Well, that was, apparently, the attitude that Senators adopted in relation to this Bill. I shall come to Senator Sweetman in a moment, so I shall ask him to be a little patient with me while I go on. I was saying that I should have dealt with these matters, and I am sure Senator Sir John Keane must have realised that I would have been only too glad to deal with them, if time had permitted, at the conclusion of the debate on the Second Reading. Time did not permit and the Senator has been very querulous about the fact that he did not get answers. I am glad that I have been able to satisfy him, I hope, at last.
To come to Senator Sweetman, the Senator is a very experienced and able advocate. I am perfectly certain that, if the Senator had a good case, he would base it on the truth and the whole truth and not on a half-truth. He opened his speech by quoting some remark I made on the Second Stage of this Bill, and he quoted a sentence out of its context. He said that I had said that what would arise here would be that, if the local authority failed to meet the demands of its officers, it would be dissolved. Now, I will recall to the House precisely what I did say. I said this:—
"At that local inquiry—"
the local inquiry contemplated here by Section 30—
"the local authority will be represented. If they have any justification for failing to make a sufficient rate, for failing to meet the demands of their officers—"
that is the sort of thing which might arise—
"if they urge that these officers themselves had not been functioning efficiently, that they—"
that is to say, the members of the local authority—
"are not satisfied with the services provided by their servants—"
that is, the officers who are making the demands—
"in return for the revenues made available—these issues can all be thrashed out at that local inquiry and the Minister will then be in a position to say whether or not the rate, as determined by the local authority, would be sufficient if the authority's services were economically and efficiently administered."
The point I was making there was that this inquiry may not only put the local authority on proof but may also put the servants of the local authority —the manager, as Senator Ryan has pointed out, is part of the local authority under the Act—also on proof. The manager may have to prove that he is not making an excessive demand. Therefore, so far from this inquiry being designed to coerce the local authority to meet the demands of its manager, the inquiry contemplated here may just as readily and as easily put the onus on the manager and the other officers of the local authority to satisfy the public and the Minister that their demands are not excessive. When that is realised, one realises the force of what Senator Ryan has endeavoured to impress on the Seanad—that this section, so far from imposing an onerous obligation on the local authorities, is really an easement of the present position.
Since Senator Ryan has mentioned it, perhaps I may refer to the circumstances under which this section was drastically amended. In the Bill as originally introduced, the section contained only the proviso that the local authority might have power to strike a supplementary rate and that the Minister might, if necessary, require it to strike a supplementary rate. The local authority already had that power under an Emergency Powers Order and it was originally proposed merely to continue the position which had been created by that Emergency Powers Order and to enact it in permanent form. When the section came before the Dáil, objection was taken— and, in my view, having considered the matter, properly taken—to the fact that, as originally drafted, it might have led to the thing which Senator Ruane seemed to visualise, to lax estimation on the part of the county manager or the local authority.
As there would be no limitation as to the circumstances in which a supplementary rate might be struck, it might lead to unsatisfactory budgeting, to the development of an unsatisfactory financial practice on the part of the local authority, that is to say, that they would fail, in the first instance, to make adequate provision to cover their estimated expenditure, that they would come along towards the end of the year, when funds began to run short, and strike a new rate and continue in that way striking further rates and living more or less from hand to mouth until the financial year had concluded.
The Minister for Local Government, being a reasonable man and ready to listen to a good case when it is made, immediately saw the force of that. On going into it again, to see how the power which we had intended to confer on the local authority might be reserved for the purpose which we had in view when the section was being drafted, we provided this machinery whereby the supplementary rate could only be struck after the Minister had been satisfied, as a result of due investigation, that it was necessary to strike that rate, if the local authority was to meet its obligations. Now, those obligations are two-fold. It has the obligation, first of all, of maintaining the public services for which it is responsible at a reasonable standard and it has, secondly, the obligation of providing subsidiary or ancillary bodies with the funds necessary to enable them to function. Senator O'Reilly will appreciate what I mean. For instance, if the Tipperary County Council were to refuse, as it might happen, to strike the rate necessary to provide the finances for the Vocational Education Committee, naturally that committee could not function and a very undesirable state of affairs would be brought about. If a local authority takes up that recalcitrant attitude in relation to a statute of the Oireachtas, by refusing to strike such a rate for vocational education when it is bound to do so under the statutes, I cannot see how there can be any contention that we are doing anything wrong providing that the Minister, after having ascertained the position by public local inquiry and bringing out the facts in the public view, should then give to the rebellious local authority—we have been hearing a lot about rebellions in the course of this debate—an opportunity to amend its way of life and continue to render useful public service. That is what is intended by Section 1 of the Bill. I hope that that exposition of the section will be borne in mind by some of those Senators who have criticised this section in this way.
