The revised Estimates for Vote 25 in regard to the Department of the Environment and Local Government have been referred by the Dáil to the committee for consideration. On behalf of the committee I welcome the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Deputy Cullen, the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, and their officials. Is the draft timetable circulated by the clerk to the committee agreed?
Estimates for Public Services 2003.
Vote 25 - Office of the Minister for the Environment and Local Government (Revised).
I do not have that timetable.
We can make it available to the Deputy.
Thank you, Chairman.
Does the Deputy have sufficient time to make his case?
I do not think there will be any need for an adjournment.
I call on the Minister, Deputy Cullen, to make his opening remarks. Deputies Allen, Gilmore and Cuffe, if he arrives, will follow.
I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for meeting with us this afternoon. I will try to cover most of the issues as briefly as I can but with some substance.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss my Department's 2003 Estimate with the Select Committee on the Environment and Local Government. I look forward to a constructive debate and exchange of information. A short briefing note has been made available to the committee giving details of the overall Estimate and the individual subhead expenditure. Deputy Noel Ahern, Minister of State at my Department, is with me and we will be happy to assist the committee in any way we can in the course of the debate. If more specific information that is not readily available is sought by members, we will be glad to communicate with members subsequently.
There have been significant changes to the shape and mandate of the Department since the 2002 Estimate was discussed by the committee. My Department is now charged with a more comprehensive responsibility for environmental protection. Heritage policy, conservation, nuclear safety and responsibility for Met Éireann have been added to our brief. Conversely, most former roads functions have been moved to the Department of Transport. It is principally the transfer of the national roads programme which accounts for the significant reduction in the 2003 Revised Estimate over the corresponding Estimate for the previous year.
Following a review of the organisation of heritage functions generally, some further changes are now being made. These mainly involve the transfer of operational and management functions concerning the built heritage to the Office of Public Works. The changes, which were signalled by the Taoiseach from the commencement of the new Government, seek the optimum use of the organisational resources available between the different Departments. They build on my Department's strengths in terms of experience of regulation and policy development, particularly in the environmental area, as well as the Office of Public Works's strong tradition in the areas of conservation and property management. The new arrangements will be formalised shortly in Government orders to transfer the functions involved and by the addition of a reference to heritage in my Department's title.
A number of major policy developments have already been completed since I took office less than a year ago. A progress report and policy review, Making Ireland's Development Sustainable, was presented to the Johannesburg Summit in September 2002 and represents a major update of Irish policy on sustainable development. The national spatial strategy has been delivered and is being implemented. The Government's commitment to improve enforcement of environmental regulations is being addressed through the establishment of an office for environmental protection within the Environmental Protection Agency. Rapid strides continue to be made on the water and waste water infrastructure programme.
The Government is firmly committed to the continuation of the measures initiated in its previous term to increase the supply of housing, including increasing investment in the provision of serviced land and more effective use of that land through improved planning guidelines on residential densities. It is also examining issues concerning the price of land for development. Our success in increasing supply is reflected in the level of housing output for 2002. With almost 57,700 houses completed, it was the eighth consecutive year of record housing output, and it exceeded 2001 levels by almost 10%.
Ireland is now building at the fastest rate in Europe - close to 15 units per 1,000 people last year. We all agree that this is an excellent achievement. The comparable output last year for housing in Sweden, a country of nine million people and with a strong track record in housing, was just under 20,000.
In Sustaining Progress, we are committed to reviewing the effectiveness of programmes designed to assist low income groups, including those with social housing needs, such as elderly, disabled and homeless people and Travellers. Ensuring that programmes are both efficient and effective means that we cannot just focus on outputs in terms of units delivered and households assisted. We must also look at the broader outcomes of social and affordable housing and the effectiveness of our mechanisms of delivery to ensure we are getting value for money.
Last year saw the delivery of the highest level of output under the range of social housing measures for more than 15 years. The overall number of completions of local authority housing for the year, including acquisitions, is 5,074, which is higher than the output in 2001. I anticipate the capital funding for the main programme of almost €695 million this year will yield a further 4,000 completions or acquisitions as well as 5,000 starts, with an additional 500 new units coming on stream under the funding provided for the Ballymun redevelopment and Dublin inner city regeneration programmes.
The Government's commitment to developing the voluntary housing sector is borne out by the level of funding which is being provided this year. Taking both the Exchequer and non-Exchequer provisions together, the provision of almost €211 million is up almost 28% on last year's outturn. The level of activity by the voluntary housing sector in 2002 was 1,360 units and it is anticipated that the national development plan output target of 1,750 will be achieved this year. Overall, the total Exchequer and non-Exchequer capital funding for social and affordable housing in 2003, at €1.7 billion, is up almost 7% on the amount provided in 2002. This will meet the needs of more than 12,000 households.
This year I am seeking €471 million for investment in water services. This will fund ongoing work to meet the strategic, environmental and economic objectives set out in the national development plan for the development of water and waste water infrastructure. Some €90 million of this is required for the rural water programme, mainly to tackle water quality standards in private group water schemes.
I want to correct some misconceptions regarding the general standard of Irish drinking water supplies. For example, recent uninformed comment has suggested that a report of the European Environment Agency has indicated that Ireland's drinking water is among the most contaminated in Europe. This is emphatically not the case. The EEA report does not contain data enabling comparisons to be made between Ireland and other countries. As far as Ireland is concerned, the EEA report includes data for all sampled drinking water supplies, including public supplies, private group schemes and individual private wells. Regarding other countries, the EEA provides data on public supplies only and, in many cases, only on large public supplies involving 5,000 consumers or more. Furthermore, Ireland is exceptional in terms of full, open and transparent reporting on the quality of its drinking water.
In Ireland, successive EPA reports have confirmed the fundamentally good quality of our drinking water, especially from public supplies. The EPA reported a compliance rate of 96.7% to the standard for faecal coliforms in public supplies in 2001. Continuing investment by my Department in the development and upgrading of water supply infrastructure is intended to maximise compliance with prescribed quality standards. The National Development Plan 2000-2006 provides for investment amounting to some €1.4 billion on major water supply schemes, and my Department's water services investment programme 2002-04 includes 218 public water supply schemes.
