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Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 3 Jun 1988

Vol. 381 No. 7

Supplementary Estimates, 1988. - Vote 26: Environment (Revised Estimate).

I move:

That a sum not exceeding £594,639,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1988, 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.

I dtosach báire, ba mhaith liom a rá go bhfuil an gnó poiblí a thagann faoi mo chúram-sa mar Aire Comhshaoil thar a bheith leathan. Mar sin, ag féachaint don mhéid ama atá ar fáil againn inniu, is léir nach mbeidh sé ar mo chumas déileáil go a nochtadh sa díospóireacht a bhí sa Dáil Mheastachán seo. Ach beidh lá eile ag an bPaorach. Agus, dár ndóigh, bhí. Mar shampla, bhí deis ag Teachtaí a dtuairimí a nochtadh sa díospóireacht a bhí sa Dáil inné faoi mBille Tithíochta. Agus beidh deiseanna eile acu nuair a bheidh siad at plé le reachtaíocht thábhachtach eile atá tugtha isteach agam cheana nó a bheidh á tabhairt isteach agam go luath.

The Estimate is nearly £264 million less than the 1987 outturn. The reduction is due for the most part to the ending of the direct Exchequer subsidies to local authorities which assisted them in meeting in full or in part the loan charges payable in respect of past expenditure on their capital works programmes.

There is another major change in the Estimate this year with the inclusion for the first time of most of the local authority capital expenditure which was formerly financed by local loans fund loans. These changes follow from the enactment of the Local Loans Fund (Amendment) Act, 1987. This legislation enabled a range of circular payments which had arisen over time to be terminated. Overall, expenditure by my Department and local authorities, both capital and current, in 1988 will be £1,300 million or 7 per cent of GNP — £520 million of which local authorities will raise from their own resources.

Arising from the measures taken by the Government to rectify the public finances, 1988 is a transitional year for expenditure by local authorities and my Department. This transitional period presents an opportunity to rationalise and revitalise the functions and services provided. In this connection, local authorities were authorised to offer the Government's voluntary redundancy/ early retirement scheme to their staff after exhausting measures to maximise savings on manpower costs through natural wastage, redeployment, career breaks and job-sharing. At this stage nearly 2,500 applications for the scheme have been accepted by the local authorities. Financial assistance is available from the Exchequer to local authorities to meet in full the cost of all lump sum severance payments under the schemes.

Like all other areas of the public service, local authorities must continue to play their part in the present programme of adjustment in public spending and this is reflected in the level of Exchequer subvention being made available this year.

About one half of all local authority expenditure on current account this year will be funded in one form or other by the Exchequer. A sum of £264 million of this funding comes in the form of grants and recoupments for specific services while the balance of £196 million comes as rates support grants, to be applied at the discretion of the authorities themselves. The rate support grant provision announced in the Abridged Estimates last October has been reduced by £39 million to reflect the reduced debt burden on local authorities following the implementation of the Local Loans Fund (Amendment) Act, 1987.

There are two other adjustments to the rate support grant this year. The former Vote for Rates on Government Property is now included in the grant and £3 million were transferred from the grant to the Vote for Agriculture and Food as local authorities do not have to contribute to the cost of committees of agriculture this year.

Over the past year I have been examining options for reforms in the methods of financing local authorities and as soon as this examination is completed I hope to introduce measures aimed at restoring an appropriate degree of stability to local finances. Much of the necessary ground-work has already been done and I expect to be in a position to report to Government with reform proposals at an early date. Work on the development of proposals for the structural reorganisation of local government is also well advanced.

Since taking office, I have on numerous occasions referred to the need for a more enlightened attitude by public authorities and individuals to the care of the environment. I have taken action to strengthen my role as Minister in order to provide better co-ordination and closer links between research, policy formulation and implementation. Care for the environment is a major priority and it must influence the development of national policies and programmes. Good environmental conditions are now more highly valued than ever before and it is my intention that environment policy will continue to be developed and extended to reflect the needs and importance of this area.

The Dublin smoke situation is by far the country's most serious air pollution problem. The need to remedy it was one of the main reasons for the enactment of the Air Pollution Act, 1987, which this Government actively promoted through the Dáil upon assuming office. The Act enables local authorities, subject to ministerial approval, to declare "special control areas" or smokeless zones. Dublin Corporation have already completed a survey of some 800 houses in Ballyfermot and have made a special control area order for the area concerned. As objections have been made to the order, I am now arranging for an oral hearing to be held and will make a decision as soon as possible.

I hope to announce shortly the details of a scheme to provide financial assistance towards the cost of the adaptation of domestic heating systems in areas where smoke control measures may be necessary. This scheme would apply to all suitable appliances, whether for gas or solid fuels. The estimate includes for the first time a provision for grants of this kind and expenditure of up to £250,000 is envisaged this year.

On my initiative, the budget included a concession on the excise duty applying to unleaded petrol. This removed the price disadvantage caused by the additional costs of producing and distributing unleaded petrol so that it now retails at the same price as premium leaded petrol.

I am continuing to press the distributors of petroleum products to expand the number of outlets for unleaded petrol to ensure that a balanced distribution network is put in place by late 1989, as required under the terms of an EC Directive. I am pleased to acknowledge the efforts to date of Esso, Shell and Texaco. My Department have already prepared literature containing information on the subject of unleaded petrol, and later this year I intend to launch a promotional campaign, aimed particularly at the owners of modern cars, to stimulate greater use of unleaded petrol. I have also established a steering committee, which will be chaired by my Department, to develop and oversee a comprehensive action programme. The motor trade and the oil distribution companies are being invited to participate and I will be addressing the first meeting on 9 June.

An extension of the number of outlets selling unleaded petrol will contribute to the current campaign to promote Ireland as an attractive tourist venue. Growing numbers of continental motorists are now using unleaded petrol and the wide availability of outlets for such petrol will help Bord Fáilte to attract more motorised tourists to this country.

Following a number of serious water pollution incidents last summer, a Cabinet committee under my chairmanship developed a comprehensive and integranted programme of measures to combat water pollution. A programme of farm surveys has been carried out in recent months and work on the implementation of the various other measures in the programme is in progress. I hope to present the Local Government (Water Pollution) Bill, 1988, to the House shortly.

A provision of £1.75 million is made in subhead R for research, analytical and other services concerning environmental and infrastructural matters. This replaces the specific provision for a grant-in-aid to An Foras Forbartha which was included in the Vote in previous years. Details of the revised arrangements for the provision of essential research and related services were announced last December. They include the establishment of a new environmental research unit in my Department and the transfer of certain functions of An Foras Forbartha and the staff involved, to local authorities and other public bodies. I intend that these arrangements will be fully in place shortly.

About £280 million is being spent on road works this year, as part of the process of bringing our roads, particularly our national roads and the principal access routes to our ports, and airports, up to the necessary standards. I have carried out a comprehensive review of the road development programme and work on a draft Blueprint for Road Development is practically completed. The Government have also approved my proposals in relation to the setting up of the National Roads Authority. I will be making a detailed statement in relation to the draft blueprint and the National Roads Authority later this month.

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat.

I thank the Deputy for his support. The House will be aware that there has been considerable deterioration in recent years in the condition of county roads.

The Minister surprises me.

Because of my concern about the state of the county road system, I have taken special measures to increase the level of State funding for works on such roads.

In 1987, a total of £15 million was allocated to local authorities for strengthening county roads, compared with £5 million in 1986. A further £15 million has been allocated in 1988. I have also decided that, in future, local authorities can use the block grant for roads on surface dressing and repair of potholes on primary county roads. Local authorities can also adopt a more flexible approach to the grant for strengthening county roads, which should be spent on primary county roads as far as practicable.

Detailed information has been received from all county councils, in response to a departmental circular issued in May 1987, about the condition of the network of county roads, together with estimates of the level of investment required to remedy deficiencies in the network. This information was considered in the context of the preparation of the draft blueprint for road development.

The Government are keenly conscious of the difficulties facing the construction industry. We believe that these difficulties will be overcome as order is restored to the economy. Activity in the construction industry depends on the demand for construction services. A healthy economy will foster a vibrant building sector. The substantial falls in interest and mortgage rates and the boost in business confidence stemming from the Government's assault on the imbalance in the public finances have laid firm foundations for recovery.

The prospects for private investment in construction activity this year are encouraging, particularly in the commercial sector. Output in the commercial and retail sectors of the industry last year recorded its first increase since 1981 and a further increase is expected this year. The redevelopment of the Custom House Docks site will have a significant positive impact on the industry and should create a knock-on momentum for development and recovery. The special scheme of financial incentives for urban renewal now operating in 14 urban centres is beginning to spread commercial development activity throughout the country. The section 23 incentive reintroduced in this year's budget to encourage investment in the private residential sector should provide a distinct stimulus to construction activity and generate increased output and employment in the housing sector within the short to medium term.

Arising from a complaint by the European Commission related to alleged encouragement of the use of Irish cement, I wish to take this opportunity to clarify the reply given by the then Minister for Education to a Dáil question on 9 July 1985. Deputies will know that it is Government policy to ensure that the maximum level of indigenous materials are used throughout the economy. However, I wish to make it clear that this policy is contingent on such use being consistent with our EC obligations, under which we are precluded from taking any action which discriminates against products and materials manufactured in other member states of the European Community.

Economic recovery demands the best and most intensive use of all of the country's resources, including the important resource of land. This Government have made a specific commitment to rationalising the difficult question of planning compensation. Work on this is well advanced and, as I have already indicated, I intend to have the relevant Bill circulated before the summer recess. Optimum land use is also frustrated by problems of dereliction. I also intend to bring forward proposals for tightening and improving the law on derelict sites.

Finally, I am optimistic that as the beneficial impact of the Government's policy measures work through the economy, the construction industry will see a return to stability and growth.

In October of last year I announced proposals for a radical new legislative framework for building societies to enable them to survive and compete in a rapidly changing financial services sector. My proposals in this area have been widely welcomed and I can assure the House that I am working to have the Bill presented to the Dáil at the earliest opportunity.

There has been a reduction in the public capital programme provision this year for local authority house purchase loans following the agreement of the banks and building societies to make available an additional £70 million for house purchasers of modest means. The arrangement includes a limited State guarantee in the event of a loss being incurred in the case of repossession and resale. A token provision is included in the Estimates to allow for the recoupment of such expenditure, if the need arises.

In conjunction with these arrangements, the Government also decided that a variable interest rate should be introduced for annuity and convertible loans with effect from 1 December 1987. The interest rate now being charged to local authority borrowers is 1.75 per cent less than the fixed rate of interest obtaining prior to December last. I welcome the recent announcements of further reductions in interest rates by two banks and I am hopeful that there may be further reductions in the mortgage rate shortly. This further reduction would be additional to the 3.75 per cent reduction in the mortgage rate since the Government took office. The cumulative reduction to date represents a monthly saving of £63 on a typical £25,000, 20 year mortgage. This, indeed, is a significant saving for house purchasers.

The capital provision for local authority housing in 1988 is £49 million. Though this is a reduction on the capital provision in recent years it must be viewed against the reduced level of demand for local authority housing and the tight budgetary situation which we are now facing. I expect that some 4,500 households will be provided with first time lettings by local authorities in 1988, of which about 1,600 will be accommodated in newly built houses.

