Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 19 Jun 1986

Vol. 113 No. 9

Local Loans Fund (Amendment) Bill, 1986 (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 the Public Service (Mr. O'Keeffe)

The object of this Bill is to raise the limit on the amount which may be issued from the Local Loans Fund by £1,000 million. The revised statutory limit on advances from the fund will be raised from £3,500 million to £4,500 million. This is a purely technical measure but one which is essential if the Local Loans Fund is to continue to operate. The fund provides loans to local authorities to finance capital programmes such as housing and water supply and sewerage schemes. I anticipate that the increased limit should be sufficient to cover advances from the fund for the next three or four years. In 1986 for instance the fund will advance £324 million to local authorities.

By far the largest proportion of the loans advanced from the Local Loans Fund is for housing, both to finance the construction of local authority houses and to fund the local authority house purchase loan scheme, or SDA loans as they are usually called. Over 5,000 SDA loans were paid in 1985. As I am sure Senators are aware, my colleague the Minister for the Environment has recently announced significant increases in the income and loan limits for the SDA scheme. The increased limits were announced in the context of the introduction of the new funding arrangements for the Housing Finance Agency which is not financed from the Local Loans Fund but raises its own funds on the market. In future, the SDA and HFA schemes are to be more closely aligned with local authorities assuming more direct responsibility for the administration of the HFA scheme. The income limit for ordinary SDA loans has gone up from £8,000 to £10,000 — the same as already applies to Housing Finance Agency loans. The maximum loan has been increased by £5,000 to £21,000 in the case of ordinary loans and to £25,000 in the case of special category loans; the latter are available to tenants and tenant purchasers of local authority houses and to certain persons on waiting lists who opt to purchase private housing. No income limit applies in the case of special category loans. The interest rate charged to SDA borrowers is 9½ per cent. The increased limits greatly improve the options open to aspiring home owners and reinforce the Government's policy to encourage private housing as far as is practicable.

The Government have also made considerable progress in the provision of public housing for those who are not in a position to house themselves. The local authority housing programme is the largest single beneficiary from the Local Loans Fund accounting for 55 per cent of expenditure from the fund in 1985. The total number housed increased from 7,900 in 1982 to 11,750 in 1985. A key factor in the success of the public housing programme has been the introduction of the £5,000 grant for LA tenants vacating their houses to move into the private sector. In 1985 some 2,200 houses became available for re-letting as a result of this scheme alone and this figure should be even higher in 1986.

The other major service which is financed from the Local Loans Fund is the water supply and sewerage programme on which £77 million will be spent in 1986. The much increased level of investment in the sanitary services programme since 1980 has ensured that the lack of these services will not act as a constraint on development in the foreseeable future. The fund also provides loans for other services such as the construction of fire stations, harbours, libraries, swimming pools and courthouses. Loans from the fund are repayable by local authorities on an annuity basis usually over 25-30 years. The interest rate charged on loans from the fund, which is set by the Minister for Finance, is 9 per cent — the current Exchequer lending rate.

While all loans made by the LLF must be repaid, in practice the Exchequer meets a large proportion of the loan charges, both principal and interest, on advances from the fund. For instance, the Exchequer meets the loan charges on local authority housing in full and about 50 per cent of all loan charges for sanitary services. The annual cost of these subsidies is carried in the Vote for the Department of the Environment. In 1986 the amount provided for local authority housing is £179 million and £46 million for sanitary services.

I have already said this Bill is a technical measure. Increasing the statutory limit on issues from the Local Loans Fund does not affect the level of funding for individual programmes financed from the fund. The fund is simply a financial instrument to channel capital to local authorities within the allocations for programmes agreed annually by the Government. The statutory limit on issues from the fund has to be increased every few years as demand dictates. The last amending Act of this kind was passed in 1983. This legislation then is simple and straightforward in scope but essential to enable the Local Loans Fund to continue to finance local authorities.

I commend the Bill for the approval of the House.

Mr. Mullooly

I welcome this Bill, the purpose of which is to raise the ceiling on the amount of loans which may be issued from the Local Loans Fund to local authorities. Although this Bill is presented by the Minister of State at the Department of Finance many of the matters which Senators would wish to raise relate to the Department of the Environment. This is understandable because the Local Loans Fund is the source of loan capital for local authorities. The resources for the fund come from the Exchequer but local authorities depend on the Local Loans Fund for the finance they require for housing construction, housing loans, sanitary services and other capital projects.