I am certain that, however those arguments may weigh with Senator O'Reilly, who can visualise for himself what might happen in certain circumstances, they will not have very great weight with Senator Kingsmill Moore, Senator Sir John Keane or Senator Douglas. They seem to think that the only remedy for a situation in which a local authority refuses to maintain the public services at a reasonable standard is to allow everything to drift until it falls into chaos. They have been saying that, instead of proceeding as the section provides, we should allow these public authorities when they are manifestly refusing to discharge their public duty, to persist in that refusal. It was suggested that, even if they were corrupt, we might allow the corruption to continue until at long last the general public would rise in revolt and put them out. Now, one might as well argue that it would be a right and proper thing if a bridge on a main railway line was deteriorating in condition and had visibly become unsafe, to allow that deterioration to continue until at last one day, when a passenger train was going over it, the whole structure collapsed in chaos and destruction. Such is the solution for this problem with which I have been faced and that is seriously put forward in the Seanad which is supposed to be composed of elder statesmen as a remedy for the gravest public ill that can afflict a community, the deterioration and decay of local administration.
Well, that is not how I think the matter should be dealt with, and in saying that I am not arguing from any mere theoretical conception. I am arguing from practical experience. Among the county councils which were dissolved comparatively recently was the Kerry County Council. Now, in that case, this remedy that Senator Kingsmill Moore and Senator Sir John Keane have urged upon us was perhaps tried. I am not going to say that it was consciously tried. It was rather, perhaps, acquiesced in.
We had over a considerable number of years a county council which refused each year to provide adequately for the maintenance of the road system in County Kerry. The county council went out and another county council was elected. In the first year that it was elected it went even further along the road of improvident parsimony than its predecessors had gone, and it refused to strike an adequate rate. We reasoned with them. We even made special financial arrangements with them to help them, and only after it had been indicated to them that, if they did not meet us, we would hold a sworn inquiry and dissolve them, because it was quite clear that they would have to be dissolved, there not being any doubt about the facts, that they ultimately consented, after having secured special financial assistance in the way of a special allocation for the roads, to make any significant provision at all
In the following year, thinking, you see, that they had a soft person to deal with, they refused practically to make any provision for the maintenance of roads. They struck a rate which, I think, would have provided the equivalent of about £4 10s. 0d. per mile for the maintenance of main roads in the County Kerry, roads over which a great amount of turf traffic and beet traffic was passing, and in a county into which was flowing a considerable volume of supplies for its farmers and inhabitants. I held a sworn inquiry, and in due course the Kerry County Council vanished from the scene and was succeeded by a commissioner appointed by me. But what was the position in which the commissioner might have found himself? That, because the Kerry County Council had struck a completely inadequate rate, he would have been powerless to strike another rate, he would be powerless to raise money except by borrowing in respect of a county where the borrowings had already been very considerable and where very heavy liabilities were already resting on the ratepayers. We got over that difficulty where it did arise by making an Emergency Powers Order which gave the commissioner the right to make a supplementary rate. We were not called on to do that in the case of the County Kerry, but we were called on to do it in the case of Roscommon.
The Seanad can see what happened in Kerry by allowing things to drift as Sir John Keane would. That, in order to make good the failure of the Kerry County Council over a number of years, and principally over the last two or three years of its life, the rates in Kerry had to be increased by, I think, almost 10/- in the £. When I say that I am speaking from recollection, but they certainly had to be increased very considerably, and even at that, and even with special assistance in the way of grants that we were able to make to help the Kerry people to get out of this plight, the appropriation which they have been able to make since for the restoration of the roads has not been quite sufficient.
As a result of following Senator Sir John Keane's policy and the policy of Senator Kingsmill Moore in respect of the Kerry County Council, the Kerry ratepayers are going to have to carry very heavy burdens indeed during the next few years, years which may not be quite so prosperous for them as latter years have been when, by reason of turf production and other things, very considerable sums of money have been circulating in the County Kerry.
That is the sort of position which Senator Sir John Keane, Senator Kingsmill Moore and other Senators who are opposing this Bill, want to create in any other county in Ireland which at any time may have the misfortune to be administered in the way that the Kerry County Council was administered for years. I do not think that is a good thing and, having had this experience, I shall ensure that so long as I am Minister for Local Government, we will not have it again, and that my successor will not have it again: that, having learned from experience, I shall pass on to him the benefit of that lesson and put him in a better position to deal with this matter than I was before the Emergency Powers Order was made.
Now, another objection has been urged against this section, and that is the fact that the supplementary rate is going to be expensive. Senators will have to remember that it is contemplated that proceedings under this section will be taken immediately, or almost immediately, after the rate has been determined.