The provision of adequate suitable accommodation for travellers generally is a matter which local authorities have been asked to deal with as an integral part of their housing programmes. Substantial progress has been made over the last few years. Through encouragement and 100 per cent funding by my Department, we have reached a stage where 37 proposals to provide serviced caravan parks for travellers are either at construction or advanced planning stage. I have expressed my concern at the tardiness of some local authorities in providing the necessary accommodation and my Department are monitoring progress on a quarterly basis.

I had been concerned for some time at the low take-up of tenant purchase schemes in recent years and on taking office I was determined to do something positive to redress this situation. I introduced the 1988 tenant purchase scheme in order to extend home-ownership to as many local authority tenants as possible and thereby help to create and restore stability to local authority housing estates. The scheme has been generally welcomed by both local authorities and tenants and I am confident that with the generous discounts now on offer, up to 50 per cent off the market value, together with the other favourable terms, it will provide more tenants than ever with the opportunity of home ownership.

Cé go bhfuil athruithe móra ó Mheastachán na bliana seo caite, is suim nach beag í an Meastachán seo atá os comhair an Tí. Is léir go gcaithfear srian a choinneáil ar an gcaiteachas Comhshaoil chomh maith le reimsí caitheachais eile chun smacht airgeadais a bhaint amach. Sa Mheastachán seo tá iarracht déanta agam an t-airgead a chur ar fáil chun na seirbhísí atá riachtanach a chothú — agus a fheabhsú, chomh fada agus is féidir seo — agus, ag an am céanna, an caiteachas a choimeád faoi smacht ceart. Táim cinnte go n-aontóidh an Dáil gur éirigh liom sa bheart seo.

The extraordinary thing about the Minister's speech is that with an Estimate which has been so radically changed in several different ways through the alterations in the method of providing loans to local authorities for capital works earlier this year, he managed to make an entire speech introducing it without explaining to the House the extent to which the provision for the Department of the Environment to the operation of local authorities has been substantially reduced this year.

It is difficult to establish, because of the various changes in the method of compilation of the Estimates — one could be forgiven for saying it was like the old adage of doing it with mirrors because enormous amounts have been taken from one side and put back on the other — the loss of income but the local government system, local authorities and the Department of the Environment are all suffering a substantially reduced allocation this year over last year which, in turn, was substantially reduced over the previous year. It will become increasingly apparent over the summer that it has been a year of environmental neglect. It seems odd that a Minister can, in introducing his Estimate, talk about improving and providing better co-ordination and closer links between research policy formulation and implementation in the year when he abolished An Foras Forbartha, the organisation charged with providing independent research and advice to his Department and local authorities generally. To put it charitably, it is disingenuous of the Minister to suggest that he has improved the facilities for research and policy formulation having abolished the organisation specifically set up to carry out that task.

The fact that there has been a year of environmental neglect is clearly evident from the appearance of our towns and countryside. The works formerly done by local authorities on environmental improvements and maintenance has come to a standstill because they no longer have the facilities or the resources and, in many cases, the staff to enable them to carry out basis maintenance, never mind improvements. Local authorities are starved of cash, forced to shed staff, unable to continue services, prevented from imposing charges and denied the promised reform of the financial structure and financing of local government which the Government promised during the election campaign 16 or 17 months ago. The Minister spoke about providing a new system of local government finance which is identical to the commitment he gave in the Estimates speech exactly 12 months ago. However, there has been no sign of a proper new system for realistically financing local authorities except on several occasions when the Minister of State, with or without the Minister's permission, floated some daft ideas which got dafter responses and, eventually, even more daft denials by the Minister. It is time, for the sake of the local government system, the authorities were clearly told what the future holds for them, what level of financing and autonomy they can expect and what is expected of them. At present it is being demanded of them at local level that they provide the services which people had traditionally enjoyed. They are not being given the resources to provide those services by the Government and the promised reform of the system has not materialised.

The loaves and fishes approach.

At least you do not belong to a Godless society like the rest of them.

And you do not belong to the miracle makers.

That pre-supposes that a person has particular powers, skills and talent. The incumbent may imagine he has these but the rest of us know that he is painfully short of them.

Let me now turn to deal with the general question on how to protect the environment and the more important question of how to improve the level of public awareness of the importance of their environment. In 1986 I initiated the enormously successful "Clean Up Ireland Week". It was quite remarkable the way in which the local authorities and the general public responded to that campaign. There was much favourable comment in both the national and local media about the work which was done during the course of that week. Having been run in a half-hearted fashion last year the Minister has now abandoned the "Clean Up Ireland Week" entirely in favour of taking on the appearance of some public salesman of dishwashers which is a sorry and poor alternative to the "Clean Up Ireland Week", which was successfully launched in 1986.

Despite all the talk and all the promises and commitments the Minister only devoted one paragraph of his speech to what was supposed to have been done in eliminating the dreadful problem of pollution of our inland lakes and waterways which resulted in so many fish kills last year. The Minister proudly pointed out that he chaired a sub-committee but he omitted to tell us what the results of the work of that committee were, beyond suggesting that some surveys were carried out. Already there have been fish kills this summer and I regret to have to say that I am certain as the summer progresses the number of fish kills will be as high as it was last year and that nothing is being done to find a remedy to that problem. Promising a new Water Pollution Bill is a waste of time and in any event such a Bill would be unnecessary in view of the extensive powers which the Government and the local authorities already have under the Water Pollution Act, 1977.

It is equally important that the Minister realises that if we are to eliminate fish kills we will have to improve dramatically the method of disposing of effluent. In order to do this, grants will have to be made available because it will be extremely expensive to switch over to a new system. On several occasions the Minister has spoken about the possibility of providing such grant aid under the western package — long promised but not yet delivered. The Minister must realise that this is a nationwide problem and grant aid must be made available to farmers to encourage them to undertake this extremely expensive work. In many cases they would be replacing systems which they put in on the technical advice of the agents and officers of the Government. It is now unreasonable to expect these farmers to spend between £10,000 and £20,000 to replace systems which they put in on the technical advice of the officers of the Department of Agriculture and Food. The Minister will not solve this problem through promising a western package, which I presume will arrive at some stage. He should remember that there is an Ireland outside of the west.

I was baffled when the Minister said that a sum of £218 million is going to be spent on road works this year. Even from a cursory perusal of the Estimates one will see that the Minister has reduced by 10 per cent the amount of money which will be available to the local authorities for road building, from £166 million to £150 million. It would only take the minimum number of excursions throughout the country to bring people to realise that the road system is steadily breaking down. When in Opposition the Minister constantly spoke about the road system and he promised that on taking office his first priority would be the elimination of potholes. It is clear that not only have they not been eliminated but the road system, especially the local road system, has deteriorated sharply during the last 15 months. In fact, I heard a story in recent weeks that farmers in west Mayo, in the Minister's own constituency, are using the potholes as watering troughs for their cattle. Rather than the Minister claiming credit for eliminating potholes I think the appellation he has been accorded in west Mayo of "pothole Pádraig" is an indication of his lack of interest in this problem.

We have also seen a winding down of the progressive programme for the building of new sewage treatment plants throughout the country. As a result, the level of pollution is increasing in certain areas around the country and will increase dramatically as time goes on. There is no point in trying to encourage people to eliminate the pollutants which they discharge into the waterways when the public authorities are polluting many lakes and rivers and are unable to eliminate this pollution because of the winding down of the programme for the building of new sewage treatment plants in many parts of the country. We had a plan to carry out that programme but it has now been dropped as has much of the road programme. It was ironic to read during the week of the Taoiseach opening a major bridge in Limerick and the Minister for the Environment yesterday absented himself from the debate on the Housing Bill in order to open a fly-over in Cork city. The money to complete both of those projects was provided by the previous Government and it ill behoves the present incumbents to suggest that they are carrying out improvement schemes when the opposite is the case.

We have also seen the housing grant scheme being would down with unfortunate applicants being hand tripped at every turn in their efforts to be paid the grants which they were promised. It is now taking up to six months for grants to be paid to applicants which they had applied for on completion of the work. This is not good enough.

The Minister also referred to the construction industry, for which he is responsible, an industry which was promised a £500 million injection by the Taoiseach on assuming office. That industry is now on its knees in a way never seen before and this can be seen clearly from the figures which I quoted yesterday during the course of my contribution on the Housing Bill.

It is now some time since our late colleague and my adversary, Mr. P.J. Burke, accused the Department of the Environment of not having the price of a bag of cement. Whatever about the veracity of that remark it is a fact that if the Department of the Environment had the price of a bag of cement they and the local authorities do not have the buckets to put the cement into. The local government system has been brought to a standstill over the past 15 months with services being eliminated, others deteriorating and the road system breaking down. Our lakes and waterways are increasingly becoming more polluted, our countryside and the towns are becoming more tattier and shabbier and the Minister is engaging in a series of public relations exercises in order to congratulate himself on presiding over this demolition of the local government system. This is not good enough and it will not redound to the credit of the Minister or the Government.

In a debate like this there may be a suggestion that because of national financial constraints, the Government are hampered in doing a whole range of things which have no major financial implications or which are not about assigning major amounts of money at all. The broad thrust of what Deputy Boland has said is accurate financially but there are other areas of legislative initiative which are essential and which would not cost this Minister or Government any money and in respect of which I believe action is long overdue.

This Department is entitled the Department of the Environment. Unfortunately, much of the thinking that permeates the Department goes back to the days when it was a Department dealing merely with local government administration. There are specifically environmentally-orientated actions and initiatives which are vital at present if we are to make any kind of progress in protecting the slender edge we have currently in environmental terms.

I regret very much to note that a recent international Protocol to freeze and reduce the use of aerosol sprays and other manufactured products which cause very serious damage to the atmosphere and which lead inevitably, as reported by experts, to a higher than heretofore incidence of skin cancers — though signed by 50 other countries, including EC states — has not yet been ratified by this Government. Rather than lagging behind, as we so often do, we should be showing initiative in this area. We should be showing that we are concerned about protecting our environment and the health of our citizens. I should like to see us not just signing that Protocol, which the Minister may very well be thinking of doing, but giving a lead and banning the sale of such products.

I contend the Minister should go further, requesting consumer and house-wives' associations to inform themselves sufficiently to make very careful choices in the range of products purchased so that there is not a tendency for us all to be involved in practices which are degenerative of our environment, leading to inevitable and irreversible decay. The use of what are called chloro-fleurocarbons in this area if stopped immediately worldwide would involve a lapse of the order of 100 years — the experts tell us — in which to undo the damage already done to the protective layers of the earth's atmosphere. That ecological abuse is echoed in a variety of other actions within our competence and jurisdiction.

Last year saw over 120 very serious fish kills in this country alone. Unfortunately, before summer is properly under way, we are already on the road to similar abuse simply because we have not the courage to tackle the polluters, those engaged in environmental vandalism, and treat them in the same way as any other person who makes an assault on property or life should be treated, that is as a criminal. It is appalling to note the degree to which this House has been unsupportive of inspectors and local authorities in their reasonable efforts to tackle these abuses. All over this country at present there is seeping into rivers and lakes effluent and pollution of various kinds. Indeed, the Minister's Department were unable to give me recently the names or other details of the number of local authorities engaged in disposing of untreated sewage into the seas around us.

