The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance is in charge of the Barrow Drainage Bill, and I shall give him leave to attend to take charge of it in the Seanad.
Barrow Drainage Bill, 1933—Second Stage.
Cathaoirleach
I do not know whether it is in accordance with the customs and conventions of this House to give us all the stages of this particular Bill to-day, but, if that can be done, I shall be very glad.
This is a very simple Bill. Its provisions are entirely financial. It consists of three parts. The first part is to increase to £550,000 the limit of expenditure of £425,000 prescribed by the Barrow Drainage Act of 1927 as the maximum expenditure on the drainage of the River Barrow, the additional sum being provided in equal shares by Free State grants and by advances by the Commissioners of Public Works, repayable with interest by the localities concerned in accordance with Sections 9 and 20 of the Act of 1927. That simply means that the total expenditure is raised from £425,000 to £550,000 and it is borne in equal shares between a Central Fund grant, the local authorities, and the local beneficiaries.
Secondly, it is to provide for an increase from £4,000 to £6,500 in the average annual expenditure on maintenance. The estimate of £4,000 for maintaining £425,000 worth of works was probably a low estimate. Senators can quite understand that on an expenditure of £550,000 the maintenance would be greater and the proportion of maintenance has to be raised because the original estimate of maintenance was probably too low.
The third part of the Bill is to enable advances not exceeding in the aggregate the sum of £3,250 to be made to the Barrow Drainage Board by the State towards the cost of maintenance during the first year following the date of the final award. The State and the local authorities provide the maintenance in halves, each providing £3,250 out of the £6,500 estimated for maintenance. Owing to the fact that the local authorities may not have collected in the first year their share of the maintenance, provision is made to enable the State to advance their own contribution for one year towards that maintenance, that amount being half of the total maintenance for the year, for the purpose of bridging over the gap.
I do not know whether there is anything else that the Seanad would like to know. We have found that the old plans upon which the scheme was originally founded were in many particulars inaccurate. The result is that the actual amount of excavation has had to be very considerably increased. Perhaps the quantities would interest Senators. The quantities of rock and soft—that is, everything except rock— were originally estimated as 56,000 cubic yards of rock and 2,200,000 yards of soft. These figures are now estimated upon a new survey as 120,000 cubic yards of rock and 3,000,000 cubic yards of soft.
It was originally intended that the Barrow scheme would benefit some 40,000 acres of land. The £425,000 scheme, as worked out, is now estimated to benefit only 20,000 acres of land and this extra expenditure on about 120 miles of subsidiary drains is in order to bring into the scheme the other 20,000 acres of land which otherwise would be left out.
Will the Parliamentary Secretary say whether the local authorities have been consulted and are generally in agreement with this and will he also indicate how much of the £425,000 has been spent up to now and what are the results as regards the value of the work done in the drainage area?
I received with great satisfaction the result of the present outlay on the drainage of the River Barrow. Whole tracts of land around Monasterevan and other centres have been reclaimed. In former years, even in the middle of summer, I often saw large tracts of land there completely flooded. In the month of August I have seen hay being swept away. Up to this the 40,000 acres to which the Parliamentary Secretary referred were practically worthless. Everybody is aware of the results of the work that has been carried out. There are several other schemes to which the Government might give attention. For instance, in the case of the Liffey there could, for a very small outlay——
Cathaoirleach
This Bill deals with the drainage of the Barrow.
I am merely suggesting to the Parliamentary Secretary that he might extend his activities to other rivers as soon as possible.
Cathaoirleach
The Seanad must not discuss that matter under the present Bill.
As regards Senator Johnson's point about consultation with the local authorities, the local authorities were not consulted in connection with the previous Bill and they were not consulted in connection with the amending Bill. On the point of the benefit derived, Senator Counihan will communicate his experience to Senator Johnson.
I would like an authoritative statement.
Does the Parliamentary Secretary consider that the local authorities should not be consulted? Recently in the case of quite a number of Bills the Government's explanation in reply to any questions raised was to say that their predecessors did exactly the same. There may be some of us who do not believe in the complete infallibility of the Government's predecessors.
As to how far local authorities should be consulted is simply a matter of opinion. All I can tell the Seanad is that of those hundreds of drainage schemes that are in the back of the mind of every member here, which they desire to be brought forward and which are on the files of the Board of Works, the vast majority are held up because local authorities have been consulted.
I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary that local authorities should not be consulted in these matters.
I am not expressing any opinion; I am merely stating the facts.
I would ask whether this £550,000 which is necessary for this scheme will be paid by the beneficiaries, that is, the people whose land has been improved, or has the State, as a whole, to pay this money?
In relation to these schemes the beneficiaries repay what is the estimated benefit. I have made out figures in relation to this particular scheme, and assuming that the beneficiaries maintain what is being done for them, it would require a grant from sources other than those now being made of 93 per cent. of the total cost of the scheme, in order to make it economic.
I wanted just to draw attention to the fact that while I am very pleased to see this work carried out, according to the Minister there were only 20,000 acres of land benefited by the original scheme costing £425,000, that is, £21 per acre. I doubt very much if you would get anything like £21 per acre for this land.
Did it not work out at 40,000 acres?
No, only 20,000 acres were benefited. To bring in 40,000 it would be necessary to increase the sum from £425,000 to £550,000. If you take £420,000 for 20,000 acres you get a cost of £21 per acre.
What about the relief of unemployment?
I said I was very pleased that the work was carried out. I only wanted to draw attention to the cost of some of those schemes. We have a lot of them in our county. Some of them are ten per cent. economic, others are 7 per cent. economic. Nevertheless, it is right and proper that we should drain the land, help to dry the atmosphere, and do away with a lot of tuberculosis and a lot of other diseases, such as fluke, among our cattle. But it is only right that the public should know what the State is doing to benefit the farmers. They give more in subsidies than the land is worth.
This expenditure of £550,000 upon 40,000 acres of land would work out at less than £14 per acre, so Senator O'Duffy can change his figure from £21 an acre to £14 an acre.
Question put and agreed to.
Cathaoirleach
It is impossible that we could take the remaining stages of this Bill to-night. I assume we will have to meet to-morrow and in that event we could take the Committee Stage of this Bill to-morrow. The Committee Stage will, therefore, be taken to-morrow, if we meet to-morrow.