Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 7 Jun 1978

Vol. 89 No. 6

Local Loans Fund (Amendment) Bill, 1978 (Certified Money Bill): Second and Subsequent Stages.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Wyse)

The Bill is an enabling measure to raise the statutory limit on issues from the Local Loans Fund from £1,000 million to £1,500 million. The fund is simply a mechanism for channelling money to local authorities. Revising the statutory limit has no policy implications for the programmes financed through the fund; the financial allocations for these programmes are determined annually in the budgetary context.

Exchequer loans are made through the fund to finance essential capital services of the local authorities, including health boards, vocational education committees and harbour authorities. The Local Loans Fund Act, 1935 which set up the fund imposed a limit of £5 million on total issues. The limit has been increased periodically by successive enactments and was last fixed at £1,000 million in 1974.

The local authorities have become increasingly dependent on the fund. In 1977 more than 92 per cent of their capital expenditure was financed from that source, e.g., housing, sanitary services, vocational schools, hospitals, harbours and itinerant resettlement. Issues from the fund have increased substantially in recent years. The level of annual issues has risen from £112 million last year to an estimated £150 million in 1978. This reflects mainly the increased provision for the local authority house purchase loan scheme, the loan and eligibility limits of which were increased by the Government on taking office last July. Extra funds are also being provided for sanitary services for the purpose of new housing development and to provide infrastructure for new industry.

At 31 March 1978 total issues from the fund were £968 million, of which £485 million was for local authority dwellings, £255 million was for house purchase loans and supplementary grants and £153 million for sanitary services. The balance of £75 million was provided for vocational schools, hospitals, harbour works, libraries, itinerant resettlement, fire stations and so on. At the present rate of issues from the fund the limit will be reached this month. It will be necessary to raise the limit substantially to provide for estimated requirements over the next few years. Accordingly a new limit of £1,500 million is proposed in the Bill which I trust will be acceptable to the House.

Mr. A. O'Brien

This side of the House welcomes the Bill. The increase of £500 million in the maximum available is an enormous increase. If we take into account the effects of inflation it might not be as great as it appears on the surface. Nevertheless, it is an increase and we welcome it. We hope that the moneys will be readily available to the local authorities, which depend to a large extent on borrowings from the Local Loans Fund. We also hope that hints from high places of a cut back on public expenditure do not indicate that money to local authorities under this heading will not be readily available in future for the many schemes they might have in hand.

A large percentage of this money will, as in the past, be used to provide housing. I hope the local authorities will be encouraged and helped to apportion land and service it for the provision of housing sites. Failure to do that in years past has meant that people who would normally be in a position to provide their own housing now find that the cost of purchasing a site, which in some provincial areas has gone as high as £3,000 to £4,000, means that they cannot do so. This is something that has built up over the years and cannot be readily eliminated.

The huge increase in the cost of housing sites and the fact that so many local authorities have done little or nothing to provide serviced sites is a matter of grave concern. It is good business to help people who would set about providing their own housing as otherwise the State will have to do this. I would recommend to the Minister that the local authorities be encouraged to provide serviced sites convenient to our towns.

In reply to a question in the Dáil it was stated in February that the increase in the price of houses over the last 12-month period was about 19.2 per cent. That indicates the necessity for raising the limit of SDA loans. Furthermore, a good case can be made for increasing the ceiling with regard to the salary of those to whom loans will be given. At present, the maximum loan is about £3,500. That is not sufficient to provide housing. Even a modest house now costs over £10,000. In some areas, because of the shortage of housing people are forced to pay between £25,000 and £30,000 for quite modest three-bedroomed houses. Because of the shortage of housing we have people living in flats paying as much as £15 a week in provincial towns. It was an old, rough and ready rule of thumb in regard to housing that when a house cost the family more than one-eighth of their income it was gone beyond common sense. Far too many people today find themselves having to pay much more than one-eighth of their income to provide housing.

The development of many small towns and villages is held up because of lack of water and sewerage facilities. There has been some improvement in water supplies in recent years because of the popularity of group water schemes. Sewerage schemes are a different matter. The lack of water and sewerage facilities results in planning permission being refused in these areas. I hope that the increase in the Local Loans Fund will result in money being more freely available to local authorities for developments of this kind.