If that is the lead from a Department, self-styled the Department of the Environment, then what can we reasonably expect from the industrialist or small entrepreneur who is endeavouring to create some form of enterprise for himself or herself? The Department must give a lead. They must be very rigorous with all of those engaged in those actions, but they have not done so. Not merely that there has also been the dumping of toxic waste. I know and the Minister knows that nowhere is there a record of where those wastes are being dumped. In various publications and literature on this topic it is evident that perhaps as much as half of such waste is being dumped, presumably furtively, in unknown locations throughout out the country. Certainly there is no record available either of the nature of such wastes or where they are being disposed. One can only conclude that they are being dumped in the nearest convenient location. There is evidence already to indicate that that, too, is taking its toll in environmental terms.

Staggeringly, from my point of view, earlier this year there was a survey undertaken in Cork by Cork County Council in co-operation with the farm development services of 1,100 farms embracing some 1,000 acres of land. The outcome of that survey showed that pollution-free farms accounted for approximately one-third of those farms surveyed. That was a survey carried out by what might be loosely called establishment bodies, not people engaged in any kind of scare-mongering or any desire for propaganda but rather responsible officials engaged in a scientific survey. I must say this, if I were Minister presiding over circumstances in which arguably two-thirds of our farms had a pollution problem, I would feel deeply ashamed and would be acting immediately to do something about it. If that is not accurate I will be pleased to be corrected by the Minister. There is an immediate obligation on him to convince his colleagues, to ignite, in the public consciousness, a campaign of environmental awareness to ensure that people are clear on what are the implications of the constant degeneration of our environment.

I could develop that theory. Our fishermen will tell us privately of the increasing numbers of deformities in fish-life they are dredging up from the seas. We know that the most radioactive stretch of water in the world is the Irish Sea, due to its constant pollution by Sellafield. Despite the protestations of the Minister's colleague, we are still not convinced that every rigour of the law, internationally, every opportunity for highlighting the problem, every forum available to us, has been used to ensure that the British Government realise that the constant ecological assault on this country is not acceptable. No amount of diplomatic nice talk, no amount diplomacy, will take the place of a frontal assault on the British Government, publicly and at every opportunity, to ensure that the constant seepage and disposal of wastes from Sellafield ceases.

Worse than that, it is now clear in the light of recent evidence form workers in that area, from the Greenpeace organisation — whom I had the pleasure of meeting recently — that the information on which the Irish Government base their self-assurances about conditions at Sellafield is based on nonsense, that in many cases work practices and procedures at Sellafield leave not just a great deal to be desired but, in fact, are deliberately so contrived as to maximise profits for individuals within the company to mask the real workplace practices that take place there. Those assurances which our Government receive, presumably from Departmental colleagues in the British Cabinet, which presumably emanate from British Nuclear Fuels Limited — which in turn, presumably, emanate from the operations manager himself at Sellafield — are worth very little in the light of those revelations.

Therefore, taking all of that together, we have a very comprehensive list, unfortunately, a very depressing jig-saw of environmental abuse. In the wake of that I have to say that all we seem to be getting are many promises. Indeed every page of the Minister's remarks contains a promise for future action. What is needed to be done is clear. I can understand there are financial constraints but in many cases it is not about finance. For example, it does not take finance to sign international conventions, to introduce legislation, for example, to ensure that every industrial or commercial proposal put to the IDA has an attendant environmental impact statement so that the full cost to the Irish economy and society can be gauged. There are costs involved in some of those proposals and therefore, difficult choices will have to be made in that area.

What I am saying is that those steps which should be considered and taken are not economically or financially intensive. More than that: I was particularly perturbed recently to learn what was, for me, sinister news, that a Government Department had decided to keep to themselves the news that containers of a food product had been refused entry some two years ago by the Dutch Government because of excessive radioactive contamination, though in my book any radioactive contamination is excessive.

Above all, I believe people have a right to know and to be informed. Accordingly, it is the view of my party that there should be introduced in this House a freedom of environmental information Bill whose provisions would make available to any interested party the kind of access to the environmental impact statements to which I referred a moment ago, which would render them capable of evaluating the full costs of such proposals. It is certainly wrong that a Government Department, acting on behalf of the people, decide to keep key information to themselves. I was also very disturbed to learn that the Minister's response, in terms of trying to assuage public opinion and assure people about the destination of these container loads of food product was to blithely tell them, that it had been insinuated into the animal food chain. There is, of course, no such thing as an animal food chain as distinct from the food chain. It is very disturbing that a Minister of State in charge of food will tell the public that it is acceptable and defensible to insinuate radioactively contaminated material into the food chain. Any rightminded Government would immediately take action to ensure that that kind of educational deficiency was corrected.

Underpinning this whole approach should be the need for us to make the polluter pay the full remedial costs of rectifying damage wherever possible. It is not unreasonable and it would not cost much for the Minister to engage in urgent dialogue with RTE to ensure that where possible there will be a massive and sustained advertising campaign, at minimal outlay to the Exchequer, directed towards environmental awareness and improvement. Surely there are few things more important than getting that view to the public. A gentle approach, in the context of a dialogue with RTE would be helpful in that respect.

Also, the Minister for Education could at no cost to the Exchequer decide that environmental awareness should be a fundamental element of the school curriculum. That could have immediate and long-term fundamental positive repercussions.

Related to our concern for our ecology is the whole area of local government. A radical reform here is necessary. I note with interest the Minister's repeated promises to introduce a Bill. I hope that that Bill will wipe away some of the plethora of bodies which encumber this area. I am talking about irrelevant local authorities in some cases, urban councils, school attendance committees, eastern regional development organisations and so on——

They are gone.

Yes, but some of the structures and staffing are still in place.

Keep going on with the list.

There is a long list which nobody has tackled, and the net effect——

He has done his bit, he has wiped out a fair few.

It is easy to wipe out bodies when they have not got councillors.

I accept that, but we are hoping to rectify that in the near future. We have a growing number of councillors, as Deputy Boland knows. However, we need a radical root and branch reform in local government. We should have a small number of local regional organisations with developed power and with autonomy and greater powers than they presently have. They should have managers or mayors who are publicly elected and accountable. There are Ministers at the Cabinet table who have less power than some of the managers who are not directly accountable to anyone. That is a fundamental reform which I look forward to seeing in a Bill which I hope will be before this House soon.

There is a major challenge for the Minister to reshape the Department of the Environment away from the Department of Local Government administration, and to use it to launch, nationally and internationally, a campaign to awaken environmental awareness among people, and to take the necessary steps to ensure that the precious and in many cases non-replaceable environmental resources we have are protected as much as possible. I hope the Minister will respond and tell us what he intends to do in those areas, especially where there is not a vast amount of money needed to bring about such a change.

I have to admire the Minister's courage in presenting this Estimate speech to the House this afternoon. I must also recognise that this is the last Estimate the Minister will present as Minister for the Environment, because by the autumn I predict that he will be Minister for Finance following the departure of his colleague, Deputy MacSharry.

Congratulations.

He will do to the rest of the country what he has done to the Department.

One of the reasons he will be promoted is because of his manifest ability to cut everything and anything in front of him. I suggest that Members should read the Minister's speech of last year on the Estimates in which he proudly boasted that the Estimates represented 10.5 per cent of GNP. This year the Minister boasts, without reference to last year's speech, that his Estimate represents 7.7 per cent of GNP. This Minister is willingly presiding over a massive reduction in allocations to our local authority, environmental, housing, construction and planning system. It is not surprising therefore that the local authority system has effectively broken down and that there is a major crisis in the finances of local authorities.

Over the last 15 months the Minister has been making promises in a manner that has been immortalised by Winston Churchill in the words "never has so much been promised to so many", with so little result. At present there are three Bills of the Minister's on the Order Paper. The first Bill was promised in the Minister's Estimate speech last year a speech which, if the date were changed, would serve as well today. By the autumn of last year the Minister promised a housing Bill. We got a first run at it yesterday, when the Minister was down in Cork.

Some of us did.

Some of us did. I have bad news for Deputy Ahern, in that if his Whips get their way, he will not get a bite at it at all.

They would have all got a bite at it if Deputy Quinn had closed down a bit earlier.

If the Minister had come forward a bit sooner there would have been enough time. A very good Bill was on the Minister's desk when he came into the Department of the Environment and it was not brought forward, although there have been few changes made since the Minister got the Bill. Now that the Bill is finally here the first thing the Minister wants to do is to restrict debate. For the interest of Deputy Ahern, the proposal is that all stages will be taken by next Thursday, and this relates to a major social measure.

(Interruptions.)

In relation to local authority houses, that marvellous script writer, who should really take a career break and work with "Yes Minister", talks about the fact that for the first time 4,500 households will be offered local authority accommodation. However only 1,600 of them will actually get into local authority houses. Decoded, what that means is that, whereas previously as far as records go back we were providing 5,000 local authority dwellings, this marvellous Minister for the Environment in presenting this Estimate is announcing 1,600 dwellings in a sort of reverse thrust. I do not know what the Gaelic opposite to Glasnost is, but this is a sort of murky looking glass and through that murky looking glass we are being told that local authority completions in 1988 will be 1,600. That is, if I have correctly interpreted the “Gaelnost” implicit in the speechifying of this Minister.

The Minister and his colleagues in Opposition made great noises in the direction of the construction industry, and well they might because the construction industry made out great cheques in the direction of Fianna Fáil in Opposition. With a great fanfare last year a construction industry committee was set up and the Minister in his speech last year referred to it as being a highpowered committee. It was high-powered in more ways than one, because the chairman was Mr. Robin Power.

What has been the contribution of this committee other than getting section 23, applied indiscriminately across the country, reintroduced — a measure which I welcome. Nothing else has come from this committee. The Minister referred to it in his speech but there is no tangible evidence of any concrete proposal coming from that committee which has been so identified and labelled on the floor of this House and yet we are being asked to pay £40,000. This is £40,000 for a committee which as far as I can see, has delivered little or nothing. Perhaps the Minister will be able to illuminate what precisely it has delivered. I should like to say to him that any local authority — even those which Deputy Keating wants to abolish — could happily do with the miserably small amount of £40,000. I think that that was a sop to the building industry at the time. It is quite clear now that Fianna Fáil in Government have been converted to the economic logic and the economic observation which they consistently and persistently rejected over the last four and a half years that construction demand was a function of economic demand within our economy and that it could not be artificially stimulated. During the last time it was artificially stimulated in 1977-79 — as Deputy Flynn will recall — the construction industry was grossly distorted and seriously undermined as a consequence. At least in Government the Minister has finally arrived at the end of the road to Damascus although the meanderings which he took along the route in the last four and a half years were quite extraordinary.

We have been promised a national roads authority. With the assistance of the public relations people we have been promised miles and miles of a national roads authority. The frequency with which that announcement has been repeated would give the impression that this body was permanently up and running and was in the business of constructing miles and miles of roads. As recently as 12 weeks ago the Minister told the committee of the General Council of County Councils that within six weeks the details of the national roads authority would be announced. We are now told in his speech today that it has finally been agreed by his colleagues in Government but he has not indicated whether legislation is required.