The last time the ceiling was adjusted was in 1983. As far as I recall, the ceiling at that time was raised from £2,500 million to £3,500 million. It is now proposed in this Bill to raise the ceiling to £4,500 million. The Minister did not tell the House if the ceiling of £3,500 million has been reached but he stated that the increase now being sought is expected to be adequate for a further three to four year period. I wonder if that means that the £1,000 million extra which is the amount by which the Minister is seeking to raise the ceiling will be the total amount available to local authorities in the next three to four years to fund capital projects. If that is the case the £1,000 million would appear to be an inadequate amount for the period in question. The ceiling should have been raised to £5,000 million.

The Minister stated that there has been an increased level of investment in the sanitary services programme since 1980. That may have occurred in other counties but it certainly did not occur in my county. Roscommon County Council, which is the local authority of which I am a member, has been receiving a decreased capital allocation for sanitary services in the past three years.

The Minister of State also referred to SDA loans and the recent increase to £21,000 in the maximum SDA loan available. The income ceiling has been increased to £10,000. I welcome these increases. I was at a meeting of our local authority the other day at which the increase in the maximum loan was welcomed. However, many members felt that the income ceiling should have been increased to a figure in excess of £10,000, possibly £11,000 or £12,000. At present the net income of people who are earning under £12,000 per annum, as a result of very high taxation, could be in the region of £6,000 or less. Members felt that the income limit for SDA loans and Housing Finance Agency loans — which are the only sources of finance available to that category of people — should be increased to a figure in the region of £12,000. Many people are experiencing difficulty at present through no fault of their own with regard to loan repayments. Some are experiencing difficulties as a result of unemployment and others are depending on social welfare payments. Some scheme should be devised to assist people experiencing such difficulties to get back on an even keel and enable them to repay arrears.

The repayments on an SDA loan are fixed over the period of the loan so that the amount of the repayment a person starts off with remains the same up to the end of the repayment period. The Minister might consider having lower repayments over the first third of the loan term than over the second third of the repayment term with an increased fixed repayment for the final third of the repayment period. This would be of considerable assistance to people with SDA loans because the early years are the most difficult for most borrowers. I am not saying that this is the only way in which this could be dealt with. There are many ways in which it would be made easier for people to meet their loan repayments. This would eliminate the difficulties being experienced by many people at present.

I wish to refer to the delay by the Department in approving loans under the local loans fund scheme. Usually local authorities are notified in the first half of the year of their capital allocation for capital projects during the year. The local authority then seek approval for a loan for the carrying out of the works. Very often, there is considerable delay before approval for a loan is issued, by which time it is quite late in the year. If we are speaking in terms of getting value for money, particularly in the case of works which are carried out by direct labour, it is very important to get those works underway as early as possible in the year, certainly before the summer months in the period during which the best return in terms of output and production will be obtained. In the case of capital projects, local authorities should be notified earlier in the year and the loan approval should be issued as expeditiously as possible. Local authorities would then be in a position to get such capital programmes underway in the early part of the year, before the end of May.

I welcome the Bill. It is a technical measure. I hope the Minister will answer the question I raised as to whether the £3,500 million ceiling has been reached at this stage.

Mr. Ferris

This is a technical Bill dealing with the amount of funding for the local loans fund. Those of us who are members of local authorities will avail of this opportunity to comment on the advantages of this fund. I am a member of two local authorities, Tipperary Urban District Council and Tipperary South Riding County Council. These authorities benefit to a large extent from the facilities this fund gives them. They are now given at a rate which local authorities can afford. Recently there has been an easement in the level of repayment for borrowers who benefit from SDA loans provided from this fund. The rate was reduced from 11½ per cent to 9½ per cent, which is a welcome alignment with commercial banking rates. It ensures that money is available to people who have shown some initiative in providing their own homes. The Government have been innovative in the area of loans, grants, interest rates, the level of income applicable to borrowers and the amount of loans which are available. With changing times and with increased wages an income limit of £10,000 is still fairly tight. The increase in the income limit represents a significant improvement for the category we would like to assist. Very few people earning under £7,000 per year would dare borrow £20,000 whereas people earning £10,000 or more would have the courage to borrow in order to build their own house. We should give them every incentive to do so. I welcome the improvement and hope that the Minister and the Minister for the Environment will keep the income limit continuously under review.