Earlier this month, I announced an allocation of €297 million for a new national water conservation programme. This heralds a complete overhaul of the operation of local authority water supply systems, including the installation of the most up-to-date management technology, significant reductions in unaccounted for water and major rehabilitation of supply networks. Reducing pressure on water production output through conservation measures will ensure that local authorities can bring even greater focus to bear on the quality of supply.
I accept there are quality deficiencies in the group water scheme sector but the problem must be analysed objectively and in proper perspective. Overall, group schemes supply about 11% of households nationally. However, water quality deficiencies in the group sector are mainly confined to the much smaller block of schemes that depend on private sources without treatment or disinfection equipment. These privately sourced schemes serve some 50,000 rural households, or less than 4% of all households nationally.
All these schemes are eligible for a 100% grant for the installation of water disinfection and treatment equipment. Related civil works are grant aided at up to 85% of cost. In addition, a subsidy of up to €197 per house is payable towards the operational cost of supplying domestic water to group scheme consumers.
Earlier this year I announced a record capital allocation of €90 million under the rural water programme for 2003, with the lion's share ring-fenced for group water scheme improvements. This year's spend is up almost 50% on the 2002 figure, and is ten times greater than that spent in 1996. This clearly demonstrates my commitment to eliminating the problem of quality deficient group water supplies. While as many as possible of the group schemes with private sources will be connected to a local authority public supply, some 500 will have to provide their own water disinfection and treatment facilities, all of which will be 100% grant aided.
The 2003 allocation provides the means to put in motion this year a massive upgrading programme to improve supplies to over 38,000 of the 50,000 rural households that depend on group schemes with poor quality private sources. Positive progress on these schemes this year will break the back of the problem. Funding to deal with the remainder has been allocated under the national development plan.
I take drinking water standards very seriously, and breaches of the standards must be addressed urgently. However, I am satisfied that the measures being implemented and the strategies I am pursuing will resolve the remaining deficiencies in individual supplies as soon as possible.
Waste management continues to be one of the most problematic and challenging environmental issues facing our country. Decoupling waste growth from economic growth is now a major challenge, not just in Ireland but across all EU states. We are aware that landfill capacity is under pressure and that we need to provide a new waste management infrastructure. We have made progress. In 1999, we had no waste management plans but comprehensive plans are now being implemented in all regions. From a standing start two years ago, one third of all households in the State are now provided with a segregated waste collection service. Four years ago we had just over 800 bring banks in the country and we now have over 1,400. An increasing number of excellent civic amenity sites have been provided. A sum of €35 million, which I am making available from the environment fund in 2003 for waste recycling and recovery initiatives, will significantly accelerate the provision of these facilities.
In 1998, Repak reported the recovery of 93,000 tonnes of packaging waste, which trebled by 2002. New waste packaging regulations, which I made earlier this year, have introduced a ban on the landfilling of most commercial packaging waste. This waste must now be recycled.
The new landfill levy has helped tip the economic balance towards recycling over disposal. Let us not forget the impact of the plastic bag levy, not just in terms of litter reduction but its value as an awareness raising issue. We are also making progress in ensuring individual sectors deal with their own waste. Following on the success of Repak, I launched the National Construction and Demolition Waste Council in June last year. This is a positive initiative by the construction industry to take on the responsibility of dealing with its own waste.
The Government recently accepted my proposals for dealing with end of life vehicles. Provisions to give effect to these proposals will be included in the Protection of the Environment Bill, currently before the House. I established a task force in February this year to make recommendations on the implementation of the EU directive on electronic waste. I expect this task force to report by the end of the year. In addition, my Department is pursuing new initiatives on tyres and newsprint.
We are now approaching the average EU rates for recycling of around 14%. I accept we still have a long way to go to reach best international practice where recycling rates of 40% and above have been achieved. I am confident these initiatives, and further initiatives which I plan to take in the coming months, will transform the way in which we deal with waste in Ireland and that we will, within a number of years, match the best practice in our most progressive EU partners.
As Minister with responsibility for nuclear safety, I have responsibility for a number of important issues that are of great concern to Government and the public. In accordance with the commitments in the programme for Government my Department is continuing with the legal action against the Sellafield MOX plant under two international conventions. The significant increase in the provision for nuclear safety reflects the costs arising from the pursuit of these two international legal actions by the Government against Britain in relation to the commissioning of the Sellafield MOX plant. These unprecedented international legal actions involve extensive legal and scientific research to ensure that Ireland's claims are prepared, presented and argued cogently at the relevant international arbitral tribunals. The additional funding provided underlines the Government's commitment to pursue the claims made in the legal actions.
The Kyoto Protocol is part of a global response necessary to address climate change. Europe is anxious to widen the commitment to the protocol and show that tackling climate change can be undertaken in a manner that supports sustainable development. However, Ireland is among a number of member states that are off track to meet their agreed share of the EU's Kyoto target with our emissions in 2001 at some 31% above our 1990 levels. Economic growth is making the achievement of individual burden-sharing targets challenging for most European countries, not least Ireland. The target of +13% that Ireland agreed under the EU burden sharing recognises that our emissions were always expected to rise in the medium term given our higher than average economic growth that led to increased energy consumption. However, we have been successful in achieving significant decoupling of emissions from economic growth, second only to Luxembourg. The challenge now is to accelerate this decoupling and achieve reductions in emissions.
The Government's national climate change strategy, published in November 2000, set out a comprehensive range of policies and measures to be implemented across the energy, transport, agriculture, industrial and residential sectors, to meet our Kyoto obligations and limit our emissions. I have initiated a review of implementation of the strategy to enable us to intensify, refocus and accelerate action on its implementation leading to real reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions. There will have to be a substantial, genuine and major change in the focus of Departments, sectors and the wider public so that climate change, and reducing our emissions, becomes an integral part of the way we pursue sustainable economic growth. This will be ensured through a strengthened strategy later in the year.