I have no problem in regard to the establishment of this body provided local authorities retain the power to determine the alignment of a particular road because the engineering and construction lobbies desperately want — and have desperately wanted in the city of Dublin since 1971 — to construct an eastern bypass along the route from Merrion Gates across through East Wall and up to Santry, despite repeated democratic rejections by council after council and councillors group after councillor group. Instead we have asked for — and I am glad to see that the Minister is making finance available — the keeping of the commitment which was entered into by the previous Administration to build a western bypass which would link both sides of the city, east and west, and which, being built on firm ground, would cost far less than the construction of an eastern bypass. This may or may not be the appropriate occasion but in the context of announcing the establishment of a national roads authority — and I can see great merit in an NRA — the alignment and location of a road should remain vested at the local level. That is where the impact affects most of the people involved. That was promised last year and frequently during the year but not yet delivered and we now understand that it is cleared with the Minister's colleagues. However, we do not know whether legislation is coterminous or conditional upon it being established.

The Minister's speech devoted much time and energy to the question of the environment. He started off with local authority finance and as Deputy Boland said we have had three or four balloons launched courageously up into the air and on some occasions the unfortunate Minister of State at the Department of the Environment did not have the wit or the temerity to let go the balloon and was in mid flight when they were eventually shot down.

He did not put a knot on them.

They were a pretty sight.

It was a pity a few of the Deputies were not tied to the balloon.

The Minister will be safely ensconced in the Department of Finance when the reality of this legislation has to be dealt with.

(Interruptions.)

I am being demoted after being promoted last year.

I intervene to advise Deputy Quinn that he has now some four minutes left of the time allotted to him.

The Minister cannot hide behind the repeated sentences and statements that he is reviewing the situation. The civil servants who still remain in the Custom House will be in St. John of God's if not St. Brendan's if they are asked to review any longer the four or five minimal and contracted options that exist in relation to the introduction of a property tax. The walls of the Custom House could be wallpapered with all the documents that have been produced. He does not need the 12 months which he promised himself last year and which he has now taken. The options are there. It requires not the Civil Service——

Four years.

I am glad the Deputy interrupted me because Deputy Boland did more in the eight to ten months in which he was Minister for the Environment than the present Minister who is now twice that length of time in office. I will list this man's record if Deputy Roche wishes. I am glad he has come to the assistance of his Minister——

(Interruptions.)

——because it enables me to remind him that the Minister has executed, demolished and destroyed more in his tenure of office in the Department of the Environment than any previous Minister for the Environment. It is unfortunate that the Deputy should provoke me to draw this sad aspect to the attention of this House.

It warrants my promotion.

It does, because that seems to be the thrust of Government policy. I will not have the temerity in the limited time at my disposal to talk about the botched execution of An Foras Forbartha. The Minister has not, even at this stage, given it the coup de grace as they still reside in St. Martin's House. The environmental research unit was announced in December and yet not one single person is on the payroll of the environmental research unit. Nobody in An Foras Forbartha on this 3 June 1988 knows to whom they are working, upon what projects they are working and what they are doing. What they do know is that they should not talk to anybody. We also know, through the chair to Deputy Keating, that environmental information is something which the public will never get from the environmental research unit.

This is a sad Estimate from a Minister whose promises can no longer be taken seriously. We will not see this Minister in the House delivering another Estimate for the Department of the Environment because he will not be in that Department by the autumn, wherever else he may be, and I suspect he will be in the Department of Finance. All the promises, undertakings and commitments unfortunately have to be viewed in that context.

Maybe I will be in charge of the roads authority.

This is the second time I have followed Deputy Quinn. He was speaking yesterday on the Housing Bill and I was supposed to be the next speaker but, unfortunately, there was not a time limit as there is today and I am now in a position to get in. It was ironic that when I got home last evening I opened my post and found a bundle of letters from the Simon Community in Dundalk berating the Dáil in general for the lack of progress in relation to a housing Bill. I decided to put pen to paper and reply there and then because I felt so strongly. I refer to the fact that while the Government and I wanted to get this Bill passed as soon as possible a number of other Deputies in the House did not see that and chose to speak at length. I appreciate they are quite entitled to speak, but I hope to be able to return to that Bill given the opportunity some time next week.

If that is the best the Deputy can do it is a poor thing.

Any of our frequent visitors in the public gallery will have seen the type of Coalition we had in the four and a half years prior to this Government coming into power. Yesterday two people from the parties to the Coalition adopted completely different attitudes to the Housing Bill. Deputy Boland agreed more or less with the thrust of the Bill and Deputy Quinn went the other way and said it was not a Bill at all. I say to Deputy Quinn they had a 1985 Bill and nothing was done about it in two years until February 1987 when this Government came into power. I wonder why they talk about rushing through Bills or getting housing Bills passed. It took them two years to bring their Bill forward and even then they did not get their chance to have it debated.

Earlier this week we had an unseemly dispute between two former Coalition Ministers on the Courts Bill, each adopting a different approach. I know, Sir, that I am digressing and I hope you will permit me to do so. I am making the point that that was the type of Government we had before this Government came into power. Deputy Quinn and the other speakers are slightly unfair in saying this Minister is responsible for the local authority system as it is at the moment. Generally the problems were created while they were in power.

(Interruptions.)

I remind him of the 1983 Act when they reduced the rate support grant to local authorities throughout the country and because of that I am here today——

(Interruptions.)

——pleading for my local authority, Louth County Council, who are £4 million in the red, not because of this Government but because of the Coalition's mismanagement during those years. Deputy Kelly has just come in. He was a major non-supporter of the Coalition Government. He is correct. As has been proved, this country needs one-party Government and they have it now.

Let us get back to the Estimate. Let me say there is a strict time limit on this debate and interruptions are particularly unwelcome.

Coming back to local authority finance, the Minister said he is bringing forward proposals in relation to this and I agree that the sooner this is brought forward the better because my local authority have been £4 million in the red over the last six or seven years. It has a cumulative effect. We had a three-day working week for the outdoor staff there in the last month or so, but thanks to the Minister for the Environment who made a special grant to the local authority, we are now back on full time. How long that will last I do not know, but because of the good offices of the Minister for the Environment and his Minister of State Louth County Council are now back on full-time work, and long may it last.

At the end of the day, in County Louth in particular, the county council are sandwiched between two very powerful and fairly well off local authorities, Drogheda Corporation and Dundalk UDC. The problem is that Louth County Council, for a number of reasons, have been denuded of their financial base and have absolutely no way of collecting money other than in service charges, the rate support grant and moneys from Central Government. The urban authorities have a tremendous base by which to collect money. The Minister will have to address this. I have no doubt it is happening all over the country, but it is most apparent in my county because of the two large urban areas on either side of the rural areas represented by Louth County Council.

The Minister referred to the national roads authority and a blueprint for road development. This again is something we all welcome because, as the Minister knows well, in my constituency there is a great deal of agitation regarding various road schemes. County Louth is the gateway to this country in that the vast majority of traffic coming from the Six Counties comes through my constituency. We have the highest proportion per head of population of national roads. The blueprint and the roads authority will be welcome if and when they come forward, which I understand is to be later in the month.

The question of county roads is close to the hearts of all people on local authorities. I have to welcome the fact that the Government each year in the last two years have reallocated £15 million to the strengthening of county roads. The vast majority of our population are traversing these day in and day out. There are bad stretches on some of our roads but generally not as bad as some commentators make them out to be. For instance, on the Dunleer to Collon road we had a major problem in the last year or so. Quite a number of people from outside the constituency wrote to me pointing out that this road was so bad and they did not realise the cutbacks were going so far. I had to point out to them that it was not the cutbacks, it was the fact that the roads were put down just after it had rained and just did not hold. Again, the Department, through the good offices of the Minister, made a grant of £69,000 available so that that road could be repaired. I travelled along it today and an excellent job has been done there. I thank the Minister for making that allocation to us.

The Minister mentioned planning, and I feel particularly strong about this. We have heard a great deal about reform needed in compensation. That has to happen, but the Minister should address his mind to the fact that because of the time limits written into the 1963 legislation and the amending legislation of 1976 some local authorities can hold up planning applications for ages. This is not in the interest of development or job creation. The Minister should look at it to see if anything can be done to put an onus on local authorities or other allied agencies to respond to various queries. We know all about additional information and how that delays the response and the planning application.

Another matter about which I feel very strongly is mortgage finance. I compliment the former Minister, Deputy Boland, for the building society regulations he brought in shortly before his exit from office. They were excellent regulations. Unfortunately, while they may be in place the various agencies are doing their level best to try to get around the regulations.

Hear, hear.

I have taken up this matter with my Minister on more than one occasion. As a solicitor, I know only too well that these regulations endeavoured to do away with a third solicitor in conveyancing transactions. That has not happened and something will have to be done urgently about it. Extra unneeded expense is being occasioned for someone buying a house and taking out a mortgage. The Minister will have to look at this.

Another matter regarding the building society regulations is the question of insurance. Some building societies have been getting away with blue murder. The regulations provided that if borrowers wanted to use their own insurance company they were entitled to do so, but I have seen circulars from a number of building societies and in one there were about 17 conditions the persons had to comply with before the society would agree to allow them to use their own insurance company. A number of these cases have been referred to the Registrar of Friendly Societies and the sooner some action is taken the better. I should like to ask the Minister to use his good offices in regard to this because the regulations are being flouted and that is not right. We should remember that the regulations, which were prepared by the Department of the Environment, were adopted by the House.

In the debate on the Housing Bill next week I hope to deal with the plight of travelling people. On behalf of the people of Dundalk I should like to thank the Minister, and his predecessor, for allocating money to Dundalk UDC to erect a halting site in the town. In my view it is one of the best halting sites in the country. The facility was recently opened by Cardinal Ó Fiaich and I advise Deputies who are interested in the plight of the travelling people to make a trip to the town to view it. I have no doubt they will be impressed. Next week a scheme of ten sheltered houses for travelling people will be opened by Cardinal Ó Fiaich — he is a frequent visitor to our county — and that scheme received a 100 per cent subsidy from the Department of the Environment. I should like to thank the Minister for his help on that scheme. For many years that plan gathered dust in the Department of the Environment and we are grateful to the Minister for dusting off the cobwebs and proceeding with it.

I should like to commend the Minister and the Government for bringing forward the tenant purchase scheme. There has been a tremendous response in my county to the scheme. The Minister will have to put an onus on local authorities to ensure that they adhere to the phrase, "market value". In my view if some local authorities get their way they will inflate prices to such an extent that the scheme will be beyond the reach of many people. I accept that the Minister is anxious that the scheme be availed of and I should like to impress upon him the importance of ensuring that local authorities do not put inflated prices on their houses. In my home town of Dundalk it appears the local authority are putting an inflated price on some houses. We will have to take up the matter with the officials and try to get them to see the light. I will deal with it in detail next week.

Finally, I should like to congratulate the Minister on the work he has done in the past year. He has done an excellent job with the resources available to him.