The increase in the amount of money available is welcome. The maximum has risen from £18,000 to £21,000 for SDA loans and from £20,000 to £25,000 for special category loans. The level of loans for reconstruction has been increased to £2,000 for non-secured loans and £6,500 for secured loans. This should be reflected in the building industry. People have facilities available to them and financial incentives from the Government which, I hope, will create a new enthusiasm in the building industry. I look forward to that.

I welcome some of the restrictions which were included in the reconstruction grants. I look forward to the day when we will devolve the power of the inspectorate in the Department of the Environment on to the local authorities, in order to speed up the process of approval for people who want to get on with the reconstruction work they have in mind. The local loans fund can be used to assist them. Local authorities cannot survive without this SDA low interest money from the local loans fund. The fact that the limit is increased to £4,500 million is an indication of the kind of activity taking place. I understood from the Minister of State's speech that he is satisfied that this increase will take account of the expected activity under this fund but I notice that he said that in 1986 the advance to local authorities from this fund would be £324 million. That is a reduction in the amount of money which was allocated in 1985 which was £350 million. I would have anticipated, with the improvements which have been announced recently, that there would be an escalation in demand under this heading. Perhaps this refers only to funds for the house building and sanitary service programmes of local authorities. There are different rates of repayment depending on the heading. Perhaps it does not indicate the amount which could be demanded for house building projects. The Minister of State might indicate if that is the case.

I notice that there were 5,000 beneficiaries from SDA loans in 1985 which means either new houses were built or houses were purchased by people through this process. Any incentive we can give, whether it is the £5,000 environmental grant, the £2,000 new house grant, the mortgage subsidy scheme or anything else we can do to encourage people to house themselves is welcome but that does not remove the social responsibility on local authorities to house, through these funds, people who are unable to meet the challenge of providing their own home. We have, in some areas, housing lists which have not yet been fully completed. We have made massive inroads on the housing waiting lists, particularly in the major cities and towns. Over the past four or five years there has been a boost in the number of local authority houses which were built and standards have improved. I welcome that and I hope the house building programme will be accelerated in areas where there is proven need. Major projects were submitted by the local authority in South Tipperary to the Department for approval under this fund. They will help to restore parts of Tipperary town to its original form. There are many derelict sites at the entrance to the town from Cashel. This area would benefit if approval was given by the Government for the projects we have submitted for rebuilding the original design of Father Matthew Street in Tipperary town. These are the kind of projects I should like to see getting off the ground. Not only would they meet a housing need but the centre of our town and approach roads to our town would be reconstructed so as to be as they were hundreds of years ago. I welcome any move by the Government that will bring such plans to fruition. This Local Loans Fund is one of the vehicles that local authorities depend on almost completely for the vast majority of their funding for major capital projects. I welcome the Bill.

Mr. Lennon

In common with Senators Mullooly and Ferris, I welcome this Bill also. Having been a member of a local authority for many long years, this is, perhaps, the most welcome news we have got for a number of years.

The increase in the SDA loans from £15,000 to £21,000 and the raising of the income limit from £8,000 to £10,000, was overdue. SDA loans, are very popular at the moment with many people. They prefer to go for that one rather than the HFA loan. A loan of £21,000 is as much as some people can repay. Having said that, it does not go the whole way in buying or building a house. While sites may have fallen in price for a number of reasons in the past years, even when they were being sold at £5,000, £6,000 or £7,000, there was still a great short-fall for many people who were considering building their own house.

I welcome the Bill for several reasons, one is that it will appeal to many people. It will appeal more today than would have been the case six or 12 months ago because the interest rate has fallen from 12.5 per cent to 9½ per cent. That means we must spell this out to people to point out the attractiveness of the SDA loan. In fact, quite recently in Louth this matter was discussed with me. The other person was saying that the repayment on an SDA loan six months ago was something in the region of £40 per week. Now an SDA loan of £16,000 is £30 per week. Therefore, a £21,000 loan will not cost much more than a £16,000 loan would have been costing not so long ago.