Time does not allow me to expand at this stage upon many other functions and services for which my Department is responsible. These include non-national road grants, the supports provided to local authorities through the local government fund, and a diversified range of measures in support of nature conservation and conservation of the built heritage. I hope that the discussion that will now follow will provide opportunities to address these and other programmes for which provision is made in my Department's Estimate. I commend the Estimate to the select committee.
I thank the Minister for his presentation.
I welcome the Minister, the Minister of State and the Department officials to this meeting. We are going through the annual ritual of considering the Estimates. On reading the Estimates one can easily see why local authorities are in crisis. If they are not in crisis it is not because of the powers being given to managers in the Protection of the Environment Bill. Powers are being transferred from local authority members to the manager to increase refuse charges and this effectively gives the manager powers to make up the shortfall from the local government fund and impose it on the public.
Councils have also been forced into increasing commercial rates in a punitive way. One has only to look at the range of increases across the board to see how punitive they are. The device of dramatically increasing local authority rents has been used. I have seen elderly people getting a €10 increase in their pension only for it to be taken away by an increase in rent. The pension increase was wiped out and did not take into account price increases etc.
I note the €100 million reduction in the provision of local authority housing. On top of the inflation factor of approximately 10%, this is a massive cutback in capital allocations for the provision of local authority housing. I hope the Minister will not say a record number of houses is being built this year. While there may be a record number of houses being built, the number that is available to first-time buyers in the private sector is low. Figures have shown that investors or speculators purchase about 30% of these houses. Young people trying to purchase their first house are meeting greater barriers by the day. They are being forced onto local authority lists. We can see that the figures on the lists are increasing dramatically. This year, for the first time in the history of Cork City, the figure of 4,000 families awaiting housing or assessment for housing has been breached. While the evidence shows more people are being forced onto the local authority lists, we are seeing a cutback in the provision for local authority housing. There is an aspiration in Sustaining Progress for the provision of 10,000 affordable houses. We have seen no evidence of how the Government will reach this target. Will this vital cog in the agreement be reneged on? I would like to hear the Minister clearly setting out how he proposes to meet this target.
One has only to walk around this city, or any urban area, to see the problem of homelessness, which is becoming more acute because of increased unemployment, higher pressure on local authority housing and the imposition of a programme by the Department of Health and Children to take people out of psychiatric institutions and put them into high-support hostels or local authority housing. This is often done in areas where there are few community based support services and the demand for houses is low. I know many people who leave psychiatric hospitals and go to a local authority house have been harassed and threatened, have no support system and often end up on the streets because of the lack of an integrated service between the Department of the Environment and Local Government and the Department of Health and Children. The figures doubled between 1999 and 2003 at the height of the Celtic tiger period. We know that 70% of homeless people are single males. Will the Minister examine the question of defining homelessness? Why does he use the yardstick of counting people sleeping rough on the streets between 3.30 a.m. and 5.30 a.m.? Why do we not have realistic and accurate information on homeless figures?
Some time ago in the Dáil we had a debate on disabled persons maintenance grants and housing aid for the elderly. In the Year of the Disabled, how can the Minister tolerate a situation where there are more than 11,000 applications for DPG, 6,000 of which have not yet been considered? Again, I can give only practical examples. In some local authorities hundreds of people were certified as qualifying for DPG but the money is not available. Elderly people who need, say, a downstairs toilet because they cannot climb stairs end up in nursing homes because they cannot get the money required to install necessary facilities in their homes. Despite all the lip service given to the disabled in this Year of the Disabled, and all the hype about the Special Olympics, the reality is that the disabled are being sidelined. They are being told to wait in line until funding becomes available. The figures are available for all to see. The funding has decreased dramatically. This year's Estimates show that more than €250,000 has been cut from the budget this year.
I saw the Minister on television earlier meeting with the British Minister for Energy about the incident at Sellafield. At some stage this evening, under the nuclear safety subhead, will the Minister tell us what is happening in relation to the incident reported yesterday? We all got a press release today from British Nuclear Fuels telling us, effectively, that yesterday's article in The Guardian was rubbish and exaggerated, but British Nuclear Fuels has lied so often in the past regarding its operation at Sellafield I do not believe a word it says. I ask the Minister to tell me what happened in the medium active concentrate liquid storage tanks at Sellafield recently. Why is British Nuclear Fuels continuing to pump TC99 into the Irish Sea?
I raised this matter in the Dáil recently in a priority question. I said we should declare war on the British nuclear industry and gave the reasons we should take a hard line with that industry but I received a letter of rebuke from the British ambassador, the first communication I had from him since his appointment here. His letter, dated 16 May, rebuked me for asking the Minister to deal effectively with the British nuclear industry but as a sovereign country we should insist that Britain allow the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland into Sellafield to establish what is happening at the plant and the associated risks. In his meeting with the Minister today, did the Minister insist the Government implement the promises made many years ago that it would allow scientists from the RPI into Sellafield to establish the risks for themselves? I reminded the ambassador that Ireland is exposed to all the risks associated with the British Nuclear Fuels operation at Sellafield but we are getting nothing economically out of it. How dare he try to misrepresent statements made in the Dáil by people such as myself. When I referred to unconditional war on the British nuclear industry he tried to imply that my statements were intemperate in the context of efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. He deliberately tried to misrepresent my comments which were made in the context of political action, not terrorist attacks. What did the Minister get out of today's meeting? I ask him to step up his efforts under OSPAR and the Hague Convention to get the British Government to act in a responsible way in respect of this plant. As I said, we are exposed to all the risks of Sellafield but enjoy none of the economic benefits from the British nuclear industry.
On the Department's role in dealing with the major problems facing us - curbing inflation and dealing with some of the issues raised by Forfás in its report - has the Minister any plans in respect of the retail floor space guidelines? Guidelines were issued in SI 194 of 1998 which placed a limit on retail floor space. What is his opinion on dealing with inflation, especially in terms of foodstuffs, and what is his attitude to that statutory instrument which was implemented by his predecessor?
