Vol. 406 No. 2
4 Mr. Dempsey asked the Minister for the Environment if he will list, by category and on a county by county basis, the names of organisations whose applications were considered for national lottery funding in 1990; and if he will outline those successful and the amount of the grants allocated in each case.
As indicated in reply to Question No. 78 of 26 April 1990, the preparation of a statement giving details of each of the 3,968 projects for which grant applications were made under the amenities-recreational facilities grant scheme would absorb a disproportionate amount of staff time. In any event, this information might more appropriately be obtained directly from the local authorities whose responsibility it was to process the applications.
A schedule listing the grants allocated under the 1990 scheme on a county by county basis is available in the Oireachtas Library.
I understand the Minister's reticence to provide the detailed information sought in the question. Will he give the number of successful applicants as a percentage of the total number of applications he received and will he confirm that only a tiny fraction of the organisations who sought lottery funding got a penny from the national lottery?
The figure is 3,968 for projects received, and grant aid was provided to 1,006 projects.
I am surprised at the Minister's reply. Will he confirm that he has already listed the successful applicants for lottery funding on a constituency by constituency basis and that he notified Fianna Fáil TDs of these listings 24 hours before he notified the local authorities concerned when the announcements were made last summer, and that some members of his own party had issued press releases announcing the grant allocations before the local authorities had been notified of them?
Obviously the scope of this question is being widened.
The details of the 1,006 project which were allocated grants under the 1990 scheme were made known, but this is a separate question relating to the details of all 3,968 applications which were received from the local authorities, having been processed by them, and they were recommended for grant assistance. It was not possible to give a grant to all of them. When one considers that the total amount of money required to service the 4,000 or so would have been in excess of £160 million, not a bad job was done by the Minister in providing grant assistance to the 1,006 lucky ones. Of course, we have a scheme again this year.
Is the Minister satisfied with the way this scheme is being operated at the moment, taking into consideration that he has asked the local authorities to process the applications? Does he think local authorities are going to refuse any of the applications? After all, will he not agree that all the local authorities throughout the country are doing is rubber stamping the applications in the first place and that the real political decision are being made when the applications come back to the Department of the Environment, so there is no change?
I would regret if the Deputy pursued that matter because he is casting a reflection on his own colleagues serving on local authorities.
Will the Minister allow the local authorities make the decisions themselves rather than make recommendations? Will we ever see the day that it will be let go from the Minister's clutches and that the national lottery allocations will be made in a fair way and will not be just a political slush fund for his party?
It is not intended to change the formula by which the allocations are made under the 1991 scheme. It was generally accepted and reported on by all the commentators following the disbursement of the lottery surplus in 1990 that a good job was done.
I always improve it as I find it necessary.
Since the Minister has confirmed that he notified Deputies from his own party of the listings before he notified——
Deputy, you have already raised that issue. We are having repetition, obviously.
Does this not confirm the widely held view that the lottery is being used by the Fianna Fáil Party as a means of political patronage, that this procedure of using the national lottery in this way should be brought to an end and that the local authorities should be allowed to disburse the funds directly themselves?
I think the Deputy has made his point.
That is not so. In fact, the Minister decided on these matters himself and notified the various local authorities of his decision in the matter and it was then——
Twenty four hours after he notified his own Deputies.
That is not so.
It is so.
Let us hear the Minister without interruption.
It was then a matter for the local authorities to communicate with the applicants, which they did in due course. I have no difficulty with that, and it was recognised that it was done in a fair and equitable way and I attempted with the limited amount of money available to me to give as good a spread as was possible. That is the Minister's responsibility.
Since the Minister in his last reply has confirmed that it was the Minister himself who made the decision in relation to the successful grants and since he denies the contention strongly held around the country that it was on the basis of political partnership that decisions are made, will he agree to circulate with the schedule the criteria used to reject 75 per cent of the applicants and the criteria used to find out the ones that were to be successful, the quarter who actually got the money?
We shall have to have finality on this question. I will call Deputies if they will be brief.
Yes, I did make the decisions in the matter. It is not always easy but that is what a Minister is paid to do.
How much went to Mayo?
That is a separate question, Deputy.
Deputies were called in one by one——
A proportionate amount of money, and Deputy Howlin can have that information if he puts down the necessary question. I responded on 26 April 1990 to Deputy Shatter in this matter. I thought the matter rested there. In fact it was agreed by all that they divide the applications through the local authorities in the first instance, the local authorities doing the responsible thing in sending up their recommendations——
That was a joke.
If you are saying there is something the local authorities did not do properly, that is another matter.
Deputy Belton.
The Minister is happy to say that he had representations from all sides of the House on this matter.
Who were the lucky ones, Minister?
Do the sub aqua clubs qualify under the present scheme?
The Deputy cannot be heard because of the conversations going on in the Chamber.
Do sub aqua clubs qualify under the present scheme? Does the Minister envisage any way he could give assistance to those worthy organisations?
That is a separate matter.
In the first instance it is not for the Minister to decide whether they qualify. All applications are made to the local authorities under the guidelines. If the local authority judges that the application conforms to the guidelines and they recommend it to the Minister, then such a scheme would be entitled to a grant if it was allocated one.
A short question.
Please Deputies, I ask you to desist. We have dealt adequately with this question. If Members feel it should be debated there are other procedures in this House for that purpose. I will hear a brief question each from Deputy Eric Byrne and Deputy John Farrelly.
Would the Minister confirm that it is not really appropriate that a Minister should spend time sifting through thousands of applications, that this is a job more suited to the local authorities, and that the way to overcome this problem is to allocate on the basis of block grants the lottery funding money?
I asked for brevity.
The notion of a Minister with so many onerous duties sitting down and supposedly siphoning through all those applications shows that it is not the proper way to proceed.
The short answer is that the Minister has a lot of onerous duties and he regards this as one of the duties he has to perform.
Will the Minister, two years on, implement the recommendations of the all party committee of this House and allow the local authorities disburse the grants? Indeed, the Leas-Chathaoirleach of the House signed the recommendation on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party.
I answered that already when I said that the 1991 allocations would be made on the same basis as the 1990 allocation.
It is a cynical use of public money.
Question No. 5 please.
