section 4 planning applications. We were represented as the local authority which indulged in this operation more than any other and the implication was that we used this facility recklessly. I want to deny that charge. Our council have a very responsible attitude to planning and in introducing section 4 we go to great extremes to ensure that we know what we are doing. We go to the site in question and take the advice of our planning officer and technical staff. If the council decided to grant planning permission I am certain they did so in a responsible manner having due regard to the public interest and to the interests of the individual concerned. Nothing is done in a reckless or lighthearted manner as has been implied in many articles.
I welcome the statement made by the Minister this morning about tightening up the planning laws particularly in relation to farm development. This move is very necessary. It is a shame to see some of our rivers, streams, lakes and sources of water for human consumption polluted by the careless approach of individuals to this type of development. We all know how easy it is for water to be polluted and of the great increase which has taken place in agricultural development over the last ten years. It is a pity that some of this development has led to the pollution of our rivers and streams and it is time our planning authorities applied stringent control to stop this pollution.
I also welcome the raising of the income limit for SDA loans. This was long overdue but it is a pity that the increase was not bigger. It is a while since there was an increase. The cost of building a house has increased and we all know the problems young couples face when they are providing homes of their own. We know the difficulties they encounter when trying to raise the necessary finance. The level of the loan should be brought more into line with the overall cost of a house. However, I welcome the upward movement in the income limit and the level of grant.
Reorganisation of local government is necessary and long overdue. We are operating under an Act which is almost 100 years old. The necessity for reorganisation is not an excuse for postponing local elections. It represents a slight on local authorities. I know that local elections were postponed before but that does not justify postponing them now. Local elections should be held when they are due and people should be given an opportunity to elect their local representatives. Local representatives should be given a chance to explain their policies and programmes to people and have them accepted or rejected by them.
There is not just need for financial reform of local authorities but also for structural reform. I hope the review of local authorities which is taking place will be expedited. All these matters should be taken into account. There is overlapping between local authority staff and central government staff, particularly in the engineering field and this is scandalous. Financial reform has begun in so far as charges have been introduced. The present financial position necessitates a look at overlapping particularly between housing inspectors in the Department of the Environment and those in the local authorities. Something could be done if the will was there. The inspectorate would be more efficient and less costly.
As a result of the very low increase in grants available to local authorities they will find themselves, like our local authority, in straightened circumstances. They will have to take drastic remedies. I outlined our position in Mayo. I will complete the picture by saying that in addition to slashing some services our manager has told us that it will be necessary to increase the water charge by 33? per cent, from £45 to £65. We will have to increase the refuse collection charge by 40 per cent which will put it up to £25 and we will have to increase the rate by 20 per cent from £26 in the £ to almost £32 in the £. As we are aware, it is only the small business community who pay rates. While many firms will be able to bear this increased burden many smaller ones will not be able to do so. Consumer spending has fallen and the volume of business and trade is dropping. They find it difficult to keep their doors open and an increase like this will be the straw that will break the camel's back.
Many people were not able to pay water charges last year and it is ridiculous to have to increase them this year by such an amount. A rate of £32 in the £ is very serious for us. I am sorry the Minister is not here. We asked him to meet us to discuss the difficult position we face in our county. Perhaps he could do something regarding the statutory charges and give us something extra which would enable us to get over our difficulty this year.
This Estimate is highly significant not only because the Department of the Environment on its capital and current account spends in the region of £1.4 billion and employs 35,000 people, but because every local authority, whether they are a municipal authority or county council, are going through an exceptional period of financial difficulty unprecedented in their history. There are many reasons for this. Poor law valuation was abolished as a rateable valuation system, especially in County Wexford where the legal case was initiated and fought up to the High Court. Rates were abolished in 1977 and no alternative funding or revenue raising system was introduced. We also have the position where the Government have not made good the shortfall in the loss of domestic rates to local authorities. A combination of all those factors has left local authorities in an unviable financial structure. The problem is accentuated by the fact that 60 per cent of current expenditure and all the capital expenditure is controlled by the Department because they have to sanction any scheme or project. There is no doubt that local authorities have been reduced to talking shops and all the powers of the Department of the Environment emanate from the Customs House.