I will raise the other issues I wanted to mention during consideration of the individual sections. The biggest crisis currently facing us is in the health service, followed by that in housing. Unless they have their own assets or have prosperous parents or grandparents, professional and non-professional young people are in a hopeless position in terms of trying to acquire a house. Parents are being put under pressure in their retirement to re-mortgage their family homes to give a helping hand to their children. The only initiatives taken recently were those to help investors, speculators and others involved in the construction industry. I received a letter from the Construction Industry Federation which attempted to correct some of the comments I made in the Dáil recently. I wish those people dealt with the problems for which they have direct responsibility. The major social issues are in the whole area of the health services and affordable housing for young people, a problem affecting almost every family in the country.
I join with Deputy Allen in welcoming the Minister, the Minister of State and the Department officials to the committee for this annual opportunity to examine the activities of the Department and the Estimates in their totality. The Minister's opening statement invites us to mark him for effort in respect of the different areas of responsibility of the Department of the Environment and Local Government. I do not doubt the Minister's energy or enthusiasm and therefore have no hesitation in giving him high marks for effort. After six years of the current Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government, however, we are entitled to assess the accountability of the Government, and consequently the Minister, in terms of results. We are entitled to assess the Government's, and consequently the Minister's, accountability in terms of results. It is time that instead of hearing about the millions of euro going in this or that direction, we looked at the net result of the Department's, the Minister's and the Government's performance in this area. When the coalition took office in 1997 there were 26,000 families making separate applications for local authority housing. At the last official count, in March 2002, there were over 48,000 applications. The figure is probably higher now to judge by the evidence coming from local authorities. If one were to add the numbers suppressed in those figures of people looking for shared ownership, travellers and people with special needs of one kind or another, the figure would be significantly higher. One thing that is not in dispute is that the number of people waiting for local authority housing in the lifetime of the Fianna Fáil-PD Governments has doubled.
Against that background it is extraordinary that in the Estimates before us the provision for local authority housing is being cut from €698 million last year to €601 million this year. That is a cut in money terms of about 16%, if one adjusts it for ordinary inflation it is a cut of in excess of 20%, and if one adjusts it for construction inflation, which is higher than the ordinary level, it is about 25%. In other words, at a time when local authority housing waiting lists have almost doubled, the Government is cutting the budget for local authority housing by between 20% and 25% in real terms. In the programme for Government there was a commitment that this Government would set new housing targets. To be fair the Government has set new housing targets but I doubt that anyone expected that these targets would be lower than in the previous year. The figure in the note we have received is that the anticipated completions of local authority housing will be 4,500 for next year. In his statement today the Minister tells us it is 4,000. That is against a 2002 output of 5,000, a cut depending on whether we accept the note we received yesterday of 500, or 1,000 dwellings if we accept the figure that the Minister has given us today on last year's achievement.
When one looks at the figures for housing starts the cut in local authority housing is even more dramatic. This year the number of housing starts will be 5,000. The corresponding figure for 2000 was 7,000. So we have a 20% to 25% cut in the budget, a cut in the number of completions from 5,000 to 4,000 and a cut in the number of starts from 7,000 to 5,000 at a time when housing lists have increased dramatically. That means in practical terms that there will be more people waiting for a longer period for local authority housing. All the evidence shows that there are many people who have been waiting for up to ten years for a local authority dwelling in many parts of the country. That waiting is creating significant personal and family misery for the people concerned. They are living in overcrowded conditions with families maybe living in the box room of an existing three-bedroomed council house with all the tensions that involves for partners and families with maybe three or four generations under the one roof. Alternatively, they are living in private rented accommodation, exposed to the unregulated environment that existed up to now in that sector. In many cases they depend on rent allowance, which the Government cut around the time of the budget, and which is now really beginning to affect many families, as community welfare officers tell them that where rent has exceeded the limit their entitlement to rent allowance is being cut off. It is shameful that when the housing situation is worsening this Government is cutting the money for local authority housing for people who are not in a position to provide housing for themselves.
The answer that we have been getting for years, and which is still the Government's mantra on housing, is that if one increases supply one solves the housing problem. I accept that the increase in supply is part of the answer to the housing problem. If there are more people looking for housing, supply has to be increased. No Minister or consultant who has advised Government over the last six years, or any of the economists who write knowledgeably about this issue and who seem to think that the only solution is to increase supply, can say why it is that if one takes a six or seven year period - the lifetime of the successive Fianna Fáil-PD Governments from the mid 1990s - housing output has doubled and house prices have more than doubled. As housing supply continues to increase without a corresponding increase in the levels of household formation within the same period there has been a dramatic increase in house prices which are continuing to rise.
As Deputy Allen says, there are specific areas in the housing domain that require attention and I agree with him that in this year of people with disability it is scandalous that applications for disabled person's grants or assistance from local authorities in the provision of disabled person's extensions, the bathroom and downstairs bedroom that so many people need when they are unable to use a stairs, are all stacked up and not being processed by local authorities. The authorities are proposing to introduce all kinds of prioritising arrangements as if one level of disability is more pressing than another. The net effect is that many families are waiting, in pain in some cases, for disabled person's extensions and that area of the provision of assistance to people with disabilities needs to be urgently addressed by the Government.
The third area to which I want to refer is the fall out from the abolition of the first-time buyer's grant. I do not want to rehearse the arguments. The grant has been abolished and the Government can face the people on that when the time comes and account for it. The specific area to which I want the Minister to give some attention is the 250 to 300 applicants for the first-time buyer's grant who for various reasons were late in submitting their applications. In many cases there were special circumstances, for example, they did not realise there was a closing date, the solicitor was handling the application or they thought everything was gone through. These are people whose contracts for the dwellings had been completed before the termination date and where the grant was not processed. I do not imagine the cost would be enormous and there is still a sizeable budget for the grant for 2003. In fairness to those people some kind of ring-fenced arrangement should be made.