Local authorities in the past had quite a task in providing for all the applicants who were in need of housing. As most members of local authorities would agree, the waiting time for a local authority house, though it may vary from county to county, can be in the region of from four to six years, depending on the size of the family making the application Most people who move into large housing estates will probably have spent the first half of their life trying to get into them and will then spend the second half trying to get out of them. I do not mind saying that because some of the housing estates that have been built in the past number of years leave much to be desired. They are often referred to as cement jungles. Some have other names for them. These schemes may have seemed all right at the time but experience has proved otherwise. However, we should learn from our sad experience of the past. Building large numbers of houses in certain areas, created many problems. At the moment there are many people in some of the large housing estates, some in my own county, who are very anxious to avail of the very attractive grant available to those who hand back their houses to the local authority. A total of £10,000 in grants towards the cost of a new home is a great start. The Minister referred to the number of people who, in the past 12 months, have availed of these grants. We are all very pleased to see that. It has lightened the burden on the local authorities. There is no doubt in the world about that. In my county there was a large number of applications on hand but I note a big increase in the number anxious to avail of these SDA loans and of the other loans in order to build their own homes.

Even though the loan is being increased to £21,000 and that that may be as much and more than people can repay, it is still not enough for people to build their own home in 1986. The Government of the day have to look a little further at the moment. I am speaking from knowledge of my own local authority who, have not at this stage, much land to provide sites for these people. This is the great stumbling block for many people who are anxious to build their own home. The great difficulty is that any sort of decent house may cost between £21,000 to £26,000 to build and when one includes the price of a site, the total is in the region of £30,000. The increase is a step forward and I certainly welcome it.

The Government must look at the position regarding certain local authorities whose land bank has run out. I am speaking in particular about my own local authority where this is a great problem.

We hope this increase will encourage more people to build houses in the country. Obviously, this would create quite a bit of employment. This goes side by side, as Senator Ferris said, with the very attractive home improvement grants which were announced some months ago. They will certainly be a great stimulus to the housing industry. From my experience so far of the house improvement grants, they are generating a great amount of interest throughout the country. It is important for the Government and for us as members of local authorities to encourage as many people as possible to avail of these very generous grants before houses deteriorate to the extent that the decision as to whether they are worth repairing or whether the only option would be to build a new house would have to rest with an engineer.

Turning briefly to the money available under the scheme for both sewerage and water schemes, I want to mention group water schemes in which I have been involved down through the years. While welcoming the grant increase in this respect announced in the past 12 months — from £300 to £500 — it falls far short of what is necessary to promote group water schemes today. My personal experience of group water schemes in the past 20 odd years has been that it was easier 20 years ago to organise a group water scheme than it is today though some would say we are much better off now than we were 20 years ago. I found it was much easier to organise group water schemes then because no matter what way one routed the water and no matter how anxious people were to get water, most had their own deep wells and their own electric pumps etc. Therefore they are always reluctant to join in these schemes, and it used to be a matter of eight houses per mile. It is hard to get the eight houses now per mile because, as I say, most of these people have provided their own water. While it is necessary to point out to them that, in fact, all these electric pumps can only be short term and have to to be replaced in a short time, they are still reluctant because it costs £500 or £600 to be a member of the scheme.

For that reason again I would ask the Government to look at this matter because local authorities, in the main, are not providing today these regional schemes as they were doing a few years ago. I am speaking about my own. We should welcome the fact that many people take it on themselves to organise group water schemes. Every help that can be given to these organisers should be given by the Government. I am not particularly happy with the progress of these schemes in the past. I am not particularly happy with the help they have got either. Again, from experience, I found it easier some years ago to organise these and found, in fact, more help and more co-operation from the authorities then than I am getting today. However, it is something, perhaps, for the Minister to think about. There are those few points I wanted to mention and, again, I want to welcome the increase in the SDA loans.

Senator Ferris mentioned the amount of money for 1986 as compared with 1985. I would be very interested in the reply of the Minister on that one. In the main, I can only say that I welcome the overall picture. It is a great boost and that with all the other grants which have come over the past 12 months I can only say that the Government are certainly facing up to their responsibility and doing an excellent job on that front. People either building their own or repairing their own, are getting every help and encouragement and I welcome this.

