I received notice from Senator Molony that on the motion for the Adjournment today, he proposes to raise the matter of the sanction of the Minister for the Environment for Puckane sewerage scheme in County Tipperary.
Adjournment Matter. - Puckane (Tipperary) Sewerage Scheme.
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak in relation to something which is causing very great concern in North Tipperary and particularly amongst the members of North Tipperary County Council. Although I am primarily concerned with the Department's sanction for Puckane sewerage scheme, so that the House will understand the difficulty and the urgency of the matter, it is necessary to give a very brief general background to the overall problem. The level of capital allocation to North Tipperary County Council for sanitary service schemes and in other areas as well has been very low and completely inadequate to meet the genuine needs of the county. I invite the Minister to compare the capital allocation to North Tipperary with other areas and particularly with our neighbouring county of Clare from which the Minister comes and he will readily see the different ways in which two areas, roughly similar in size and in the same region, have been treated through the years. It may be because Clare has always boasted of some major names in Irish politics. Be that as it may, the situation in North Tipperary is a very serious one now. I am particularly concerned for reasons which will be apparent that this sewerage scheme will be sanctioned.
In order to get over the general difficulty the council have in relation to capital allocation for sanitary services, they could not build houses in areas where a sewerage scheme was not available. The only way over this problem, so that the council could fulfil their obligation and discharge their responsibility to provide houses was to build local authority houses in areas around the county which were serviced by communal septic tanks. Unfortunately, experience from the employment of such a sewerage disposal device proved most unsatisfactory and has resulted in health hazards. I will be referring to a particular health hazard that has resulted in Puckane, but there are other areas, including Borrisoleigh and Two-Mile Borris, where a very serious public health hazard was caused because of the inadequacy of communal septic tanks in servicing local authority houses.
There is also a considerable and significant cost involved in the removal of sludge from communal septic tanks where the council must employ contractors to empty tanks on a regular basis. Very wisely, the council have decided in future not to service local authority houses by means of communal septic tanks in order to dispose of the sewage. This means that North Tipperary County Council have had to alter their entire housing policy. They simply do not have the money to establish the sewerage schemes that need to be established. Consequently, people are going to be forced to live in certain areas, and other areas—very desirable and pretty areas where people would like to live—will not benefit from the establishment of more houses simply because of the absence of sewerage schemes. To give some idea to the House of the figures we are talking about, the allocation for sanitary service schemes in the administrative county of North Tipperary this year is £186,000.
The council coming into this year had a debit balance on sanitary services capital account of £176,000, an amount just equal to what we received for all the work we were to do this year. Our requirements for 1980, apart from the debit balance that we carried into this year, were £291,000. Our total requirements therefore for 1980 amount to £466,000 of which we have been given £186,000. This leaves us £280,000 short of our basic requirements. The council had other commitments associated with sanitary sewerage works such as the purchase of land, consultancy fees and so on. Our bill in this respect puts us in a situation this year where the council will be £50,000 short on their requirements just to do what they have planned.
I understand the present economic difficulties. Given they are there after three years of this Government's administration, it is no credit to them that the situation in any county could be as bad as I have described. I understand the necessity for public spending cuts. I am not going to come to the Minister and ask for £50,000, which is what we need. This is something to which council have given serious consideration. We have tried to narrow our concern to a specific scheme.
First of all, it is the number one scheme on our priority list and, secondly—this is really what is important and why I want to refer to the Minister this evening—the fate of 33 jobs depends on this scheme going ahead. Work for 33 men will disappear in August of this year. The county council, through their secretary, wrote to the Minister a short time ago. He explained the difficulties the council found themselves in and asked the Minister to consider sanctioning Puckane sewerage scheme.
At the last ordinary meeting of the county council the Minister's reply was read to the meeting and I can assure the Minister that the horror on all sides of the political divide with which his reply was received was evident by contributions of members from all sides in the debate that took place afterwards. It was stated that:
The question of approving the contract documents for Puckane sewerage scheme must be considered in the context of the overall level of resources available for the sanitary services programme and the number of schemes fully approved which are in progress or under construction and for which adequate finance must be provided. In present circumstances the Department cannot indicate when sanction will be conveyed to the contract document for Puckane sewerage scheme.
For the past 12 months, on several occasions, requests have been made to the Minister to receive a delegation or a deputation from the council to explain what we see as problems that are peculiar and particular to us in relation to finance, finance relating to housing, roads and particularly in relation to sanitary services. The Minister, for reasons best known to himself, has seen fit to refuse us the right of audience. I regret that because I believe that if he was as familiar with the problems of the country as we are and with the problems that are being presented now in the context of being unable to proceed with the Puckane sewerage scheme, he would have a change of heart on the subject.
Puckane is a very pretty village in the northern part of the North Tipperary administrative county. It is a popular tourist area, an area in which people like to live. At the moment Puckane has 22 local authority houses. The sewage disposal from those houses is by way of communal septic tanks. For several years now it has been apparent that those septic tanks cannot carry the load that they need to carry. The result has been concern amongst local people about the health hazard. Initially, and I suppose almost inevitably, bureaucracy did not accept this. But it has now come to be recognised by the local authority, by the health board, that there is a public health hazard. The Minister is aware of the views of the medical health officer in this respect. The medical health officer told North Tipperary County Council that it was a very serious public health hazard and should be deal with as a matter of urgency and that an outbreak of fever in the locality could have far-reaching consequences for the county council in the locality and for the tourist trade in general.