I welcome the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Deputy Cullen. I was pleased to see the publication of the national spatial strategy, but the follow through to implementation has not been as marked as we would have liked. I have yet to see evidence of significant policy shifts in other Departments to ensure adequate implementation of the strategy. Either we believe in it or we do not. There is more of a free market approach to national planning than I would like. This is creating problems in Dublin by producing continued urban sprawl, but also in the BMW region which should be getting the kind of investment that is now putting pressure on the greater Dublin area. I hope the Minister comes up with specific measures to implement the national spatial strategy to ensure the rapid increase in house prices does not continue in Dublin. The huge pressures on the transportation system in Dublin are diminished somewhat. If the Minister were to take on the challenge of the national spatial strategy he would be able to shift some of the pressure from Dublin and revitalise the BMW and other regions.
It seems the proposals for a metropolitan authority or a co-ordinating body for land use and transportation services within the greater Dublin area has been put on the back burner. I am bitterly disappointed by the Minister, because there must be some strategic co-ordination between not only the four Dublin local authorities but the adjoining counties. This would ensure the problems faced by Dublin in terms of transportation, housing and waste management would be tackled at a strategic level. It is not good enough to see the existing co-ordination arrangements between the county managers as a democratic or visionary approach to the wider problems of the capital. I hope the Minister will bring forward legislation on an agency and authority for the greater Dublin area to ensure there is not only a voice for the area, but also some modicum of co-ordination on both capital and current spending.
Within the last few days we have seen the draconian increase in fees for An Bord Pleanála, which will stifle local democracy. The increase in third party fees to €600 is a retrograde step and I am appalled that the Minister would stand over such a move as shown on the Bord's website today. I hope the Minister will reconsider these enormous fee increases to ensure people have a democratic right to make their voice heard in the planning process. A €600 charge for a third party appeal on a commercial development will simply ensure that such appeals do not happen. That is not good enough in encouraging the general public to participate in the planning process.
I reiterate what my colleagues stated in regard to the number of housing starts this year. Deputy Gilmore spoke of the problem of overcrowding and the huge pressure on people with low incomes and ensuring provision for local authority housing increases. I hope the Minister will come up with some imaginative measures to address "undercrowding". In many of the older suburbs and housing estates, there is a significant drop in occupancy. This is creating problems for the survival of services within those communities. I hope the Minister will consider fiscal incentives to encourage people to move to accommodation that might be more appropriate to their needs. Take the case of "empty nesters", where a couple are left in a family home with four or five bedrooms. Will the Minister consider introducing a tax break to encourage those people to move to more appropriate accommodation? I am not suggesting we take the stick out and shove them into smaller houses. However, the Minister could consider relaxing stamp duty for people who are trading down to smaller accommodation, which could ease some of the pressure on an overheated market.
I will not dwell on the abolition of Dúchas. I am sure the Minister has had a great deal of correspondence on that issue. However, it seems heritage and building conservation have fallen down the agenda in recent weeks with the abolition of a section of Government that was set up to both brand and market heritage in Ireland. I have received much correspondence on this issue. I am worried the link between heritage and conservation, between archaeology and architecture is being severed and we will not have a co-ordinated approach to these issues. The Minister may have a court challenge on the decision in the next few months.
Climate change is one of the more significant issues that comes under the Minister's remit. Yet again, our climate change emissions continue to rocket off the scale. It is pointless suggesting that we are beginning to decouple climate change from economic growth when we are failing dramatically to comply with the targets set for 2008-12. The Minister continues to plough money into road building which is anathema to a sustainable approach to climate change. I hope he will reconsider where investment is going and provide greater investment for public transport, whether it is a rail link to Navan or decent commuter facilities within our larger towns and cities such as Limerick and Sligo. It seems the only action being taken by the Minister on many of these significant projects is initiating studies. As far back as 1994 the DTI suggested that a Navan rail link should be reinstated. It now looks as if that is 15 years away, which does not represent a co-ordinated response to climate change. Nor indeed does the fitting of new technology on the Moneypoint power station, which will increase climate change emissions or the cutbacks in assistance for developing wind energy. All these point to a policy that is going steadfastly in the wrong direction.
We are the worst country in the EU as regards our attempt to meet the climate change targets. This will result in fines from the EU Commission and higher taxes. I hope the Minister will consider changes to bring us back down the scale.
It appears the Minister is rushing headlong into an incineration policy for waste management. This threatens our tourism and agricultural industries. It is not a modern approach to the issue of waste management. I hear discussion of improving recycling and minimising waste, but I see little action on the ground. The Irish Glass Bottle company has closed its doors. There is no commitment to a follow up to the plastic bag levy. A year ago we suggested the introduction of a beverage container levy. I will not hold my breath to see this happen. The Minister should adopt measures in that area.
I conclude by grudgingly conceding praise for the work the Minister has done in the nuclear area. I was delighted he met his British counterpart this morning and raised concerns about Sellafield. I hope the Minister will go further. We want to address the issue of building infrastructure at Sellafield and ensuring the buildings themselves are structurally safe as well as being safe from terrorist attack. I hope the Minister will grasp the issue of technetium 99, Tc-99 releases into the Irish Sea, and say unequivocally to the British Government and to British Nuclear Fuels that they should stop the release of Tc-99. The technology exists to deal with the issue in an alternative manner. It has been developed at Los Alamos in the US. It is not good enough to take a 19th century approach to a 21st century problem and allow radioactive discharges to continue to be discharged into the Irish Sea. I ask the Minister to look Tony Blair and the British Environment Minister in the eye and insist that the Tc-99 releases stop immediately. I look forward to continued action in that area. I thank the Minister and his colleagues for attending today and I thank the Chairman for allowing me to address the issue.
We will now proceed to a general discussion of the Estimates and will begin with subhead A.