Before I go through a series of specific proposals to resolve the problem of the reorganisation of local government and their finances, I would like to ask the Minister to clarify to farmers in County Wexford, like me, who also contributed financially towards the legal costs of the case whether they are entitled to a refund of their rates. This has been going on since 1979 and a large sum of money is involved.
In 1983 we collected a total in excess of £1.6 billion in VAT. In municipal authority areas there would be a strong possibility of funding local authorities through VAT rebates of 1 per cent. For example, in Enniscorthy we know how many people are engaged in businesses. They are all registered for VAT and send in detailed returns every two months. If, at the end of the year, 1 per cent of the total amount of VAT was made available, local authorities could get a sum in the region of £160 million to help their finances. Not only would it generate expenditure but people would have a double incentive to spend money locally.
We could also have a lottery organised by local authorities independently and autonomously. It has been suggested that sums between £10 million and £100 million could be raised by such a lottery. If it was done on a weekly basis there is no reason why the rent collectors and the existing inspectors and staff of local authorities could not undertake the task. There is no reason why young people employed in work experience programmes, the temporary youth employment or AnCO schemes could not also be used for the operation of a lottery.
In relation to financial reorganisation of local authorities there is enormous scope for privatisation, especially on the capital account side. The question of a roads finance agency has been mooted for some time and there is much merit in it. I understand last year there was a sum in the region of £100 million invested by private investors in the Housing Finance Agency which was directed to the construction industry. Our infrastructure could be built up if we could get private investment into an agency of this kind. The Government would then have an extra source or revenue. We all know of the gilts structure which has a greater rate of return when inflation is dropping. If a roads finance agency and the Housing Finance Agency were index-linked we would have a ready market for Government investment when inflation falls and rises.
The financial structure of local authorities could be greatly helped if many self-financing services run through other Departments were taken up locally. Licences for transport vehicles which are regulated by the Department of Communications is a case in point. The receipts from that could be channelled locally and the administration could also be done locally. The money which goes to the courts for minor traffic and other offences could also be channelled through the court clerk to the local authority of the area. In that regard, it should be borne in mind that local authorities are responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of their area. These proposals would go some way towards alleviating the problem and there must be useful dialogue. Too many Ministers in the Department of the Environment have run away from practical suggestions on which the whole basis of local authority financing has to be reconsidered. In relation to reorganisation generally, I hope that international experience in countries like Denmark which has a similar population and demographic structure to ours will be taken up and that submissions made by the municipal authorities and the General Council of County Councils can also be considered.
The most important single policy in the Department of the Environment relates to housing. In urban and rural areas young couples and families are living in mobile homes with their in-laws, maybe ten people in one house, sleeping on couches. We also have many people who are paying very high rent for accommodation. The construction industry are ready, willing and able to build houses for these people but, unfortunately, private investment dropped by 12 per cent in 1982 and by 15 per cent in 1983. There is no doubt that we will have to radically re-examine our housing policy. Last year we spent £208 million on local authority direct house construction schemes and 6,000 houses were built. The allocation of £211 million this year is only marginally higher. The total number of houses built between private and public sector last year was in excess of 26,000. With various mortgage finance schemes and new house grants, there are attractions for people to build their own houses. However, with regard to SDA and the Housing Finance Agency we could make small alterations which would help many young couples. Members are aware that there is an income limit criterion with regard to loans from those agencies. Greater flexibility should be shown by allowing young couples to submit pay slips as an alternative to the previous year's P60, because someone who was formerly an apprentice could now be qualified and have a current income which would entitle him to a loan.