Instead of having prolonged delays, as we had in the case of Roscommon, the Minister, once the facts are brought to his notice, once a prima facie case has been established and once it has been made apparent that there are grounds for investigation, will then proceed to hold this inquiry. The Minister is not going to act arbitrarily in this matter. He will have a certain criterion which will guide him in coming to a prima facie view in the matter, the same sort of view as might be arrived at, say, by a person like the Attorney-General when a case is presented to him.
The Minister will have before him the cost of these services in the past year. He will have before him the valuation of the county, and the rate which was determined in respect of the year that has elapsed, and if he finds that by comparison there is a very marked and considerable reduction in the rate which it is proposed to strike, and that this reduction cannot be immediately and easily explained by some circumstances that are patent and clear to him and to everyone else, he may feel justified in requiring a further investigation into the matter; for he will then have an indication that the rate to be determined is likely to be insufficient. But he cannot act on that indication. That merely enables him, once he forms that opinion, to institute a more searching investigation, an investigation which will take place in public and which will be conducted on oath as these inquiries may be if necessary. It is as a result of the facts which will be elicited on that investigation that the Minister will then have to determine for himself whether the supplementary rate should be struck or not.
It has been argued that the striking of a supplementary rate is going to be an expensive matter. I have only one instance to guide me in that regard and that is what happened in the case of Roscommon County Council. In the case of Roscommon County Council we were not at the outset fully armed with the powers that we subsequently obtained under the Emergency Powers Order. The position that arose in that case was this: the estimates meeting was held on the 28th February to consider the rates. The county surveyor advised that £17,440 would be required for the main roads. The council proposed to reduce this provision to £5,500. I do not want to say much about the merits of this but let me remind the House of this fact that through Roscommon County passes one of the main arteries of this country, and that its roads in certain circumstances might have been of very great military importance. However, notwithstanding this fact, the Roscommon County Council, as I have indicated, proposed to reduce the county surveyor's estimate from £17,440 to £5,500.
The estimates meeting was adjourned at the instance of the manager from the 28th February to 13th March and this time the council proposed to reduce the estimate by £10,000 instead of roughly by £12,000 as originally contemplated by them. The engineer addressed the meeting and other officers also addressed the meeting but notwithstanding that the council held on its way. Arising out of this, a sworn inquiry was held on the 12th and 13th April and at this sworn inquiry the engineer and county officers came along and they testified on oath that it would be quite impossible to maintain the roads at a proper standard on the sum proposed to be allowed by the county council. There was no challenge to that on the part of the county council. It was not contended that the roads could be properly maintained on this sum of £10,000, though it was contended that this was as much as, in their judgment, the county council should be called upon to pay.
On the 27th April the Emergency Powers Order was made and on the 19th May a letter was addressed to the county council pointing out that the roads in Roscommon had been reconstructed in 1922 at very heavy expenditure, nine-tenths of which had been borne by the State and that the estimate as originally determined by the county council would be insufficient to maintain these roads. This letter I should say now did not go to the commissioner administering the affairs of the county council. It went to the county council the members of which had not then been removed from office. The council refused to amend their previous decision and its members were removed from office on 3rd June, 1944. On the 28th June the commissioner struck an additional rate of 7¾d. to provide the £10,000 to make good the deficit on the roads estimate.
I mentioned that to show that these proceedings, which actually started on 28th February, were unduly prolonged by reason of the fact that we had not the powers to act. The supplementary rate was struck finally on the 28th June, 1944, almost four months later. I think that is about as extreme a case as one could show of delay in a matter of this sort. We anticipate that if it should be necessary to utilise the powers to be given under Section 30, the whole of these matters will probably be disposed of in seven or eight weeks. It is desirable, in order that there should be no undue expense, that they should be disposed of promptly. In the case of Roscommon where it took almost four months to clear up the matter the rate applotment for the supplementary rate cost £204 and with the addition of printing the total cost of the rate was £265.
What would have been the position if the local authority had to go to the bank to borrow that money? They would borrow £10,000 at one-half under the bank rate, perhaps at 4 or 4½ per cent. Admittedly, they could not require it all at once but a very large portion of it would naturally fall to be borrowed during the period when road works would be at their height. Assuming that the average charge for interest was 4½ per cent. then in respect of the charge for that period of the year the council might have to pay, say, £300 for interest. In one year alone the interest charged would then exceed the cost of applotting and striking the supplementary rate and not only would the interest charged in one year have exceeded the cost of striking the rate but in every successive year until the loan was paid off you would have additional charges for interest. So that from the point of view of the local authority, if extra money has to be provided to make good a deficiency in a rate which has been struck, it is much more economical to provide it by striking a supplementary rate than by going to the bank to borrow it.
I think I have dealt fairly fully with all the points that have been raised in objection to this section and so far as I am concerned it rests there.