Mr. McMahon

This Bill is, of course, to be welcomed and the announcements recently made by the Minister for the Environment are more than welcome and awaited with bated breath and, perhaps in some instances with disappointment by people who are unable to procure sufficient funds to provide themselves with a home.

There is one area where I find that people have great difficulty. It is probably that the category is so small that nobody seems to bother too much about it, that is people who are endeavouring to build a house on their own site. There is increasing difficulty and I suppose if I were to have the figures of the number provided in my area or in the entire County Dublin area for every year since I became a member of the local authority, I would say it has decreased many times because it is more difficult to obtain finance for it, to obtain planning permission or to get the local authority to build a house on the nominee's sites. This may not be the direct responsibility of the Minister, but I think his Department should have an interest in it because there is a section of the community who are in need of housing and very often have the site but there is an enormous amount of red tape and form filling; there is an added problem, that the Dublin County Council have difficulty in finding contractors who will build a single house. The whole system is geared towards taking people into the populated area. Take my own district which contains the mountain area of Bohernabreena and Ballinascorney, that general mountain area. The system is geared to taking the people off the mountain and putting them into the enlarged village of Saggart and the new town of Tallaght, which, I think, is to be regretted.

It is only in dire frustration that many of these people move out of the rural environment into the ever-expanding urban areas. It is completely against their will and I believe that a greater effort should be made to facilitate them. In most cases they are prepared to provide far more money than the ordinary SDA applicant who is moving into a housing estate. However, I heartily welcome the increase from £8,000 to £10,000 of the ordinary SDA loans and the increase to £21,000 and £25,000 for the special category loans.

Generally, the news has been good in the housing areas plus the fact, of course, that the local authorities are now finding it much easier to facilitate people because in Dublin County people now have a choice of house. Those on the housing list, who have been allocated a local authority house, have a choice of which area they will move into or which estate. That is a new departure in housing. For many years, when a person was allocated a house, no matter where it was, they were only too willing to accept the house and move into it, even though at great inconvenience for schools and, perhaps, for their place of work. This element of choice has of course brought its difficulties. As I mentioned this in the House last week, Dublin Corporation are unable to fill houses which have already been occupied and vacated by people who availed of the £5,000 grant for handing back the local authority house, then the grant of £2,000 for the first time buyer and the subsidy grant on the repayments. That has created a difficulty, particularly in County Dublin.

There is also another difficulty. This is a point I had intended making on the Bill and it is that the moneys provided, under this heading, are restricted to the development of the housing stock in the country and the sewerage needed to provide the housing. There is another area where there is an enormous amount of agitation and, in some instances, it is forcing people into availing or urging them to avail of the £5,000 grant to move out of certain areas in County Dublin. Because moneys provided under this heading cannot be used for the development of the area in which many thousands of city people have been accommodated. I am speaking of the Tallaght, Blanchardstown, Lucan and Clondalkin areas where Dublin Corporation bought large tracts of land and built thousands of houses to reduce the housing list in the city. They provided the houses but nothing else. People were put in an entirely new environment which was foreign to them and had to travel miles for the ordinary daily shopping. They had to travel miles, in some instances, to schools though the schools were provided rather quickly.

There are no recreation areas whatsoever. I appeal to the Minister to examine this and permit the expenditure of some of his money on the provision of recreation areas. For instance, in Fettercairn, Tallaght, Jobstown, Brookfield there are thousands of Dublin Corporation houses as there are in Neilstown Rawlagh on the other side of Clondalkin. We have reserved major areas of land for parks for recreation for the people who live there. Some of these people have been living there seven years and none of that area has been developed for recreation. Not only have the people to travel in order to draw pension or children's allowance at the post office and for ordinary shopping, but they have to travel back to the city for open space recreation. That is not good enough.

The only thing which is holding up the provision of these parks is that the Minister has refused to permit moneys under this heading to be used for that purpose. In one area in Tallaght Kilinardin Park has been developed. I cannot explain the great difference that has made to the standard of living in the area, to the environment and to the contentment of the people living there. It has made a great difference. No words of mind can express the difference between the situation that exists now compared with that prior to the development of Kilinardin Park.