The development of the tourist industry is held up because of lack of water and sewerage facilities in small towns. Quite a large percentage of tourists like the peace of rural Ireland but they find it very difficult to find accommodation in the small towns and villages convenient to lakes and rivers that provide fishing facilities. Failure to develop these towns has not only aggravated the housing situation but is retarding the growth of our tourist industry.

Health boards are often in difficulty when they set about providing hospital facilities. I do not intend to go into that in a board way except to draw attention to one point. Everyone in the House is aware of the inadequacy of accommodation for the treatment of mentally retarded and handicapped people. I would like to be assured by the Minister that developments along those lines will be facilitated in every way by the ready availability of money from the Local Loans Fund. In the years ahead, vocational committees will find themselves having to call for more and more help from this fund. We must develop technical education.

The ratio of pupils doing academic courses in the post-primary level compared with those doing technical courses is 3.1:1. That is the exact reverse of the situation in the other European Economic Community countries. I believe that it will be necessary, if we are to develop the industrial arm of our economy effectively, to provide more and more facilities for the training of skilled technicians. A person in the academic field told me it was easier to provide the academic type of education that we give to the vast majority of our post-primary pupils than it was for the technical schools to provide the necessary equipment. A notebook, pencils, a couple of gross of chalk and a blackboard is all that is really necessary for a lot of these subjects in secondary schools, whereas machinery, carpenters' benches and this sort of costly equipment is necessary to provide proper facilities for the development of technical education.

I can foresee in the near future a big demand on this Local Loans Fund to develop that form of education to put us in a position to develop industrially. We have more than enough people with university degrees who are forced to leave the country, and at the same time a shortage of skilled workers to help to build up the country and to develop our industries. I can foresee, within the immediate future, a growing demand on the Local Loans Fund for that sort of development.

We have nine regional technical schools in the country. They do not, in my opinion, serve adequately the needs of the people. It will be necessary within a short time to increase considerably that number and make advanced technical education available to a larger section of our population.

In so far as help from the Local Loans Fund will assist drainage activities in this country, I do not have to emphasise the position there. It is readily agreed on all sides of the House, and has been said quite recently during a discussion on the Shannon drainage that drainage is a problem in this country. If we are in a position to tackle it adequately it could increase enormously our productivity. It is to be hoped that as far as it is possible money will be available from this Local Loans Fund to expedite the solution of drainage problems which exist in many parts of the country. I believe that with whatever funds we are able to get for development in that line from the EEC and help from the Local Loans Fund, many of the big drainage problems that have held back development since the State was founded will be tackled and we will be able to increase our potential as an agricultural country.

I realise, of course, that the Minister and his Department will have to deal with applications from local authorities all over the country and that it will be their business to establish priorities. I hope that the Bill is passed quickly. I hope that talk about cutting back in public expenditure will not result in development by local authorities having to be slowed down. That, in my opinion, would be false economy. There is much to be done by local authorities. They are conscious of their responsibilities. In many cases the plans are already made and submitted to the Department. I believe that it would be a bad thing if there was any appreciable slow down in proceeding with this work. I welcome the Bill and I wish the Minister and his Department every success in its implementation.

Mr. McGowan

I want to say a few words of welcome to this short Bill. All of us realise, especially those who are members of local authorities, just how important it is to have this Bill introduced and to have the provision of money monitored and expanded. Local authorities need the confidence that when they are planning housing schemes, water and sewerage schemes and nearly all the works that are undertaken by them money will be available. This new provision helps local authorities to confidently look forward to planning schemes in each local authority area. Certainly I would be very much aware of how important it is here. Even though it looks quite a simple Bill, it is recognised very easily here that it is a massive increase of capital available to the Local Loans Fund of £500 million. It is the biggest increase ever introduced and is very welcome.

This Bill should be able to kill the fears that are purposely put abroad here to discourage people planning and developing, and restore confidence in members of local authorities. All of us realise that the Local Loans Fund is the life-blood of the work carried out by local authorities. I am satisfied that local authorities will now be able to plan extensively and extend their work programmes to include the very heavy backlog that we have in every county.

In my own county we have a very large number of water and sewerage schemes. We depend on the Local Loans Fund to finance those water and sewerage schemes. We have a backlog of houses just like every local authority. We can now confidently look forward to loans being available from the central fund. It gives me great pleasure to make my short contribution in appreciation of this measure to extend the amount of money that is available.