On behalf of The Workers' Party, I should like to make a number of comments on this Estimate. Many points can be made on this Estimate but with so little time available I will only be able to headline the concerns of The Workers' Party in regard to the programme of dismantlement of local authority administration. As a member of Dublin City Council, the premier local authority, I am concerned about the way the Government, in mimicking the Government across the water, are systematically moving to dismantle local authorities in all their operations.

It is clear that Fianna Fáil are bent on centralising power and administration in the hands of the mandarins in Government to the exclusion of the operations and power of local authorities. This process was set in train in 1977 in the disastrous manifesto which proposed the abolition of any local capacity to raise finance. We have witnessed a slow bleeding process since.

Dublin City Council went within an ace of rejecting the budget imposed by the Minister when it was considered at the estimates meeting in January. We were tricked on that occasion by three so-called community councillors who abstained from voting on the basis of a promise made to them by Fianna Fáil members of the city council. That promise, to bring in outside monitoring in the form of advisers, has not been delivered. After the crucial vote was taken the Fianna Fáil members were asked when this would happen and they replied that it was not budgeted for in the current year. I should like to issue a clear warning to the Minister that Dublin City Council will not tolerate the same type of unilateral cutback in funding in the current year. The city council will tell him they will not accept those cutbacks. They will demand a level of funding in accordance with the taxation paid by the people of the city to central Government on the understanding that it will be passed on to the local authority to ensure that there are proper services.

The attitude of the Government, particularly in regard to water charges and so on, is not acceptable. Fianna Fáil undertook to repeal the relevant legislation and abolish service charges. In the local election of 1985 they agreed with the basic premise that local services and water charges represented a double tax on working people and they agreed to abolish that legislation when returned to Government. Where does the Minister stand in regard to that promise? Another matter that concerns us is the rate of job losses at local authority level. It is horrendous. We often forget the extent of job losses when we are debating the cuts in services. I understand that 800 jobs have been or must be shed in Dublin by the corporation over a two-year period.

The fact that the Government have not sanctioned any house building in Dublin in the current year means that one of the most expert teams in Europe, assembled over decades by Dublin Corporation, is being dismantled. Officials are demoralised and their departure will be a loss to the corporation. It is unlikely that we will be able to replace them. It will take us decades to build up such a team again. Their work has been applauded throughout Europe but because of the narrowminded and short-sighted approach of the Government they are being let go.

If the Minister is not prepared to give adequate funds to local authorities he should look at the ultra vires rule which makes it impossible for local authorities to engage in enterprising projects. Local authorities could adopt many schemes to raise finance, create jobs and make them more relevant but they cannot because under the law they are prohibited from engaging in outside financial activities. A classic example of this was the prospect of Dublin City Council getting involved in waste disposal for Leinster as a business enterprise. That was a missed opportunity. I hope the Minister gives serious consideration to that matter.

The Minister has expressed concern about the pollution of Dublin Bay and the Irish Sea and I welcome that. The people of Dublin will applaud him for his initiatives in regard to that problem but a very disturbing fact emerged during Question Time yesterday. It appears, from a reply by the Minister for the Marine, that the only aspect of the problem being addressed was sludge dumping off Howth Head. I should like to remind the Minister that Dublin City Council, Dublin Corporation, Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire Borough Council are dumping raw untreated sewage at a horrendous rate into Dublin Bay and its environs. The Government in their concern for a clean environment must put a stop to the practice of dumping raw sewage into any of our waters. When one considers that substantial funding for such projects is available from the EC, it is unbelievable that we have been so slow in getting on with the job.

Dublin County Council will be hosting in October a major conference on the management of the Irish Sea. I hope the Government will make a major contribution in working towards an intergovernmental scheme of management for the Irish Sea, along the lines of the North Sea Conference. This is something we hope will emerge from our conference in this Millennium year.

The fish kills are starting again due to pollution and there have been two major incidents this week. I should like to hear the Minister's respose to the recent IFA proposals which seem to indicate that the farming community are not prepared to do anything about this until they get massive Government grant aid. The second proposal from the IFA is that the Government should go easy in implementing the law. They want the law suspended and they continue to break it on a daily basis.

I have written a submission to the Minister regarding the house purchase scheme, pointing out the very grave disparities between the 1986 scheme and the 1988 scheme. Those who are in the business of selling local authority houses welcome the new scheme, but The Workers' Party have grave reservations about selling off these houses. Major disparities and inequities are developing between the three schemes now in operation. People who opted for the 1986 scheme are paying double the amount being paid by their next door neighbours under the 1988 scheme. I know there must be a start up date and an end date, but something must be done to alleviate the sense of injustice being felt by people who responded earlier on more unfavourable conditions. There must be some amelioration.

I refer to the road project for the Grange Abbey area of my constituency. This scheme has been standing for almost 20 years but the local authority cannot get funding to finish the roads. There is no point in building highways while leaving housing schemes unfinished for lack of very small sums of money.

The Minister spoke about his care and concern for travellers. Dublin Corporation have a scheme with the Minister for the past 18 months for the housing of nine travelling families at Grove Lane. I understood that everybody wanted the scheme but I am beginning to think a little differently about the attitude of the local Fianna Fáil representatives. Despite the Minister's espousal of the cause of housing travellers, he has merely given permission to build the perimeter wall. I am at a loss to understand what is going on. The housing of travellers cannot be linked to the overall housing programme of the local authority in an area as big as Dublin. It is a vast problem. Surveys are being prepared on the housing needs of Dublin but the specific needs of travellers must be taken in isolation. I would urge the Minister to look at the Grove Lane scheme and not to leave it lying any longer in his Department.

I now turn to the problem of local authority-owned ground rents. The Minister has a function in this area. The Minister for Social Welfare, Deputy Woods, promised the 750 householders in the Donaghmede area of my constituency that this problem was being considered by a sub-committee of the Cabinet. I have yet to find out the membership of that committee or whether it even exists. There is no reason the Government cannot introduce legislation to abolish ground rents owned by local authorities. I understood the matter was being looked at. Has the Minister a role in the area and has anything been done?

There is an urgent need to reform the planning laws and the obligation to pay compensation. This is a major problem which has an incredible impact on financially troubled local authorities. They are being held to ransom by developers and planning permissions for schemes which are not deserving are being bludgeoned through because of the threat of compensation claims.

The Minister made the laughable suggestion that the construction industry is of particular concern to him and to the Government. It is one of the great myths that Fianna Fáil are the friends of the builders. They have not sanctioned one local authority house this year in the area which has the single biggest concentration of people, namely, Dublin city and county. I cannot see how the Government propose to deal with the emerging housing problem in the city area. How can they suggest they are doing anything to solve this problem or to encourage the building industry while maintaining an absolute embargo on funding for local authority housing? This matter will have to be addressed by the Minister or his successor — I am not privy to Deputy Quinn's information that the Minister is moving to a different office. If housing in the Dublin area is not put back onstream and if the expertise in the local authorities is not retained, we will be faced with a housing crisis and will be forced to consider the kind of schemes we had in the sixties to deal with the problem.

For all those reasons and all the problems unaddressed by the Minister, and especially because of his attack on the existence of local authorities, The Workers' Party will not be supporting this Estimate.

It would indeed be an historic occasion if The Workers' Party supported any Minister on any Estimate in this House.

The Deputy was not here last week when we supported the Estimates.

They have the considerable glory of promising this, that and the other to everybody and delivering nothing. I have said that before.

The Deputy's record of misrepresenting things in this House is well known.

I am amused at any suggestion from The Workers' Party that I misrepresent anything. Several speakers have touched on a number of the issues I intended to take up, particularly the tenant purchase scheme. The 1988 tenant purchase scheme is undoubtedly one of the most imaginative schemes that has ever been introduced. I have already congratulated the Minister on it and I do so again now. I agree with the last speaker that there are disparities beginning to show between the 1988 and the 1986 schemes. That is an indictment of the Minister who introduced the 1986 scheme and it indicates how progressive the current Minister has been in the most recent scheme. Notwithstanding that, the matter needs to be examined because people are buying local authority houses next door to each other which are identical in value, but one party are making considerably higher repayments.

The 1988 scheme is very welcome but I have some problems with the way the scheme is being implemented at local authority level. I would urge the Minister to address these problems. For example, in the county council housing area in County Wicklow, 600 indications of interest in the scheme have been received to date from council tenants. The council have adopted the approach of using their own engineering staff to draw up valuations and, as a result, 300 notices of valuations have issued.

Like Deputy Ahern, I am not happy with this approach to valuation. Current market valuation is relatively easily established in any housing authority area. There are very few housing estates where the ordinary individual house owner or house renter would not be able to give a good estimate of the current market valuation. It is not necessary for local authorities to set up some sort of bureaucratic function to establish current market valuation. It will undoubtedly impede the take-up of the scheme if this is allowed to progress.

In particular, I am fearful that some of the valuations that are being produced — I am not speaking about my own local authority alone but I have heard this from discussions with other Deputies — are undoubtedly inflated and that will inhibit people's enthusiasm for the scheme and their take-up of the scheme. I know that Deputies from all sides of the House have approached the Minister on this issue. I suggest to him that it would be worth his Department's while to urge the local authorities to speed up the process of valuation, to make valuations for all local authority houses automatically available so that tenants will not have to come looking for them. In that way tenants can see what sort of deal they can get under the 1988 scheme.

The scheme is a very valuable one. It is generally welcomed in this House. It is seen as progressive. It will not cause the problem caused by the first-time buyer grants which were introduced by the previous Minister in the last regime, that of denuding local authority housing estates of the most progressive elements in those estates. It is a welcome scheme but disparities are beginning to show, particularly the disparity in regard to people who are purchasing houses under the 1986 scheme. I would also urge the Minister and his Department to address the problem of local authorities taking their time in drawing up valuations.

The question of roads has been addressed by a number of speakers. I was amused when listening to Deputy Boland's contribution when he was at his normal vitriolic best. He was speaking about the Minister and gave him the title "pothole Pádraig". I suppose the Minister, Deputy Flynn, is a big enough man to take that on his shoulders. He has taken many other appellations and he arises smiling from them all. When I look at the record when Deputy Boland was in office it brings a wry smile to my face. When the Department of the Environment were in Deputy Boland's tender mercies they gave the magnificent sum of £5 million to road stengthening and repairs. Last year the Minister, Deputy Flynn, assigned £15 million to those purposes and this year he is assigning a similar amount. He was given the name "pothole Pádraig" or whatever name Deputy Boland chose to call him. Parliamentary rules and procedures here, plus a stern up-bringing, prevent me from putting on the record what motorists said about Deputy Boland during his period in the Custom House.

Risk it.

I will not. I have been in enough trouble as regards parliamentary language on other occasions. On the general issue of housing, there has been much craw-thumping about the housing starts. I would be the first to admit that the question of housing starts is an important one. At present we are in a transitional period with regard to housing. The best way of helping the building and construction industry is not the way suggested by Deputy McCartan, of building more houses to stand idle. In many local authorities there are houses idle and that is an indication of where housing policy went wrong. In the past two years, as in this year, there has been a welcome increase in moneys allocated for important elements of the housing schemes such as the housing refurbishment scheme. I would like to extend my personal gratitude and the gratitude of the constituents in Bray, Greystones and Kilmacanogue to the this Minister for his very far-sighted approach with regard to funding of the refurbishment schemes.