I may not be correct in this but my understanding is that Dublin Corporation paid the county council for the development of Kilinardin Park. The expenditure was in the region of £130,000 to £150,000. My understanding is that, after pressure, Dublin Corporation paid the county council this money to develop the park because they saw the social need for all the reasons I have outlined in anticipation of permission coming from the Minister's Department that this money could come out of the moneys provided under the local loans fund for housing. I do not think that permission has yet been given despite the fact that that park has been there for the last two years. If that permission had been given I believe further moneys would have come from Dublin Corporation, who are the main, if not the total developers in the three areas I mentioned — Fettercairn, where we have a large area of land reserved for park development, Jobstown Brookfield where there is a further large area and the Neilstown Rawlagh. I have not had time to check today but if the corporation had got the permission they had sought to take that £130,000 or £150,000 from the money provided for housing, I have no doubt they would have given Dublin County Council the go ahead on the other areas. I believe it to be a legitimate cost on the housing programme and should be considered as such. There should not be a strict rule that the money being provided here is solely to provide housing. That was fine when we were providing smaller numbers of houses in scattered areas. Now that there is such a concentrated development in the one area, open space park development should be considered a legitimate cost of the housing programme. I am asking the Minister to give serious consideration to that.

Having said all that, I would have to congratulate the Minister and his Department on providing adequate finances. It is a new thing for us, as politicians, to say here. We are normally looking for more. I am not looking for more money now. I am only asking the Minister to permit some of this money to be directed for the development of the open spaces.

I am not talking about the smaller open spaces which normally local authorities can handle through other funds. I am talking about major open space where there are over 1,000 houses. In some of the areas that I am talking about 3,000 to 5,000 houses have been provided. I think £150,000 for the development of an open space where there are from 1,000 to 4,000 houses is not much to ask for considering that the input into the area can be calculated in millions. I am asking for only a small amount to make living in those areas much nearer what it should be.

I should like to congratulate the Minister and his Department for making adequate funds available to meet the housing need. Money has been coming as fast as local authorities can spend it. The local authorities, generally, have been doing a good job. We are now at the stage in the Dublin area where we are cutting back on the development of houses. Heretofore when we allocated 100, 200 or 300 houses, there were always 400 or 500 left on the housing list. Now, when we have an allocation, we are looking for other people to apply for houses so that we can give them the houses that have been built. It is a healthy situation. Thank God, we have got to it. There will, of course, be those who will not accept houses in certain areas. It is not possible to satisfy everybody. I want to thank the Minister and the Government for the healthy situation in regard to the provision of homes for those in need of them.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. O'Keeffe)

I should like to thank Senators for their comments and for the welcome they extended to this Bill. I want to deal with some of the major points raised by the House. I should emphasise in relation to detailed aspects of environmental policy, that that falls more within the province of my colleague, the Minister for the Environment. My function in the Department of Finance is essentially to provide with this Bill the financial instrument under which funds will be made available for the implementation of policies. As far as my comments relate to detailed Local Government matters, I should stress that they are a personal reaction.

I will say, beginning with Senator Mullooly, that some very interesting points were raised in the course of this debate. I will be glad to convey to my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, those points which fall as a matter of policy within his office. Senator Mullooly raised the point as to whether we have reached the ceiling under the present legislation. We have not quite reached it but it is anticipated that we would reach it later this year. That is why we are anxious to complete this legislation. The Senator did raise a legitimate point when he asked why not provide for that over the next three or four years, why not increase it to a much higher figure now? One has to go back to the democratic process and decide that it is a question of balance, making a reasonable provision at this stage while at the same time giving an opportunity through the democratic process in these Houses for a discussion of the situation at reasonably regular intervals. This whole system goes back to a different system established in 1897 and replaced by the local loans fund system in 1935. Governments from time to time had come back at regular intervals to the Houses. That is appropriate.

The average expenditure from the fund would be about £330 million a year. On that basis, taking into account the fact that the existing provision would be sufficient until later this year. I would estimate that in three or four years we will be back in this House seeking a further extension.