I should like to suggest a number of things in relation to changes in housing policies. I do not know the number of local authority houses which come under the ordinary rented tenant accommodation but we should do what they did in Britain which converted many Labour seats into Conservative seats. Houses which people are paying rent for on a weekly basis and which are over about 20 years of age should be sold at a reduced rate. At present they are sold under a rigid and expensive tenant purchase scheme. You could almost give them away and produce an economic argument to justify it. For example, there are many houses rented for as little as £2 per week. If the doors and windows in those houses have to be replaced at a cost of £400 or £500 it would be better to pass on the responsibility for maintaining houses to the tenant by selling them at a cheap rate. An enormous amount of money is paid out by the Exchequer through the Department of the Environment under the differential rents subsidy scheme. This would abolish that scheme. Another advantage is that the money realised through the sale of the houses would give a major cash flow impetus, generating funds for new starts and enabling the building of more than 6,000 houses per annum. I would hope for a new policy whereby local government housing stock would be turned over faster and houses over a given age would be sold off quickly.
It is appalling that local authority housing is costing so much. I am a member of Enniscorthy Urban District Council and semi-detached houses in one local development are costing £42,000 each. The unit cost is totally out of line with that charged by private developers to individuals. I am building a house at present at a cost of £17 per square foot. Local authority houses are in many instances costing over double that amount. This is unpardonable. In County Wexford private developers are selling houses at between £22,000 and £27,000, yet the local authority are paying £42,000.
There is an argument to be made for the Department of the Environment and the local authority buying houses from private developers at a low rate. Let them have the problems of cash flow and of carrying out the work. We should consider joint ventures and direct purchases of houses. I would include second-hand houses. In that way we could get more houses at a cheaper rate and enable limited resources to go further.
Another important factor is that we are failing to provide the number of houses necessary. The largest municipal authority, Dublin Corporation, have about 8,000 people on their housing list and they are building about 1,500 houses per year. Obviously many people will be waiting a long time for housing. Why do the Government not tell the private sector to go ahead and build the accommodation and then give a subsidy of, say, £20 a week to people on the housing list until the local authority can provide a house? This would remove these people from caravans or from sharing accommodation with in-laws. It would be a positive, viable social and economic policy.
I read recently in an NESC report that there is an argument for 100 per cent loans by local authorities to housing applicants. This would be more economic than the present system. I would hope for such a radical move because it would give housing applicants a chance of finding accommodation for themselves.
There are four proposed urban boundary extensions in County Wexford at Gorey, New Ross, Enniscorthy and Wexford town. I understand that since the abolition of domestic rates in 1977 not one urban boundary extension has taken place. I do not know whether this is correct but this is the information I received from the officials of the assistant county manager of Wexford. There are a number of difficulties relating to financial transfers between the county council and the municipal authority. There is a loss of rateable valuation to the rural authority and new revenues are generated to the urban authority by the transfer of rateable property. A special fund should be set up to help local authorities who are mutually agreed to extending boundaries so that physical planning can be done. This would cut out ribbon suburban development which is piecemeal by nature and would enable co-ordinated growth. It would also help industrial development. Many industrial companies, especially medium-sized enterprises related to mobile international investment, carry out labour market surveys of the population sizes of small provincial towns and they often use erroneous figures. If boundary changes were expedited many provincial towns would be helped to obtain industrial investment.
There are also many social anomalies. People living on one side of the boundary at the top of Shannon Hill in Enniscorthy are entitled to free fuel while people some yards away on the other wise of the boundary in exactly the same economic circumstances are not entitled to it. Many of them are on unemployment assistance. The same applies in the case of many other benefits. Water rates are the direct responsibility of local authorities. People living in the rural area are charged £60, while those on the other side of the boundary in the urban area are charged £25. Before the 1983 Act people on the urban side were not paying any water rates while those on the other side were paying £50 per annum. This is very unfair. These anomalies cause many petty problems and I would ask that the red tape be removed to facilitate urban boundary extension.
In regard to capital schemes, the rate of subsidy given by the Department is lower in the case of urban authorities than for county councils. Urban authorities wishing to extend their boundaries cannot do so if they have a major capital project in the offing because they will get less and therefore lose out. The same grants and subsidies should be given in order to overcome that anomaly.
Nothing is a source of more grievance than planning permission. I would ask the Minister to clarify that community-type developments are exempt from planning charges.
Debate adjourned.
The Dáil adjourned at 5 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 13 March 1984.