That is the position. There is a public health hazard because of the absence of a sewerage scheme. The sewerage scheme is first on North Tipperary County Council's list of priorities. The cost of the scheme for this year is approximately £65,000, which is about 12 per cent of the half-million pounds that we have as a short-fall this year alone, so what I am looking for is merely a drop in the bucket. It would not place any undue financial hardship on the Department of the Environment to accept that this is something that is needed and something that is desirable. North Tipperary County Council have, for several years now, 33 men employed directly working on similar type sewerage schemes. These men have experience and they are particularly good at their job. They have been brought together to carry out certain functions. Work for those men disappears in about August. Puckane sewerage scheme needs to be done as there is a public health hazard there.
We have work for the 33 men and we want them to go in and work. Apart from the appalling position of 33 men joining the dole queues, we do not want to break up a good team who have proved themselves good at a job and we can carry out this function. I appreciate that public spending cuts must be made but this is false economy. If you add up the costs of cleaning out the septic tanks in Puckane it is about £8,000 a year. The cost of making these men redundant—redundancy payments are a significant cost factor—the cost to the Exchequer of paying these people Department of Social Welfare money, unemployment benefit as they are entitled to, it becomes very false economics indeed and the Department can be accused of being penny wise and pound foolish in their approach to this matter.
Those men want to work. The work is there to be done. It is work that needs to be done. It needs to be done because there is a health hazard there; it needs to be done because it is a tourist area and as the medical health officer said, tourist facilities in the area are being affected. The attractiveness of the area is being affected. The local authority find themselves in a position where they cannot build more houses in an area where there is a need and where there is a housing queue.
I urge the Minister to reconsider his position. I also want to say that I think it was in the week we had the county council meeting at which this matter came up—I found it disturbing and hypocritcal on the part of the Taoiseach and his Government, to see in the national papers photographs of the Taoiseach with statements and great hullaballoo about what the Taoiseach was doing. He was inviting together the chief executives and the chairmen of 21 State-sponsored bodies to discuss——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
The Chair is reluctant to interrupt the Senator but on a motion like this the terms are very narrow and the Chair would be grateful if you would relate all the remarks to the actual motion we have down.
I most certainly propose relating these remarks because they are very relevant. This is the way the ex-executives and the members of North Tipperary County Council feel about this. The Taoiseach invited these men from 21 State-sponsored bodies to discuss economic growth and expansion of employment. I can tell you that 33 men in North Tipperary do not believe that the Government are concerned with expansion of employment when men in what would be regarded by most people as the most solid and secure of employment, employment by the county council—they are not casual labourers, these men have been there for years—are going to be let go because the Department refuse to sanction £65,000 which is what is required to put this scheme into operation.
I ask the Minister to reconsider his position and to realise the difficulties that local authorities are faced with. I accept that this has affected many county councils but in this instance there is urgent need, there is a public health hazard and 33 men are facing redundancy. The matter is the first on the county council's list of priorities. I ask the Minister, as a man from County Clare, to compare what County Clare has achieved by way of capital allocations and what North Tipperary has achieved by way of capital allocations. I believe that he will readily accept that North Tipperary needs an extra boost. I am not asking that we get all we looked for this year, I ask merely that we be given that one thing to solve the public health hazard and to retain 33 men in employment. I do not know what will happen next year, perhaps economic times will improve, perhaps they will disimprove, but at least let us hold these men for the moment and let us try to improve an appalling situation that exist in a small village.
I would like to emphasise that, since I became Minister for the Environment, the total amount of money available has increased rapidly each year. This year a total of £40 million has been made available for water and sewerage schemes as compared with £25 million which was made available in 1977—the last allocations from the National Coalition Government. This has enabled me to make £550,000 available to North Tipperary in recent years, to go ahead with the sewerage schemes of Borrisoleigh and Borrisokane. In March of this year—the figure given by the Senator is correct—£186,000 was allocated for major public water and sewerage schemes in North Tipperary. It should also be understood that this was the maximum allocation that I could have made at that time as it represented virtually the entire undrawn balances of loans sanctioned for major schemes in North Tipperary and no further requests came to avail of loans until after the recent letter about the Puckane sewerage scheme. That was the next request we got for further allocations of loans that had been sanctioned.
The fault there rests squarely with North Tipperary County Council, not with me or my Department. It is up to the Senator and his fellow councillors to make sure that these things are done on time. I also allocated £75,000 to North Tipperary County Council for small sewerage schemes this year. This is the sixth highest level of small schemes allocations made to individual sanitary authorities in 1980 and it is £15,000 higher than the last small schemes allocation made by the Coalition Government.
At the beginning of this month Tipperary North County Council made representations to my Department that 33 council workers now employed on four major sanitary services schemes which are nearing completion would have to be laid off unless new sewerage works were fully approved for execution at Thurles and Puckane. My Department wrote to the council on 12 June pointing out that I had already given full approval and sanctioned loans for foul and storm water sewers to serve the new vocational school at Thurles. The Senator did not refer to that letter. Work on these sewers will re-employ 15 of the men which the council propose to lay off in August in the Thurles job.
That is not true.
It is a matter for the Senator to decide whether it is true or not but that is the position. I am happy to inform the Seanad that I have earlier this week released the Puckane sewerage scheme for commencement in 1980. The total figure involved will be £175,000 for this scheme and it will absorb the remainder of the 33 workers, who the Senator says, are about to be laid off.
I should like very briefly to thank the Minister——
An Leas-Chathaoirleach
There cannot be any comment after the Minister has concluded. That is the procedure.
The Seanad adjourned at 8.25 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 26 June 1980.