asked the Minister for the Environment in the light of the decline in real terms in the public capital programme allocation affecting the building industry in 1984, and the apparent pick-up in private building in the first six months of the year, if he considers that additional Government measures would boost the construction industry.
Written Answers. - Construction Industry.
692.
While additional public investment in the building industry, over and above the level, envisaged in the national plan, could be expected to provide a boost to construction output in the short term, the implications for the overall level of public expenditure, for borrowing requirements and for taxation would in the longer term be damaging to all sections of the economy, including the building industry itself. The plan provides for the maintenance of public investment affecting the building industry at the highest sustainable level and, in particular, provides for substantially increased investment in roads, for the maintenance of high levels of investment in housing and sanitary services, and for the introduction of a number of new policy measures in housing, the general effect of which should be to stimulate overall investment in this sector. Within the public capital programme as a whole, it is projected that expenditure affecting the building industry will take up an increasing share of total public capital expenditure.