Very well, I will confine my remarks, but I am compelled by the exigencies of the moment to refer to a specific matter which I should like the Minister to clarify. On two successive days this week local authorities were confronted with an extremely serious financial situation. The Minister for Local Government informed us, relative to housing and sanitary allocations for the year, that we would be required to have recourse to borrowing outside the Local Loans Fund and that we were to apply ourselves to sources of revenue other than from the Local Loans Fund.
Then we had a directive from the Central Bank that two-thirds of the credit available within the country is to be absorbed by State borrowing; and the question which our county manager could not answer, but which I hope the Minister will answer today, is whether the loans of local authorities for housing and sanitation are to be included in the category of the two-thirds or will they have to compete in the commercial banks with the private sector of the economy about which the Minister and his Leader of his Party have made such a song and dance in regard to their respect and admiration of the private sector of the economy. Are the local authorities obliged now to compete with the private investor in recourse to the local banks?
On the day succeeding this impasse, I attended another meeting—I must refrain from identifying that meeting because of negotiations which are still in progress—in an effort to secure sufficient money to carry on this particular education service. But the directors of the bank, which had traditionally come to the rescue when the Department had failed, met twice and rejected the application for a loan of £25,000. All insurance companies which have been approached have refused to accommodate this local authority, and negotiations are in progress at the moment in the vague hope that building societies may come to the rescue.
Let me say that our deliberations were interrupted to make a phone call to the Assistant Secretary of the Department to confirm over the phone whether the Department also were to be written off as an underwriting source for the loan. The present negotiations are a last ditch effort to retrieve the situation. I cannot be more specific about them, but I should like the Minister to inform us whether this direction from his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, to local authorities to have recourse to the private banks will come within the restrictions imposed by the Central Bank in reserving two-thirds of the credit available for Government borrowing or whether local authorities will have to compete in the private sector about which we have heard so much recently.
The Dáil was dissolved within hours of the Minister's reply on the General Financial Resolution affecting the measure now before this House and this had the effect of denying the Minister for Finance a real opportunity of confirming the undertaking given on television by the then Minister for Education, Deputy Lenihan, that there would be no autumn Budget.
This is an opportunity now for the Minister for Finance to confirm that statement and to confirm that this undertaking will be maintained and that what is presented to us in the Budget for this year is calculated to balance the necessary finances. The Minister should also confirm that in presenting the Budget he anticipated any expenditure that had not come to light but which is, perhaps, in the offing and that consequently the undertaking that was given on television by the then Minister for Education will be honoured in a firm statement by the Minister for Finance to the effect that the taxpayers of this country have had their impositions for this financial year and that there will not be another Budget in the autumn.