Mr. Connaughton

I too, welcome this Bill. It is a step in the right direction. I note that there is something like a 40 per cent increase in the actual amount of money available over what was spent last year and what was spent this year. There is no doubt that the funding of local authority activities is a very important function in local government. While I acknowledge that this increase is very important and substantial by any standards, we must view the increase in the light of what has happened in the last 12 months and then the startling increase might not be so dramatic.

I should just like to refer to one important facet of local authority activity, the housing grant and the loan to ordinary individuals to build their own houses. This loan was increased from £3,500 to £7,000. Now we find that, while at the time that £7,000 looked extremely well, there is a tremendous shortfall in the price of a house anywhere in Ireland today. Prospective housebuilders are finding it increasingly difficult to bridge the gap. However, I consider this a very good scheme. It puts the initiative on the user of the loan to ensure that he supplies himself with his own house. There is a lot to be said for it. We hope that the standards applied by the local authorities will not be too restrictive so that more people will use this loan. This is an important development. We hope that the day will not be too far away when that £7,000 will be raised again.

While the reconstruction grants have been increased in the recent past, nevertheless the sum of £600 at the moment is not adequate for any type of reasonable reconstruction. I hope that more money will be made available in the future for this type of programme.

We have a problem with sewerage in many parts of the country. I am aware of countless numbers of small development committees in small towns who are very low on the priority list. Perhaps the Minister and his Department could look at the idea that small communities or committees might be asked to contribute towards the provision of a sewerage scheme on the same basis as the group water scheme, thereby enhancing their hope of getting a sewerage plant for their small town years in advance of when it would come up on the county council priority list. This is holding back development in many of the small rural towns. I would be grateful for the Minister's comments on the feasibility of such a development. While most small town development committees would say that it is the responsibility of the local authority to provide sewerage for them I believe a stage has been reached where many of them are so annoyed about the time lag that they might form themselves into group schemes, pay a local contribution and see if it would get a reasonable response from the Department. There is a fair case for that, and I hope that the Minister will take that suggestion reasonably seriously.

Another important factor with local authority involvement is the local improvement schemes. At a time when everybody is currying around to increase employment I am amazed at the lack of activity in a number of quarters so far as the local improvement schemes are concerned. I hoped that if there was to be an upsurge, particularly in the rural areas, it would be in this very important sector. Local improvement schemes, by their very nature, are funded for a start from local contributions and then from the local authority. One assumes that this is the best way of marrying two schemes. You have the local initiative, the local commitment and involvement, you are carrying out a necessary scheme and at the same time you are creating employment. I am far from happy with the present day trend. I am amazed at all the bog roads and substandard by-roads we have when there are so many people unemployed. I cannot understand why people are not employed on such schemes.

So far as drainage is concerned I am far from happy with the involvement of local authorities. Under this Bill, some dramatic change by the Department will have to take place because we are now at a stage where we are looking forward to increased grants from the EEC for land drainage. While we understand that that will be for field drainage and some arterial drainage of a fairly major nature, there are vast areas, particularly in the north and west, which have what we call small streams, I have been involved with a number of those only to be told on an LIS application that it was outside their control, that they normally did not do projects of that size. I am talking about four, five or six miles of a small stream into another tributary. On the other hand, the Board of Works seem, most of the time, to have their head in the sand so far as this type of development is concerned. We find that a great number of potentially good viable acres of land are providing nothing by way of return to their owners, or, indeed, to the national economy. I should like to hear the Minister reply to this because I believe there is a certain section there in which the local authorities should involve themselves. It would be involvement in the draining of those smaller type streams which do not seem to be in the sphere of the various organisations who carried out such schemes in the past. The local authorities are not carrying them out either. We hope that that will be rectified.

The group water schemes have been one of the more successful success stories in this country. Since there was a change of emphasis on the regional schemes carried out by the local authorities some years ago, when the initiative and commitment was placed fairly and squarely on the people, they responded and we have now highly sophisticated machinery able to deal with group water schemes, but all is not well. We have a problem in that the liaison between the local authority and the Department of the Environment often gives cause for much frustration and I would suggest, in the context of what we are speaking about this evening that the local authority be given more leeway. After all, they are the people on the ground. They have their staff at local level and are equipped with offices and so on. Alternatively, if the Department of the Environment are to be involved at the same level as they are now, in order to speed up the process I would suggest that their inspectors around the country be given greater facilities. They have no offices or staff and they can be difficult to reach at times because of the amount of work that they have on their hands. In the future this fund should cover the vast areas of the country that have not yet got clean water supplies. I would hope that this situation would be rectified.