I have two questions on the administrative budget. Why is €1.7 million being spent on Ireland's EU Presidency in 2003 when Ireland does not take up the EU Presidency until 2004? Why has the budget for various consultancy projects increased by about €0.5 million this year over last year? I ask the Minister to supply the committee with a list of the consultancy projects and their individual costs.
I thank the Deputies for their earlier comments and I will have an opportunity to respond when we reach the various subheads.
With regard to the costs of the EU Presidency, Ireland will very shortly form part of the troika. The Government has taken the view that because the acceding countries will become full EU members during Ireland's Presidency of the EU, it is important that we engage with them immediately. Each Minister has been charged with his or her responsibility to ensure we meet representatives of all the acceding countries. That is a major task, because the advent of ten countries to the EU represents the greatest ever enlargement of the EU.
I was in Kiev last week, where I met and hosted lunch for representatives of the acceding countries. It was a worthwhile exercise. Only two of the countries were not represented. The meeting was largely with Government Ministers. It was a worthwhile engagement. I observed a change in the right direction. There is serious engagement between the acceding countries and Ireland, with a very positive view of Ireland emerging once again. There is a great deal of engagement between the acceding countries and Ireland at public administration level, in the private sector and through the various consultancies, in terms of their preparation. These countries genuinely look to Ireland to guide them in many respects. That they will become full EU members during the Irish Presidency of the EU places an enormous pressure on the Irish Government and on individual Ministers.
I hope to visit all the acceding countries before Ireland assumes the EU Presidency, and I will visit some of the current EU member states - all of them if I can. That is where the costs increase, but Deputy Cuffe will agree it is important we prepare well.
I hope that during the Irish Presidency of the EU, the agenda will not be too wide ranging. It would be preferable to focus on key issues, and I am trying to get pre-Presidency agreements with my colleagues as to their specific concerns. I would like to establish a specific agenda of achievement during the Presidency, rather than simply touch on a broad range of issues. I am also engaging with the Commission. The other consultancies under the DATS project - the Development Applications Tracking System - form a large element also.
There will be other related cost elements. The issue of electronic voting will be important during the local elections and the European elections next year. We will have to apply a great deal of resources to get full information into the public domain in this area, and in other areas.
Is it possible to make available the list of consultants engaged?
Certainly. There is no difficulty with that.
I know the Minister does not often receive suggestions for saving money. However, I suggest that he drop the proposals for electronic voting. It is a waste of public money. The technology, which the committee has yet to consider, is very dubious. It is not good for the way our democracy operates to continue to proceed with the type of electronic voting proposed. The idea of widening it to all elections is unnecessary and should be dropped.
I raised the issue of electronic voting on a previous visit to the committee by the Minister. The report prepared on the issue by the consultants after the general election identified a number of flaws which the Minister considered to be minor. He said new equipment would replace obsolete equipment. At a time when we have seen cutbacks in, for example, the disabled persons grants, and right across the board, electronic voting would be a wasteful practice.
I attended the local elections in the UK some weeks ago. They were introducing voting by Internet and by teletext, technologies that are not secure. The more the voting process becomes a hands-off process, the less the participation. One would not have been aware that elections were taking place in the UK. There were no posters and no canvassing. Local democracy in the UK is becoming more distant from the people.
We are heading down a route where the technology would not be secure and could be open to abuse. I ask the Minister to set out in detail for the committee his case for stating that the electronic voting system is absolutely secure. There is a responsibility on the Minister, before further finance is expended on such technology, to convince the committee that the system will be secure and is in the best interests of democracy. There is also the issue of such technology removing the magic, the involvement of the people, from the voting process.
I am happy to respond on the issue of electronic voting. It has been the general view of the Oireachtas for several years that we should move in that direction. I do not think there were any dissenters, though I stand to be corrected if there were. We have run trial schemes in electronic voting, and the public reaction has been mainly positive. I do not think there was any negative comment, apart from requests for the buttons to be bigger and the pictures to be clearer. We will address those issues. We live in a modern society, in a country which sells itself as leading the IT revolution world wide. The technology has been tested against the traditional manual method of voting and in all cases has proved to be far more accurate.
My second point concerns the report to which the Deputy referred. One could take an extreme view on anything and suggest all sorts of bizarre scenarios. I have no question about the integrity of the system. I recently had an interesting experience in Brazil, where voting is compulsory and an electronic system is used. They were able to bring the machines into the jungle. The people came along and voted and the machines were packed up and sent back. Each machine has its own integrity in its own circumstances. There was a 97% turn-out, and the system worked effectively.
Are we now modelling our democratic practices on South America?
No, I am simply using it as an example. As the Deputy may know, for the first time in the history of that country, the left has assumed power. Many would say it was a result of the accuracy of electronic voting, the integrity of which was not interfered with. That was a general point.
Much of the money has been already committed. As the Deputy will appreciate, one does not do this overnight. The money comes from the central fund. It is not from my budget but is a central Exchequer issue. We should have the first of the new machines in the next few months. I would be delighted to bring key members, if not the entire committee, to look at the system with us. I am quite open about it.
On the Amazon.
No, though some of us might want to go to Rio.
I think they wanted to re-run last year's election.
I am confident about the system and will involve the committee and front bench spokesmen in particular, to show them how the system operates. It will be a staggering undertaking to have this in place next year, when one considers the numbers of machines, the testing and the training.
How much will it cost?
The budget is €35 million from the central fund.
It does not matter from where it comes. That is scandalous.
If the Deputy is asking me whether I am in a position to stop the process, the answer is "no". Contractual obligations have been in place for some time and delivery of the machines will begin in about two months.
Perhaps the Minister would make available any assessments done on the security of the system. We do not want to get into the law of the jungle and have serious questions raised after the next general election.
