Ba mhaith liom buiochas a ghlacadh leis an Aire as ucht teacht isteach agus éisteacht leis an rud atá le rá agam.
Unfortunately, the Minister for the Environment, Deputy Howlin, is not here but I am sure the Minister for Justice, Deputy Owen, will outline to him what I have to say.
Local improvement schemes are the method people in rural areas use to get roads to places which are not serviced by existing county council roads. In a lot of cases in the west of Ireland, these are either roads to houses or to community facilities such as bogs, commonages, strands, etc. In passing, I might say that the road to my own house was built with the help of an LIS scheme about ten years ago and it is not in the charge of Galway County Council yet.
Following strong representations which I made to the Minister's predecessors, an increase in funding was given under the local improvement scheme allocation in 1994 and 1995. However, the funding being provided is still well short of the 1991 figure of £279,000 and the 1990 figure of £326,000, particularly when inflation is taken into account.
At present, there is a five year waiting list for local improvement schemes in County Galway. I asked, as a member of Galway County Council, that a report be given to the council last year and we received the following information. At that time we had 45 schemes on hand for 1991, i.e. applications lodged in 1991 on which work had not yet been done. There were 265 people who stood to gain from those schemes. For 1992, there were 57 on hand. For 1993, 47; 1994 to this time last year, 32 applications; and there were 15 island schemes on hand. That gave us a total of 196 schemes on hand on which work had not been carried out going back five years. The total number of people that stood to benefit from these schemes was 1,235.
Further information was given by the council officials regarding grant allocations and the number of schemes completed. Basically, for the five years between 1990 and 1994, we received a total allocation of £1.091 million and 99 schemes were completed. An analysis of the figures shows that we need an annual allocation of between £500, 000 and £600,000 just to maintain the status quo. in other words, to stop the list getting longer. In order to cut the waiting time to a reasonable length of between one and two years, a once off payment of £1.5 million is also required.
It is important to point out that there are a number of these schemes each year involving roads leading to dwelling houses. For example, in 1993, seven of the 13 schemes done had houses along them and a total number of 13 houses were serviced by these schemes. In 1994, four of the schemes involved roads with houses along them and the number of houses serviced was 15.
I have a case of an old couple in my own constituency. The wife had a stroke a number of years ago. They live half a mile up a bóithrín and it is nearly impossible for a doctor or nurse — and certainly, an ambulance — to gain access. They applied last year for an LIS scheme and must wait four years before that basic service of access to a house will be provided.
In the name of humanity, it is about time something was done for the endless number of people on the west coast who are waiting for the primary provision of a road to their dwelling house. I am not talking about people who built houses recently at the back of the mountain. I am talking about people who have lived in these places for 50, 60 or 100 years, as far back as their families have lived there.
As the Minister is well aware, there are no public roads on two Aran Islands, Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr, and the local improvement schemes are used by Galway County Council to provide a road infrastructure on the islands. There is a need, therefore, to provide special extra funding to ensure there is a continuing development of the road infrastructure on these islands.
As this is a self help scheme, where applicants must pay from between 10-30 per cent of the cost, it is obvious that all the applications submitted to the council are of great importance to the applicants. When you see people forking out £1,000 to get a road and people complaining about water charges in other places, it is obvious how important this is to them.
I call on the Minister to provide the necessary money for these schemes to ensure that access to basic services and to houses is provided to all in rural Ireland. I will be listening in anticipation to the Minister's reply. Arís, mo bhuíochas don Aire, agus tá súil agam le cúnamh Dé go mbeidh dea scéal aici dhom.