A major housing problem in my area has been with what are sometimes called the Bobby Molloy houses. In the last couple of years there has not been any real commitment to the refurbishment schemes. Last year Deputy Ger Connolly came to Bray at my request and had a look at the scheme there. He almost doubled the amount of money put into that scheme. I thank the Minister for the £700,000 which was allocated last year to refurbishment of houses in Bray and the £450,000 which has been allocated so far this year. It is very welcome. Any Deputy who cares to travel along the Boghall road and look at the Oldcourt scheme will see that the direct labour scheme employed there by the local authority has produced great value for money. I hope the Minister can squeeze a few extra shillings for that scheme this year. I have already gone to him with the begging bowl.

The scheme at Kilmacanogue is a credit to the Minister and to Wicklow County Council. Houses which were literally falling down — it was a mistake to build them in the first place — have now been converted into first-class modern homes. I would like to thank the Minister in particular for the additional £200,000 which he allocated, in spite of straitened circumstances, for the completion of the refurbishment scheme at Kindlestown Park. That was the flag-bearer of refurbishment schemes in Ireland.

Deputy Boland raised a point about housing starts which was picked up by another Deputy. I am not sure that simply building three-bedroomed, semidetached houses such as we have been doing up to now is the right way to provide for the current housing need. We need to re-examine the whole thrust and direction of housing starts and the present situation allows us the opportunity to do that. I would like to see more money going towards small family units. There is not enough money being allocated to that area. I will take this opportunity of reminding the Minister that I am still going around with the begging bowl for Fáilte Park in Bray. We should be putting more money into small family units. Most Deputies probably have experience of an increased demand in that area.

The major thrust in the discussions has been the thorny issue of local government finance and financial reform. This is one of the most jaded issues in political life. The Minister in his contribution pointed out that half of all local government funds this year have come from central Government. That is slightly down on what it was in the recent past but it is still far too high. There should be a system of local funds available to local authorities. With the benefit of hindsight many of us would regard decisions taken a decade ago as being the wrong ones. We would all agree that the present system of local finance is wrong and unhealthy. At present substantially more than half of central Government money is passed on to local government in the form of specific grants. This ties the hands of local authorities.

The best way to pass funds from central Government to local authorities is to allocate it in block and let the local authorities, which are after all democratically responsible in their own areas, determine how the money is spent. One of the problems with the current system of transferring money from central Government to local government is that it requires a degree of supervision and examination and a whole bureaucratic structure which does not contribute anything. If the taxpayers are going to have moneys taken from them to be passed to local authorities it is wrong that that money should be wasted in arid transfers in the deserts of administration in central Government or at local authority level.

The means by which we transfer funds from central Government to local government is not the real issue in the whole area of reform of local finance. When listening to contributions from people like Deputy Quinn you would think they had lived on the far side of the moon for the past 25 years. It strikes me they have not had even the most passing, minuscule interest in the operation of the local government finance system. I am not allowed to call anybody a liar in this House but to see the financial crisis of local government being laid at events in 1977-1978 is twisting the truth in an extraordinary way.

The facts are that problems began to emerge with local government finance in the early fifties. As far back as 1949 papers were being circulated in the Administration about a potential crisis in local government finance and throughout the fifties this was the subject of a reasonably heated debate.

Those were the years when a deficit of £500 would have seemed serious.

This was the subject of debate throughout the sixties. In 1961 two ESRI reports were produced on this subject. From 1965 to 1969 there were not fewer than four separate reports produced by interdepartmental committees arguing that we had a wrong valuation system. Everybody accepted that the valuation system was daft and Justice Barrington found it to be unconstitutional. Those reports found that the remissions and exemptions system had got out of hand and everybody accepted that. The argument was made that the grant system was wrong and that we needed to look at alternative systems of local finance.

The contents of those four reports from the interdepartmental committees and the two ESRI reports were condensed in the White Paper of 1972. I would be the first to admit that the White Paper produced by the then Fianna Fáil Government was hardly what we would call a radical step forward in local government. It was lambasted by Fine Gael and by Labour. They went out and beat the Lambeg drums on the streets of Dublin and Bray to the point where the two local authorities fell on their swords and committed hari-kari. The local authorities were dissolved, commissioners were put in and local government went into a downward spiral in both areas. That is an historical fact.

The White Paper proposals, modest as they were in 1972, were thrown out in the general election of 1973. The Coalition emerging at that time decided there were fruits to be plucked from toying with the rates: Deputy Kelly was around at that time and he knows what I am saying is the truth. The first Dutch auction on the rates occurred in 1973, offered to an electorate who were already screaming that the local government finance system was wrong, and rightly so.

It must have been the first of many offerings.

(Interruptions.)

Yes, the first of many offerings, and rightly so. Thankfully, that day in politics has gone. Between 1973 and 1977 the Coalition made a marvellous contribution towards local finance. Rather than have the guts to take the decisions which everybody knew needed to be taken, what did they do? They went to the ESRI and commissioned another report, the Copeland Walshe Report. That report was produced for the Coalition Cabinet in July or August 1976 and the Cabinet record shows it was discussed in 1976. The facts are the Coalition shirked their responsibility in this area. Like cowards they shied away from it because Copeland Walshe said a property tax was needed. Copeland Walshe gave advice but they chose to ignore it. That is a fact.

In the first Cabinet meeting in September 1976 what did these brave people who are so interested in local finance do? They decided to duck the issue again. They decided it was about time they washed their hands and walked away from the rates. The interesting fact is that there is a Cabinet decision dated 1976 to abort the rates. That proposal was offered to the electorate in 1977. They accepted it and in 1978 domestic rates were abolished. I would accept the argument, with the benefit of ten years hindsight, that that was probably not the right decision, but the cowardice we have seen since then and the continuous hypocrisy which is trotted out here is an irritation to me and to anybody who is interested in local finance. This bluster, avoidance of blame and the passing of blame downgrades politics. All we need to do is to make decisions.

The Minister has indicated that decisions are to be taken shortly. I have confidence that he will take these decisions. I hope the people on the benches opposite, who sometimes crawthump about local government, will have the courage of their convictions and support this Minister when he takes his decisions. He has my confidence and the confidence of anybody who cares about local government.

Deputy Roche must be a judge of craw-thumping because he has given us as complete a demonstration of the art over the past quarter of an hour as I have heard here for a few weeks. I will resist, however, the temptation to take him back over the years 1973 onwards and remind him of three-quarters of the very comical history he has forgotten. That would take me more time, by the time I had embroidered it, than I will be allowed for my whole speech. I will leave that for another occasion but I will not forget it.

The Department under consideration today has as one of its charges something which has very little to do with the word "environment" in its ordinary acceptance. Newer Deputies might be puzzled when they hear me say that the Department of the Environment was rechristened for an old reason. A very new, beardless Deputy might be inclined to ask what was the reason, and I would have to remind him that the English rechristened their Department the Department of the Environment and Pat had to do so as well. He did not think he would be taken seriously by his colleagues abroad unless he, too, had a Department of the Environment with a Minister and a couple of parliamentary secretaries.

Oddly enough the Department of the Environment still occupies the same old lino-covered corridors, the same people pushing the same pens on the same files, carrying out very much the same range of functions as before. There is just a change of letterhead and an excuse for a new logo, otherwise no change. The old Department of Local Government were responsible for the election law, and are still responsible for it. There is a reference in the Estimates to electoral expenses and, therefore, I hope the House will allow me to say a few words about that.

It is only about ten days or less since I heard Deputy Quinn imply during Question Time that he hoped any electoral amendment which the new census might make necessary would involve an increase in Dáil numbers to bring the number of Deputies up to the maximum constitutional number, which is one for 20,000 of the population. Deputy Quinn also said he thought it had always been the rule to increase the Dáil in step with the population in the ratio of one to 20,000. Deputy Quinn is wrong. He was a member of a Government which rightly resisted the suggestion that such a move should be made. In the 1980 Electoral Act provision was made for the return to the next Dáil of 166 Deputies. In the 1983 Act — there having been an intervening census, the broad results of which were known — although the population had grown to an extent which would have justified a further four seats, the then Government — and Deputy Boland was in the seat now occupied by the Minister — resisted the temptation that the number should be increased and it remained somewhat below the constitutional maximum.

If there is one thing on which the general public seem to be agreed — I admit it is simply a Pavlovian reflex of hostility towards politicians, and I have to accept my share of the blame if that exists — no matter what their political or partisan sympathies may be, it is that there are enough Deputies and we do not need any more. I share that opinion. It is non-sensical to talk about cutting the number in half. A good reason for not doing so was given many years ago by the late Seán Lemass when he said, quite rightly, that assuming the House is roughly divided down the middle, a Government can count on only about half the Members of the House, and they must be able to recruit a presentable front bench team and a second row team. The latter were not as numerous in those days as they are now, they are as numerous as a nest of mice and you cannot really see them because they are running in and out so fast, and their posts are just as redundant and as useless to the economy.

At least 15, or 16, or perhaps even 20, presentable officeholders have to be found and it is not easy to do that in a small House where many people, for reasons of their age, capacity or lack of it, or business commitments, or whatever, or the fact that they are geographically bunched too close together, do not offer a Taoiseach a sufficiently wide choice. There must be a certain minimum level in the Dáil and I would think that for that reason the number could not go much below 150. Something like that is the number at which we should aim. It certainly should not be allowed to balloon merely because the population has increased. Constitutionally, the number could go down to as low as about 110 but I think that about 150 is right. I hope that this Government will do what the last one did, which is to resist any temptation to increase the number.

The Estimates contain a reference to the cost of conducting elections. I should like to say a few words about the system of holding national elections here and of the expense attached to them. The expense of a national poll nowadays—— the Minister will correct me if I am wrong ——is approaching £3 million, no matter what the issue is, whether a referendum, a Dáil election, or anything else. It may be that there are minimal differences in the cost as between a referendum and a Dáil election, no doubt the count does not take so long and probably is not as expensive from that point of view, but all the other expenses, payment of the returning officers and staff, Garda overtime and so on tot up, every time we hold a national poll, to about £3 million. That is not chickenfeed. We ought not to despise money like that. We should try to economise on these outings. We had a terrible rash of them over the last five or six years, more than we needed.

There is also the disruption of the school week which the holding of polls in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday or Thursday, causes. I know perfectly well that sooner or later we will get around to having national polls at weekends, on Saturdays or Sundays, but that day will not come until the British do it. As soon as they do it, there will be somebody in here within a week asking why could we not have legislation of the same kind. Since the people across the water are seen now to have satisfied themselves that the reasons for it are not good, we too must do the same thing, although the reasons that speak in favour of that change now are just as visible, as loud and as cogent for us at this moment as they would be across the water. We should make that change now. There are very few Sabbatarians left in the country so strict that they should imagine that exercising their political duty in the shape of putting a ballot paper in a box would breach proper observance of the Lord's Day. Although I respect anybody's opinion, no matter how much in the minority it is, there is a limit beyond which minorities' susceptibilities ought not to be a bar to what most of us would regard as a rational reform. It may be that the implications of a financial kind are greater than I have taken into account, possibly overtime problems would be greater at a weekend than during the week. Admittedly, I have not reckoned that up. It may also be that a day would be required on either side of the polling day for cleaning the place up. I cannot believe that it really takes 72 hours, not just the polling day itself, but the day before and the day after, to rearrange the school desks and sweep the place. It could be done far faster than that. A poll could be held on a Saturday or Sunday and the children could still have their schoolday up to ordinary closing time on Friday and be there again on Monday morning. It is not beyond human wit or capacity. Just because a different system still obtains across the water is no reason why we should not make the change, at least experimentally. If it turns out to be a disaster, we can go back to the old system and I shall not have any further complaints about it.