On the same issue, I am staggered at the cost and the committed expenditure of €35 million, which appears to be a multiple of what it costs to hold a paper election. I asked many detailed questions on the issue of electronic voting in an attempt to home in on the issue of the transparency and openness of the computer programming used. A request under the Freedom of Information Act was made to get the source code used. Essentially, that is what happens when one unravels the skin of an onion, there, in the centre, is the source code. We should be privy to that. However, the reply came back from the Department stating it did not have the source code and therefore could not make it available to the public. To give a modicum of transparency to the system, the Department should release the source code for electronic voting into the public domain so that the public knows what goes on inside the box. I am not reassured when I receive a reply from the Department stating it does not have the source code, which is in private ownership. That is not good enough, and if we are to continue with the experiment of electronic voting, we should at least allow the public to see the basis of the calculations being done.
This is my final word on this. I make it absolutely clear to the Minister that the Labour Party is very much opposed to his spending €35 million of taxpayers' money on an electronic voting system which will be less transparent than our current system of voting and which will make the process of elections and the operation of our democracy less interesting than at present. That money would be better spent retaining the first-time buyers' grant or providing for the disabled persons' extensions for which many families are waiting and for which insufficient money has been provided in the Estimate before us. This is a waste of public money that could be better used doing something useful for people here for whom services are being cut back.
I am opposed to spending €35 million without our having answers about security for a system that costs so much. All parties are participants in an election process. To play the game, we must be assured that the rules are fair for everyone. In the absence of security assessments, I am not convinced the system is fair to all. I cannot take on faith the assurances being given by the Minister. Thirty-five million euro would build 2,000 houses for people on the homeless list and for those to whom we referred earlier. It is unacceptable that this should have happened without all parties being consulted. It is not a Government system but one that must be operated by us all in the democratic process. To go hell for leather to spend that sort of money without the ground rules being laid out and without answers being given to the questions raised by the political parties is irresponsible.
Briefly, there are two issues. People are entitled to make points about political cross-over issues and say they would prefer to spend money elsewhere. I emphasise once again that the fund in question comes not from my Department but from the central Exchequer. I am happy to bring the Deputies and the entire committee, if it sees fit, to the Department and give them a full presentation so that many of the technical issues raised by Deputies can be addressed. However, let us not cod ourselves. This measure was voted through by the Oireachtas. People may have opposed it, but there is a legislative foundation for it. I inherited it when I came to the Department, and I will go forward with it as decided.
I am mesmerised at the sort of information that could be made available from this sort of system. There is no question that it will be far greater than anything ever available from the manual system. I hope it will invigorate the electoral process and that next year we can go through it with people being excited and very interested in voting. Unfortunately, from all our points of view, the numbers of people voting have dropped dramatically in recent years. I hope the introduction of this technology will arrest that in the first instance and perhaps whet people's appetite to take more interest in voting.
Equally, regarding the pilots of this system I accept that the presentation of results organised was not great. However, the purpose was to make sure people voted and that their votes were accurately counted. We are putting an enormous amount of effort into looking at tally figures and the detail that can be made available. The subject is extraordinarily interesting. We are talking about more than 7,000 machines for the entire country. The technical undertaking is huge. I would be happy to tease out that and bring in the technical people to meet members. However, I have no concerns about the integrity of the system. It is extraordinary in that sense. Its integrity will stand up. In all trial testing against a manual system, it was without question more accurate. The best I can do with the committee is tease out all the specific issues with either it or the front bench spokespeople and, when we have the machines installed, demonstrate everything to the Deputies so that all the questions being asked can be answered at a technical as well as a political level. I have no difficulty with that.
We will move to subhead B.
Substantial resources have been put into local authority building in recent years. The figures quoted earlier are accurate although they might be slightly selective. There were some policy changes last year. Naturally if one cuts back on the number of house starts in one year, it affects the number of completions in the following year and the commitments going forward. The figures mentioned by Deputy Gilmore are correct. There are about 48,000 people on lists. However, that is coming from a very low base. In the late 1980s and early 1990s local authority waiting lists were at an historically low level. The waiting lists have increased considerably from a very low base compared to any previous decade. While there are 48,000 people on the waiting list, if one analyses the figures it will be clear that of the order of 32% of those are single persons. Certainly in the local authority of which I was a member ten years ago, they would not even get on the list because a single person had to be over 60 years of age to become eligible. Another 31% are lone parents with one child, so more than 60% are either single or lone parents with one child. The Deputy is not comparing like with like because of the extra numbers that have been allowed on the waiting lists in recent years.
I agree the allocation for this year of €695 million is down a few percentage points but the base built up during the past five to seven years is being maintained. We have reduced the number of second-hand houses being bought back. In some areas, and certainly in some Dublin suburbs, that was not a sustainable policy because the local authority of which Deputy Cuffe and I were members, bought almost too many houses and it was not possible to continue that policy on an ongoing basis. The base has been considerably built up. The number of house starts this year is up on the number for last year but the number of completions will be down, partly because we are not buying the same number of second-hand houses as we bought up to two years ago. The Deputy referred to the number for 2001. That figure was boosted by second-hand houses and by buying out some of the turn-key developments, particularly outside Dublin.
The issue of homelessness has been mentioned by the Deputies. We all know the figures for homelessness. Homelessness is a category. When one speaks about 5,500 being on the homelessness list, while they do not have a home they are not out on the streets. Some people still get confused about that. A survey carried out in Dublin last year revealed that 312 people said they had been homeless or on the streets at least one night in the last seven. We discussed this issue previously. That was one night in seven. These people were not all accounted for in the rough sleeping count. I agree there are problems.
Deputy Allen spoke about people with mental health difficulties. The homelessness preventative strategy is designed to look at that issue and to get different Departments to work together so that when people are discharged from any long-stay accommodation, be it a psychiatric hospital or a prison, accommodation is provided for them before they are released into society. Unfortunately in the past, those who were institutionalised for one reason or another were let out and expected to look after themselves. There was not the co-ordination that is now provided for in the strategy where the Departments of the Environment and Local Government, Health and Children and Justice, Equality and Law Reform are working together. The system is not 100% of what it should be, but in future if a person is discharged from a psychiatric hospital or a prison there should be a plan for them. Many of those on the homelessness list are in what is called"B&B" accommodation which is not an acceptable form of accommodation in the long-term, particularly for families. In Dublin there is much more self-catering accommodation than B&B accommodation nowadays. One no longer hears of people being told to get out at 10 a.m and that is more acceptable. The better end of the B&B market, which includes apartment blocks, is being rented on a contract basis for one to five years rather than on a nightly or weekly basis. There is enough emergency accommodation now to cater for the homeless people in the hostels. The pressure now is to provide move-on accommodation. If given the chance, some people would be able to life an independent life, but many others would not, due to psychiatric problems, and they will always need sheltered accommodation of one kind or another.