As far as local authority houses are concerned, the qualifying standard applied by most local authorities is not correct. The people who are entitled to local authority houses, particularly people living in rural areas where a house can be built in the countryside, have to be so poor that they probably would not be able to run a house of that standard anyway. Eligibility standards for such houses are too harsh and there are not nearly enough of these houses being built. The applications are increasing all the time for houses in this category. I would specifically state that this is a category that needs to be looked at very closely. As far as I can see there is not enough progress being made in this area at the moment.

Finally, taking into account the state of the economy and all the talk of the proposed cut-backs. I welcome this Bill in so far as it goes. I would like the Minister's views on the sewerage scheme and I would hope that through his good offices the question of drainage, opening, cleaning and widening of small streams will be taken under the mantle of the LIS projects. I would hope that there will be no shortfall of money and if there has to be a supplementary for the year just because there is extra work being done, that that will be available as well.

Mr. Kilbride

I join with the Members of the House in welcoming this Bill. Because it has so much involvement with local authorities it will be wide-ranging in its effects if it is applied to the extent that the local authorities would wish. This Bill is intended to provide money for the local authorities. In my county we have a great need to get finance to provide additional accommodation for a vocational school at Granard where the students are living in what is now regarded as an out-of-date prefabricated wooden structure. The sooner the vocational education committee, or my council in Longford, are financed with a sufficient amount to enable them to replace this structure with a proper school, the sooner will everybody's mind be at ease.

The local loans fund in the past has been providing finance to the local authorities to pay supplementary housing grants. The Housing Act which is applicable as a result of recent legislation means that local authority supplementary grants are not payable generally on the structured house lines that we had in the past. It is a matter of regret that we have not the opportunity of aiding the deserving person who needs finance to build a house with a grant which would be almost equal it what would be paid by the State. It is true that State grants have been increased although over 12 months have elapsed since the departure from the older Housing Act, only one grant of £1,000 was paid in County Longford, according to a reply to a question in the Dáil.

The Minister is aware that at present housing grants under the old scheme, which were provided from the local fund, are not being processed to the extent that is appropriate to the needs of the people. I have information that people who had promises made to them almost six months ago that their houses would be inspected have not yet had those houses inspected. If we come to the stage when such grants are no longer available through the local authority, some action will have to be taken by the Minister to ensure that a proper scheme of inspection will apply under the new scheme.

We also have the Minister's approval of schemes for group water supplies. There is one area in north Longford which is carrying a FEOGA grant. This scheme is approved but at present the Government cannot say when it will be implemented. This is a situation where, if the loan to the local authority to supplement Government expenditure is appropriate, the Minister could give the county councils a substantial grant. I am referring to the Lough Gowna scheme in north Longford. It is a very extensive scheme. If the Minister could make the necessary funds available to the local authorities and to the relevant section of his department a considerable amount of employment could be given, a very considerable improvement in the standard of living of the people could be achieved and a very useful service would be provided by the implementation of this scheme.

As far as drainage is concerned the local authorities have power under the Local Authorities Works Act to carry out the scheme. This sort of work, while it may not be regarded as falling directly within the ambit of money spent under the local loans fund, could be brought into line by an advance from State funds on condition that the local authorities would meet it with corresponding figures as laid down, not only for the purpose of improving land drainage, but also for the purpose of creating employment. That is something that is very much a matter of urgency at the moment. There are over 105,000 people unemployed at the moment. This time of the year is the most suitable time for carrying out land drainage and we should be going ahead with it if we are going to tackle in a purposeful way the elimination of unemployment and the reduction of this large figure.

Housing loans were made available up to a figure of about £4,500 under the old Act. This figure was criticised in the last six or eight months of the former Government's term of office. That criticism was on the basis that the amount that was being afforded was not sufficient to meet the then increase in cost of materials and so on. Since then we have learned that the Minister has increased it to £7,500. We do not welcome, and nobody in this House would welcome, the recent statements made that, while housing materials went up from 8 per cent to 13 per cent, the cost of houses in Dublin and in the country generally have gone up by 30 per cent. I do not know whose fault it is. We are not debating the effectiveness of any policy at this stage. We are talking about a loans fund.

