Vol. 450 No. 2
85 Mr. Killeen asked the Minister for the Environment if he will make an allocation to Clare County Council to enable the local authority rehouse those persons whose houses have been destroyed by flooding or to provide additional accommodation above flood level.[4904/95]
Local authorities, including Clare County Council, can provide and fund additional housing for the temporary or permanent accommodation of households in need of rehousing by way of their normal housing programmes. Alternatively, if households are regarded as homeless for any reason, including flooding, local authorities have full powers to provide accommodation, or to assist with the provision of accommodation, and they may recoup from my Department 90 per cent of the expenditure incurred.
The location of houses provided, either by new building or purchase, by local authorities under their housing programmes, and the needs to be catered for, are matters to be decided by the individual authorities within their authorised programmes and capital allocations. Each authority has already been notified of its authorised programme for 1995 and I expect to make the corresponding capital allocations shortly. No specific funding is available to me to provide allocations, over and above the normal requirements of the programme, for any additional housing necessitated by flooding.
In relation to the wider question of assistance to persons where houses have been damaged by flooding, I refer to the reply given by the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy J. Higgins, to Questions Nos. 59 and 63 of 28 February 1995, and also to his speech to Seanad Éireann on 1 March on the Second Stage of the Arterial Drainage (Amendment) Bill, 1995.