I am sure Senator Mullooly will understand if I am not aware of the details of the sanitary services situation in County Roscommon. I understand his interest in raising the issue. I would make a general point arising from that that from this fund loans are provided for public water supply schemes and sewerage schemes. There has been quite an amount of expenditure in recent years under these headings because of the demands of housing and industry. At this stage about 80 per cent of the population are connected to piped water supply systems and over 64 per cent to public sewerage systems. It is obvious that very many of the major deficiencies have been eliminated over the years. The likely projection for the years ahead is that there will not be the same pressure for expenditure in this area. Like Senator Mullooly, I come from a rural area. In the more remote rural areas these developments are perhaps slower to reach the periphery than in more populous areas. More work will need to be done if not at the same pace.

On the question of the income limit for SDA loans, I do think that the announcement by my colleague. Minister John Boland, of the increase in the limit from £8,000 to £10,000 has been generally welcomed. I do understand those who suggest that there might be a case for increasing it further. There is always the question of balance here. There is an element of subsidy cost to the taxpayer involved in relation to each such loan. There has to be a balance between the needs of the people who avail of the facility as opposed to the very heavy demands on the taxpayer. At the moment the balance appears to the Government to be in favour of increasing the figure from £8,000 to £10,000 letting in people earning up to £200 a week. That is a figure which will have to be reviewed in time to come but it is unlikely that it will be reviewed in the immediate future.

In regard to difficulty about repayment of loans, the problem is that any such suggestion does involve cost. When we mention cost we are talking about a further burden on the taxpayer. While I appreciate the good intentions behind the proposal, at all stages in a situation where the Government are trying to contain and reduce the burden on the taxpayer, we will have to be cognisant of any additional public expenditure which would have the opposite effect, increasing the burden on the taxpayer.

Delays between the Department of the Environment and the local authority would be more appropriate for the Minister for the Environment. Occasionally delays do occur because the Minister must be satisfied that the State is getting best value for the taxpayers' money. The Department of the Environment inspectorate have to examine the overall plan prepared by local authorities for housing and sanitary services and also the detailed costings. My understanding is that when these very necessary formalities have been completed there is no delay and certainly there is no policy of delay in regard to the approval and payment of accounts.

Senator Ferris raised the point about comparing the level of advances in 1986 from the local loans fund as opposed to those in 1985. There is a reduction from the figure in 1985. It is important to record here why there is a reduction. Senators will recall that we established the Housing Finance Agency and the £5,000 grant for local authority tenants. There has been a major up-take under both schemes, neither of which was financed from the local loans fund and, as a consequence, the demand on the local loans fund for housing has dropped. That is the reason for that trend.

Senator Ferris also raised the question of devolving certain powers to local authorities, in particular powers of inspection for housing grants. I have to say that my own reaction is positive to that kind of suggestion. The Government have a policy of devolution. We now have a devolving implementation group of which I am the chairman. That is the kind of proposal which I will arrange to have discussed within the context of that group.

Senator Lennon raised a number of points in relation to group water schemes. I understand why Senator Lennon would have an interest in encouraging these schemes. We have, as he is aware, increased the financial support. That does not take from the fact that there can be many difficulties in relation to these schemes. Some of them are located in rural areas with scattered housing where sometimes it is difficult to organise the community to be involved in the scheme. There are a number of factors to be taken into account. There is the general factor of the cost to the taxpayer. From my own experience I have found that the difficulties very often are not solely related to finance.

Perhaps more backing by way of professional support or otherwise at all stages to the local group could be the answer and could help in resolving these problems. In my own area the group water scheme engineer is very busy and active and the scheme has been quite successful but I am not sure whether additional expertise, as opposed to additional finance, is not the answer to some of the problems outlined by Senator Lennon. However, this is more specifically a matter for the Minister for the Environment and I will bring these and other matters to his attention.

The same comments apply in relation to the points raised by Senator McMahon. I fully understand his anxieties about the lack of recreational facilities in the Tallaght area and in the other areas he highlighted. Perhaps the Senator will understand that on such a point of detail the best response I can give is that I will bring it to the attention of the Minister.

I think I have covered most of the points which have been raised in this interesting debate and I am very glad that the measure which I have introduced received such a warm welcome from the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining Stages today.

Bill put through Committee, reported without recommendation, received for final consideration and passed.