To apply an appropriate figure to a loan to afford finance to people building their houses, some of the strictures should be removed. Take the case of a person in Granard who had a small town commissioners' house that was built for the working classes. In time, with the help of his son and other members of his family, he came to the conclusion that he should be able to build a decent house for himself outside the town. He went to the county council to buy a site and he was told that because he had signed the form to buy out this little house under a vesting scheme he is not now eligible to get the £1,000 grant. He is living in a local authority house which he might be able to leave available to somebody else but, in the circumstances in which he finds he could better his position, he is told that that grant is not available to him nor is it intended for him.

When the new Government introduced this £1,000 grant we were not told that these restrictions would be imposed, namely, that if one was living in an unsuitable house, or in a two- or three-roomed house, one could not build a four- or five-roomed house because one would be deemed to have purchased a house already. This is hardly a fair circumstance in which to find oneself. I would appeal to the Minister to use his influence to remove these restrictions and to introduce terms at least as good as those which applied under the old Act. A man who has worked all his life and lived in a house that had two or three rooms and eventually found himself for one reason or another, in a position where he was able to buy a site and build a house, should have the right to do so but this person is regarded as less than a second class citizen. I appeal to the Minister to redress that situation and to alter the image of this Bill because it is not a gift of £1,000 to the newly-weds in addition to the ordinary grants that it appeared to be. Many people read it that way. We see now that it is not.

I wish the Minister luck with this Bill. I assure him that if he affords finances to the local authority to the extent that is planned at the moment it will be applied in full measure for both the relief of unemployment and for the improvement of the facilities at local level.

Mr. Reynolds

I welcome the Bill. I wonder if the increase of 50 per cent is sufficient when one looks at the cost of housing over the past two years. We were told quite recently that the price of houses had increased by 19.2 per cent. At that rate a house which cost £20,000 last year would cost £24,000 this year. This year it is estimated that the prices in the coming year are going to increase by 30 per cent. No later than yesterday morning the price of cement was increased. With the increase in the cost of cement the cost of a tremendous range of commodities in the building industry, such as the raw material, blocks and so on, will be affected. The manufacturers estimate a total increase next year of 30 per cent on building materials. If that situation comes about, and I can see nothing to stop it, it will mean that the price of the £20,000 house, in a period of two years, has increased by £10,000. I doubt if our increase of 50 per cent, £500 million in this case, is sufficient to meet the demand. It is good thinking to increase it at this stage but I am sure we will have the Minister back again if he is to keep building at the standard it has been at and to maintain the number of houses built and keep the money flowing into the local authorities.

The one point which has been overlooked by most local authorities and by the Department for the Environment, is the question of serviced sites to be made available in every town in the country because they can very often take financial pressure off the Department of the Environment. This is because people who purchase this type of site are people who are above the income limit of £3,500 and therefore do not qualify for a loan from a local authority. These people borrow their money from a building society when it is available and most times it is. For that reason it is taking pressure off this fund which can then be used for other purposes.

We will continue to have a number of people who cannot afford to build their own houses because they cannot rise to borrowing a loan for many reasons. We are obliged from central Government as a local authority to provide houses for these people. If we had more serviced sites available in every town we would have more money available from the Local Loans Fund for building this type of house. When one looks at increases such as we have had over the past 12 months there is not much point in talking about a loan of £7,000. That figure will have to be substantially increased if we are to keep building going at all.

I would also like to refer to the point made by Senator Tom Kilbride about housing grants. It is impossible to get a grant out of the Department of the Environment at the moment. If the Minister does not accept that, I will post him a list of 30 people, some of whom have their houses completed since September, October, November and January and they have not been inspected. There is something radically wrong.

Mr. McGlinchey

Did they build them in three months?

Mr. Reynolds

No, they did not.

Mr. McGlinchey

But then they will not qualify.

Mr. Reynolds

I am talking about the old grant. I want to be quite clear about this. People who had applied for a grant, it is referred to now as the old grant, prior to the change still qualify for the old grant.

Mr. McGlinchey

Provided they are earning under £25 a week.

Mr. Reynolds

I am referring to reconstruction grants. I am in possession and it is what I say that counts at this stage. Reconstruction grants are not being paid. I am sure the Minister will have a look at it and see what can be done about it. That is all I want to say on the Bill.