I realise that the Minister present has no departmental responsibility for this except in the organisational sense, and I do not want to get on to a large subject of a kind which will make me regret having embarked on it, but the Irish Presidency is an office so purely ceremonial, almost entirely so, and representative — as they say on the Continent — and so little concerned with the day-to-day making of State policy, that the full panoply of a national poll is not justified for the election of a President. I would like this, or any other, Minister who is anxious to save a few pounds and produce a more rational system, to study what the President does. I am not, needless to say, talking about the present incumbent, or any past one, but about the Presidency as an office. He should ask what are the real, independent functions of that office and how often they are exercised, how important it is that for these very marginal and very rarely exercised functions the full panoply of a national poll should be resorted to? He might also ponder whether seven years is the appropriate time. I feel that the Chair is going to tell me that I am straying off the Department of the Environment and that is true, but I do think that it is an office so devoid of serious content for the holder that anybody who has ever occupied the office must have been heartily bored by it. I would think that two or three years would be a sufficiently long term and that the office, which is of marginal importance in the running of the State, important though it is ceremonially, and representatively, could easily be filled by a simpler selection, perhaps by the Council of State.

Deputy Kelly must appreciate that he makes it more difficult for the Chair when he himself advertises that he is out of order.

I shall leave the subject, but I do believe that it might be done more simply by an electoral college which would perhaps be an expanded version of the Council of State which is already in place. If we are again having a referendum, it might be that whatever Government is in charge would think to look at this system and ask whether we might have a more rational and cheaper Presidency by making the change which I have suggested.

In regard to local government reform, a couple of speakers here have mentioned the lack of it. One of the failures of the previous Government was in this very regard. The previous Government promised local government reform when they were returned to office at the end of 1982 and the only reform that we actually saw was a redivision of the Dublin council system, a large expansion of the number of persons entitled to wear gowns and call themselves councillor or alderman and so on in the city of Dublin and the uptitling of the chief citizen of the city of Galway to lord mayor —— this, mind you, in a republic. Mayor was not good enough, it had to be lord mayor. The grand old Saxon title of alderman is respected just as much west of the Shannon as it is over here, more so if anything. That was the only reform that we saw.

I consider the whole structure of local government here as scandalous and an anachronism. We have dozens of councillors running up expenses of all kinds, attending meetings, their own and committee meetings, going on trips, making decisions, or appearing to make decisions, which for the most part could be far more simply and easily made in some other way, and having no responsibility with regard to raising finances for their own operations, or only minimal responsibility. I heard Deputy Roche saying a moment ago, if I understood him correctly, that block grants to local authorities should be administered at the pure discretion of the elected representatives who are democratic representatives. He said something like that. That is not democracy — to be elected to a position for which you receive only the benefits. It is not democratic to be put in a position purely to dispense favours or benefits. What is democratic is to dispense the benefits after you have endured the odium of collecting the wherewithal to pay for them. When I find the councillors, who are now so good at speaking up for their own privileges and their own character as democratic representatives, also insisting on being themselves permitted to have the privilege of imposing and collecting taxation, then I will take seriously the claim that they are a democratic structure. At present, they are an expensive farce.

Courage seems to elicit such great admiration on the Fianna Fáil benches today, where they are all talking about guts, that I would like the Minister to have the courage to wrap up the whole lot and see whether the system could be replaced by a system of genuine local government, whereby people would be elected with no expenses, no attendance at redundant meetings, no nomination to boards when they can have scarcely anything more than a decorational function, but to have a responsibility for the economic development of their own district. If this or any other Minister is anxious to have my detailed opinions on this, I have submitted them to two Governments of my own colour in one shape or form. I have lost all partisan feeling in regard to this matter which seems to be so scandalous. I would gladly make whatever thoughts I have on the subject available to a Fianna Fáil Government, as well as to any other sort. Certainly, the local government system which we have here, and which was wished on us by the British in 1898 originally as part of their campaign to kill Home Rule by kindness has minimal responsibility and maximum uselessness.

That was recognised by no less an authority than Eamon de Valera when, in 1940, he decided he had had enough of their inefficiency and incompetence — and in some cases their corruptness. He emasculated the whole lot of them and transferred the greater part of their functions to non-elected officials, namely, the county and city managers. Naturally, the whole panoply of the elected representatives was allowed to continue — God knows why. de Valera must have had his reasons but I do not know what they were. I should like to be told in simple form — as Churchill used to say, on a half sheet of paper — what injury the country would suffer if, tomorrow morning, the councils as at present constituted were abolished and replaced by commissioners.

I must make a short comment on Deputy Roche's contributions who, from his knowledge of Cabinet decisions in 1976, would surely have studied the local government system to some extent.

The finer points of crawthumping.

Deputy Roche mentioned the problems which have existed for a number of years regarding the financing of local authorities and seemed to attribute them to this side of the House, which is extraordinary. We all accept that there have been problems in the local authority system for a number of years but they were dramatically compounded by ridiculous decisions before an election, giving people a holiday for four or five years in terms of abolishing domestic rates and motor taxation. Only someone who was very anxious to get into public office could have thought of that. He mentioned U-turns and hypocrisy on this side of the House which is insulting as the information was available to everybody.

Despite what some Members said, the morale of the staff of local authorities and local authority members has never been lower because they feel inept and unable to do anything. They are rubber stamps for a higher administration. They feel they have no function and, because they have been cast in that role, they talk in circles about things that do not concern them. The Minister, as a former member of a local authority, must be aware of the problems.

Most of the Members who spoke in the House have some experience of membership of local authorities and we all know that power and authority should go hand-in-hand with responsibility. I do not always agree with my learned colleague. Deputy Kelly, but I agree that responsibility must be exercised in handing out the accolades, whatever they may be. However, a number of serious problems need to be addressed, indeed they should have been looked at 20 years ago.

With the exception of Deputy Kelly and Deputy Boland, no Member said that power, as far as local authorities are concerned, is money. If they get their money directly from the central Exchequer naturally they will spend it freely, easily and regularly. They will have no responsibility because the money will have been raised by another body which will have direct responsibility to Dáil Éireann. The Minister knows that there must be an effective system and a study of the various local government Acts will show that when the system was first introduced it was on the basis that local authorities, when formed, would largely be autonomous. With the autonomy would go the power and the responsibility to which I have just referred.

The Minister publicly declared war on potholes. As I said before, if this is a war I hope he will soon win a battle because, if not, in spite of his great height he is likely to be submerged in a pothole and people will scarcely see the top of his head. Travelling through any county immediately adjacent to Dublin, one cannot but see the dreadful condition of the main and county roads. I have said this on countless occasions here. We have all spoken about it at local authority meetings and I am sure the Minister will refer to the extra sum of £15 million which he allocated for roads and so on. The money is welcome but it is insufficient to meet the requirements at present. I wish to refer specifically to County Kildare. Unless something dramatic is done and unless there is a realisation in the Department of the gravity of the situation, the roads will disintegrate and the kind of funding now required to repair them will be minuscule to what will be required in a couple of years. It is a question of making our minds up and deciding what to do. How much time have I to conclude?

You are required to conclude at 4.15 p.m.

I do not wish to encroach on the Minister's time. I wish to give some of my time to Deputy Taylor-Quinn.

The House does not object to that arrangement.

Will the Minister take another look at the roads in County Kildare? One should not speak for other counties but I know that the same applies to County Wicklow and County Meath. They are close to the most densely populated area in the country and that is why they are in such bad condition. The heavy volume of traffic has caused havoc on the roads.

I wish to make a small point in relation to housing, to which the Minister might address himself. Probably only 50 local authority houses are unserviced in County Kildare with no water or sanitary services. Many of the people living in those houses cannot finance improvements as they are living on social welfare or are elderly. It would not take much to put right and I ask the Minister to look at it again.

Water pollution is an issue which has come to the fore recently. Kildare County Council suffered the indignity of being mentioned in court for polluting the water supply. It was unfortunate but central Government have a role to play in that regard because the council can only update the sewerage treatment plants in line with the finance they get from the Government. We suffered a great deal of bad publicity last year because of one or two incidents.

The last point I wish to make is dear to my heart. Will he please answer it today and put us out of our agony? Will the Minister approve the N4 motorway scheme from Leixlip to Kilcock? It is only a matter of the Minister putting pen to paper. He should give approval to this scheme as it has been sitting there for two years. I know the Minister will say that is was also on the desk of the previous Minister but it has now been on his desk for the past 18 months or so. Unless something is done in the very near future——

Let me say to Deputy Durkan that the sincerity of his team spirit and chivalry is being put in doubt. There are now only five minutes left.

I will be very brief.

I doubt very much if Deputy Durkan wants me to give only two minutes consideration to a matter of such major concern — the signing of a CPO for the acquisition of property belonging to over 100 people.

I do not want to get involved in crossfire at this stage but I think that is a ridiculous reply——

The Minister has had 18 months.

Eighteen days.

The Minister knows quite well that it has been on his desk for the past 18 months so it is not a matter of only giving it five minutes' consideration. I totally reject the statement the Minister has made.

Not more than 18 days.

It allegedly has been on the Minister's desk for the past 18 months. If it was not on the Minister's desk it should have been. Once again I ask the Minister to consider it and the plight of those who have to travel that road on a daily basis. The Minister should also remember that the Dublin section of that motorway is very likely to be open shortly when the real problems will occur.

I thank Deputy Durkan for giving me a few minutes of his time. I admire the courage, the style and the panache of the Minister in the way he has presented this Estimate before the House. His speech is full of intentions and desires but I am still trying to find references to what action is taking place at present. On looking through the Estimate all that I can see are minuses; having done a quick addition I find that there are 14 minuses and nine pluses which I think accurately reflects what is happening within the Department of the Environment.

At present the work of local authorities all over the county is grinding to a halt, particularly roadworks. Many local authorities have finished their roadworks for this year as they do not have the finance to complete any more. I ask the Minister to act on the submissions which have been made to him by the various local authorities, and in particular the submission which he has received from Clare County Council for special aid. We in Clare County Council have received no confirmation to date as to what is happening in regard to that submission and I ask the Minister to act on that submission before County Clare becomes an island county surrounded on one side by the Atlantic and on the other by the Shannon, with no road network apart from the main road system running from Limerick to Crusheen.

The Minister's counterpart the Minister for Tourism and Transport, Deputy Wilson, with his particular style and bravado, has been promoting tourism and telling us about all of the great things which are happening but all we need to do is to look at the standard of signposting around the country. The roads to Dublin Airport, Dublin port and the ports in Cork and Waterford are well signposted but the standard of signposting in the rest of the country is diabolical. I ask the Minister for the Environment to ask his Department to urgently examine the quality of signposting at airports in regard to places outside the Dublin area. Perhaps this is a problem which the Minister has not noticed.

All of the previous speakers have referred to the roads infrastructure. All roads apart from the national primary roads are in very bad condition and in some cases they are impassable. I do not think the Department of the Environment are aware of the extent of the problem. The amount of money made available this year for improvements in county roads is a very poor reflection on the Government. An extra £15 million has been provided for structural works but that is only chicken feed. An assessment carried out in County Clare has indicated that £25 million would be needed to make the roads passable. The officials in the Minister's Department are aware of this. It is ironic that on the one hand the Minister for Tourism and Transport is promoting the tourism industry while on the other the Minister for the Environment is not providing the facilities which should be provided.

With the condition of the road network at present, particularly in the west, I think we can look forward to more emigration. Industrialists cannot be attracted into the more remote parts of the west because of the very bad condition of the roads. The Government, and in particular the Minister for the Environment, must address this problem. The Minister has ability and a certain style and I wish he would use that ability in getting something constructive done in areas which very badly need development. Once again, I thank Deputy Durkan for giving me some of his time to enable me to make a contribution to this debate.

I thank all of those Deputies who have contributed to this debate. My only regret is that we do not have more time to deal with the issues which have been raised and I hope that those Deputies to whom I do not respond will understand when I say I have taken due note of all of the points which have been raised. To put it politely, I think I have enough here to keep this debate going for many hours. This is an indication of the interest which is taken in local authority matters and in environmental matters. I wish we had more time to be able to deal with all of the issues raised.

A few of the points need to be clarified. First, I would like to respond to Deputy Boland who said he had difficulty in understanding the figures which I have given. I recognise there is a change in the way the Estimates are being presented on this occasion but this is simply because the abolition of loan charges on the local loans fund means that there will be a saving to local authorities this year of £305 million. Consequently, the subsidy in the rates support grant provision in the Estimate has been reduced by £305 million. Local authorities will not lose one penny as a result of this change and that has to be made very clear.

Deputy Boland also referred to An Foras Forbartha. I can tell him — and Deputy Quinn may also be interested in this — that the arrangements in regard to the new environmental unit which will be attached to the Department have now been finalised and these arrangements were agreed on amicably with the unions. The arrangements will enable the Department to appoint staff to this unit and this is programmed to commence next week. This will enable the Department — as has been referred to here this afternoon — to deal with environmental matters in their own way and with their own resources which they have not able to do up until now. Deputy Kelly and others were quite right in saying that the old Department of Local Government simply changed its name but did not change its emphasis or staffing arrangements in so far as control of environmental matters was concerned. That has now been changed and I think history will record me quite favourably in that regard when it comes to be written.

The Minister has a great obsession with history.

Not overly so. I think this is a change which will be welcomed. With hindsight the unions have recognised that this is the right way to proceed in so far as developing the expertise and knowledge available to the Minister and his Department is concerned. The unions have always known that An Foras Forbartha only carried out the Minister's instructions and directions anyway.

That is right.

There was much soft talk about the disadvantages in what I was endeavouring to achieve. It is beginning to dawn now that there is huge advantage for the Department, the Minister, whoever he might be, and the Government in so far as these changes are concerned.

The Minister is very concerned that Deputy Boland's Clean-Up Week Ireland should be portrayed in the way he seems to have seen it. This Minister does not believe that a seven-day response to what is a 365-day a year job is sufficient in so far as cleaning up Ireland is concerned. Whatever the former Minister might think about the success of his little campaign for cleaning up Ireland for a week, it was patchy to say the least of it. I have adopted a different attitude. I have spoken to the county managers and local authorities generally in this regard. We now have a programme of works in hand that will deal with the whole year, that will deal with the problems that arise on a day-to-day basis throughout the entire year, not just a flash in the pan response for a couple of days, then good-night Maria.

The Minister now has a one-day campaign to sell washing machines.

The Deputy is wasting time by raising such issues, because I could be dealing with other matters. Let me put on record that I do not see it the protection of our environment as a matter for the Minister alone or for his Department alone. I see it as a matter for every single individual. I foresee commercial interests, financial and educational institutions all playing a part in that campaign. What I am trying to do is entice commercial interests to recognise that an awareness programme is necessary. The Deputy will be delighted to know that other institutions also have indicated their willingness to co-operate in putting together a proper awareness campaign that will last throughout the entire year and for years afterwards. That cost a lot of money; I do not have it, but I am pleased to be able to tell the Deputy that, in the very near future, he will be hearing an announcement indicating that my concerns in that regard are shared by other institutions who are prepared to contribute and to do something positive in that regard. Therefore, the Deputy should not take the attitude he has in so far as that environmental arrangement is concerned.

The Minister must have done well in selling the washing machines.

(Interruptions.)

If the Minister addresses Deputy Boland in such an endearing and concerned fashion, inevitably he will get the Deputy's compliments in return, which will eat into his time.

Thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I might point out also that local authorities will be spending this year £1.178 billion. While Deputies might not think that that is sufficient to do the job in local authorities, at the same time it is not true to say, as Deputy Boland suggested, that they have no money at all: £1.178 billion on current and capital expenditure is a fair amount of money for local authorities to have available to them for their purposes in difficult times.

I accept that there were some fish kills last year in so far as environmental matters are concerned. We would hope that the same would not recur this year. Plans have been put in place to deal with that matter. We have been quite successful already in so far as identifying the areas of greatest concern, by way of the farm surveys carried out over the past few months, with the co-operation of the Department of Agriculture and Food, their officers and those of the Department of the Marine.

To speak about plants installed by farmers on the advice of the technical officers of the Department of Agriculture that did not take recognition of the need for proper effluent disposal comes a bit thin from the former Minister. Much of the storage facilities put in place were done on the advice of his former colleagues during a period in which silage making was needed as a matter of urgency and was applied by his colleague, his former Government. He should recognise that that comprises part of the difficulty we must now endeavour to eradicate.

Minor on the overall scene.

All Deputies who spoke expressed difficulty as far as the roads are concerned. I agree that there is a problem to be addressed there.

Not just in County Clare.

At least there could have been recognition, in so far as county roads are concerned, that my trebling the 1986 allocation in 1987, and continuing that trebling in 1988, constituted a fair response. It might not satisfy Deputies Taylor-Quinn or Durkan as being sufficient but it is a great deal — £30 million in two years — than £5 million and less per year before that on the part of the former Government. I still think it is not enough but it is as much as was available to me at this time.

I also effected an improvement in so far as the block grants are concerned and local authorities can utilise that money to deal with the problems Deputies raised.

I changed the distribution of the money available to me on the mileage of county roads, as distinct from using some peculiar yardstick the former Minister used in dealing with these matters. I introduced equity into the situation.

I would not agree with that at all.

Despite what Deputy Durkan might think, in so far as his wee county is concerned, let me point out to him that it is not just a question of the numbers of vehicles that traverse a road that must be taken into consideration. One also has to take the geography of the location into account. While roads that have been constructed in his county have been constructed at least on good substructures, there are other parts of the country that have very poor terrain to cross. Consequently, they render road-making that much more difficult. Therefore, taking the checks and balances, I feel that the distribution I have undertaken constitutes the fairest way, and is seen to be the fairest way, to deal with the matter. If one had an enormous amount of money for distribution, then one could do things differently.

In so far as the National Roads Authority is concerned I should say yes, I am pleased to note that Deputy Quinn is supportive of it, in principle, and sees its function as being a good thing. I expect and hope that its establishment will get the unanimous support of this House.

The Minister should not get carried away.

We could not expect miracles from Deputy Boland every day of the week but perhaps we might have expected that much from him on that occasion. There is a need there; we have a difficult problem to be resolved. As far as I am concerned, our roads constitute the most deficient part of our infrastructure — national, primary, secondary, the overall network giving access to ports and airports. Especially with the completion of the internal market by 1992 there will be greater pressure on us to get a better roads transport system in place. But it must be recognised that it will cost a lot of money. I estimate that it will take not less than £3 billion to bring our national roads network up to European standard. Hopefully we will be able to gain greater access to and draw down greater amounts from the new structural funds to accommodate that project. It is my belief that the National Roads Authority will be able to achieve that goal by means of a better system of working in so far as the design, construction and financing of such roadworks are concerned. The Government have cleared the project and it will commence in the very near future.

I was anxious that, in tandem with that project, the blueprint for roads development over the next 15 to 20 years would also be available. That accounted for the delay involved. That blueprint has been virtually completed as well, so that they will both run together.

Will legislation be necessary?

Yes, the total amount of money required to bring all our roads up to the required standard over the period, in so far as the blueprint is concerned, will be £8.3 billion.

The Minister will get that out of the lottery proceeds.

There is a Government commitment that something special has to be done to gear ourselves so that we can match the best transportation system available in other parts of the Community. For that reason, the National Roads Authority will address themselves to that business. I eagerly expect that there will be across-the-board support for my proposals in that regard.

Deputy Keating raised a matter about aerosols, the Ozone Layer in so far as health matters are concerned. I should like to draw his attention to the fact that the Order Paper contains a motion in regard to the protocol arrangement for consideration at as early a date as possible. Hopefully we can get the Whips to allow it to be dealt with in this session. I am perfectly happy that everything possible will be done to reduce the difficulties attached to the use of aerosols.

Deputy Keating, who was not present in the Chamber when Deputy Kelly made his contribution, will be pleased to know that Deputy Kelly supports his point of view, that it be recommended to the Minister that we wipe out all irrelevant commissions, committees of that nature. There appears to be a growing opinion among certain Deputies that local authorities serve no useful purpose, that they can be got rid of by some wave of the ministerial wand. I do not share that point of view.

I doubt if Deputy Kelly would support other proposals of the Progressive Democrats.

The House will have to accept that it is now 4.30 p.m., at which stage the question must be put.

Deputy Kelly's point was that local government had minimum responsibility and maximum uselessness, that they should be dispensed with and replaced with commissioners. As far as I am concerned local authorities have played a fundamental role in democracy in this country——

Hear, hear.

——and should be protected and strengthened. It will be necessary to put them on a sounder basis as far as structure and finance is concerned.

We are not talking about replacing them by democratic structures.

Deputy Roche summed it up well when he said that, for the last 15 to 20 years, everybody has been talking about doing something about these matters while everybody has funked it. I will not be joining that group of people.

I thank all of those who contributed to the debate. So many things warrant further explanation, particularly to those Deputies who obviously do not understand how the Department operates, but that will be for another occasion.

I suppose the Minister will be riding into town on a white horse.

Is the motion agreed?

I must then put the question: "That the Revised Estimate for the Department of the Environment for the year ending 31 December 1988 is hereby agreed". I think the motion is carried.

Deputies

Vótáil.

The House will understand that the division in respect of that question will take place on Wednesday next, 8 June 1988 at 8 p.m.

The Dáil adjourned at 4.35 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 8 June 1988.

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