Mr. Markey

It is interesting to look at the figures which were laid down in previous Local Loans Fund Acts as regards the limits of expenditure. In 1968 the Local Loans Fund Act laid down a limit of £400 million. In the Local Loans Fund Act, 1972 that had been raised to £600 million. Only two years after that, in 1974, the new Local Loans Fund Act raised the limit to £1,000 million. That was an increase of 60 per cent in two years. The Local Loans Fund Act, 1978 increases the rate to £1,500 million which is an increase of 50 per cent on the present figure. Is the limit high enough? Certainly from experience under previous Local Loans Fund legislation it would appear not to be high enough to meet the needs and the Minister says in a statement that local authorities have become increasingly dependent on this fund to meet their capital requirements. The Government, in their recent White Paper, and this will probably be followed up in the Green Paper, have given certain hints regarding local authority housing programmes in the future. There may well be a reduction in that respect. If so, I do not know where local authorities will find the money they will need for their various water and sewerage works and other capital requirements.

Local authorities, where they made application for the use of funds from the Local Loans Fund, have been refused by the Department simply because the request did not come within the confines of the criteria of the resources being given under the Local Loans Fund Act. The Department should, perhaps, consider widening or extending the range of uses of the Local Loans Fund Act.

The Minister says that the fund is used to finance essential capital services of local authorities. I would have thought that bringing roads up to modern standards under the local improvements scheme and perhaps certain amenity schemes are capital services when all is said and done and will give a very definite long-term capital benefit to areas and should be considered for resources of the Local Loans Fund. A widening or extension of its range of activities to include this type of activity should be envisaged by the Department in future.

The figure of £1,500 million which is envisaged is simply an illustration of the escalation of the cost of the provision of local authority capital services. It also illustrates the effects of inflation and is a consequence of the delays which can take place in funds being made available to local authorities from this fund. There is a considerable annual issue and it has reached almost £150 million. This is an amount on money which would justify debates on the whole Local Loans Fund matter more frequently than has been experienced in the past.

Local authorities have experienced delay in obtaining the money and delay is one means whereby the Government of the day can go easy on the limited funds which they have at their disposal. It is regrettable that these delays can occur since there are so many plans for water and sewerage works lying on the planning tables with no work being done on them. The rate of completion of new sanitary services works is not at all satisfactory. There is a considerable backlog here. I have no doubt that local authorities will increasingly be looking for extra moneys in future years under this heading. Laying down a stipulation as to what the limit will be is one thing but actually releasing the money to the local authorities is another matter altogether. I look forward to an improvement both in regard to the length of time it takes for local authorities to obtain the money from the Local Loans Fund and in regard to the widening of the range of activities which can be covered under the Local Loans Fund.

I welcome the Bill with the reservation that I do not think the figure of £1,500 million is adequate in the light of the experience under previous Acts and in the light of the considerable backlog of capital works which remain on the hands of all local authorities.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Wyse)

Unfortunately I am not in a position, although I am a member of a local authority, to answer all the queries that have arisen this evening. They are appropriate to the Departments concerned. What I and the Department of Finance are concerned with here is making moneys available to finance the different services operated by the local authorities. I was surprised that the debate went into such a broad field. The opportunity given to Senators where questions of local authorities, drainage, housing and so on are concerned, is on the Appropriation Bill. I cannot answer for any particular Minister as to how he administers the funds for his Department. I am directly responsible in making moneys available for the financing of the different services operated by the local authorities.

We should keep in mind that this substantial increase of £500 million is given at a time when inflation is not as high as it was in previous years. I am confident that we are making sufficient moneys available to local authorities to finance their programmes. Some Senators were worried that we may not have sufficient moneys in this respect. This can be reviewed at any time. I hope that this matter will be reviewed in a year or two because we have noticed that it is in the last two years that there has been the greatest demand on the local loans funds. We are making this assessment basing it, to a certain extent, on this demand during the past two years.

Senator Connaughton mentioned local improvements and drainage. That does not come under local loans but is a matter for the appropriate Department. Arterial drainage comes under my Department and I make my own estimate on matters of that kind. The purchasing of land and so on is under local authorities and we are providing the necessary moneys to finance these services. The delay in making moneys available or the payment of local loans to local authorities comes under local authorities, also. Sometimes local authorities are at fault in not preparing proper plans. However, it is not for me to answer that question.

I should like to thank the Senators for their contributions in welcoming the Bill. I think it is welcomed all over the country. It is now for the local authorities to prepare their own planning programmes and so on. The money is available to them, and the levels can be reviewed, if necessary, at any time.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.

Bill put through Committee, reported without recommendation, received for final consideration and ordered to be returned to the Dáil.