Someone asked why there was not accurate information. This is one of the problems. The Homeless Agency is developing the link system to maintain contact with homeless people and to keep tabs on them. Historically, many people who are in hostels will go to the Salvation Army tonight or this week, to the Legion of Mary next week and to Ivy Buildings the following week. There is a great deal of that type of movement. The Homeless Agency is trying to connect individuals to agencies and Deputies Noel Ahern or Bernard Allen will appear on everybody's list. The link system is being piloted to connect individuals to particular agencies. Deputy Cuffe mentioned the empty nesters.
Yes.
I heard what the Deputy said, although the stamp duty reduction for those trading would not come under our remit. The rent-a-room scheme has been introduced in recent years and also the financial contribution scheme which some local authorities encourage has ensured that many dwellings were given back to the local authority for letting where people have been moved from a house into a senior citizen flat. That is a huge issue particularly in Dublin where estates built in a certain era are now old, including some areas of my own constituency. There are many older people in such accommodation and there are opportunities to get better use out of the premises.
In regard to the disabled person's grant, I hate quoting figures for millions of euro as they can sometimes be misleading due to inflation and so on. The number of applications for such grants has gone through the roof in recent years. The real shortage is not at Department level but because many local authorities are not providing the one third in their estimates. That is where the problem lies. We must provide for the disabled, that goes without saying. If one looks at the figures, it is extraordinary that two counties, side by side, of equal size and one has 500 applications per year and the other has 1,000. Obviously there are not any more disabled persons in one county than another. It is obvious that some local authorities provide for disabled people in their estimates and use it to a greater extent than others. We are reviewing the scheme because in 1997, 2,200 grants were paid; in 2000 it was 3,648, last year the number of applications was just under 6,000 not to mention the money which has increased from €10 million to €50 million.
We all hear of people selling their houses, including the granny who sold her house for €400,000 and moved in with her solicitor son in Howth. He built a granny flat and applied for an extension or whatever. We are considering a review which would have, perhaps, a means test, a more strict medical test, a loan scheme or a clawback in the event of the house being sold, because some people get the €20,000 but the granny no longer lives in the house. It would be different if the family were staying in the house.
That scheme has become very popular and while we have to look after the disabled, we could not continue to process and pay so many applications at the current rate of increase. Some local authorities are already prioritising, and we are reviewing the scheme in the Department with a view to trying to co-ordinate it. We have to look after those who are disabled and the elderly and we are following what many local authorities are doing in trying to prioritise to some extent.
We allocated about 20 minutes to deal with housing and we have already taken up ten minutes of that time.
I am sorry.
The Minister's contribution is very welcome. I just want to give everybody an opportunity to make their case. I call Deputy Allen.
What are the Department's figures for homeless persons? How are those figures calculated? The information I have is that the agency goes out between 3.30 a.m. and 5.30 a.m. and counts the number of those sleeping rough but does not take into account those who are in hospital, etc. I would like to know the exact figure because I am puzzled by the conflict in the figures being provided. It would help if the Minister of State defined homelessness in terms of his Department, and the method of calculation of the figures.
The overall homelessness figure is an assessment of those who are on the local authority lists and those who are in accommodation for homeless people such as bed and breakfast establishments or hostels. The Deputy is talking about the count of those who are sleeping rough. Of the 5,500 who are in the homeless category, we can debate whether the rough sleepers make up 79, 140 or 312. That count is done by way of a physical count of those who are settled down at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. on quiet nights. We do not do the count on a Friday or a Saturday night when the city is buzzing. It is done between Monday and Wednesday when it is relatively quiet. A physical count is done by people organised by the Homeless Agency which works with homeless people all the time. They count those who are settled down for the night - the ones who may be sitting up having a cigarette - but the people walking up and down O'Connell Street are not counted.
So an insomniac homeless person is not included in the count.
Even the insomniacs settle down at some stage, and they are more likely to do it at 3 o'clock in the morning.
I appreciate that but I want to——
I asked about this a few weeks ago. It is the people who are settled down at that time who are counted. If they were out walking around they would not be included but they do not have to be asleep. The count is done on particularly quiet nights. I was on a radio programme with somebody who was trying to slag the officials in the Department. This count is done by out-reach workers organised by the Homeless Agency which works with homeless people all the time and knows them individually. It is those who are settled down on a quiet night, but not necessarily asleep, who are counted.
On subhead B.1.9, the grants to local authorities for recoupment of expenditure, the payment to B&Bs and the private sector to address the issue of homelessness represents a significant haemorrhaging of expenditure from the Department. I am very concerned that this figure is so high. Notwithstanding the fact that the grants for asylum seekers has been transferred to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, a 16% increase is still anticipated for this year. That is a huge amount of money.
I contrast that with a poignant appeal made at the launch of an Amnesty International document on homeless a fortnight ago when a psychiatrist working with the homeless in GrangeÍgorman in Dublin said he has no support staff to deal with his secretarial and research requirements. He is holding the fort with the bare minimum of resources, as he has been for many years.
Will the Minister examine the question of the huge expenditure going straight into the pockets of private landlords and consider another way of approaching this issue. He should certainly consider a greater allocation, in association with his colleagues in the Department of Health and Children, to deal with the provision of psychiatric services to homeless people. It does not make sense to simply give many millions of euro to private landlords when we all know the issues of homelessness are complex and tied in directly with psychiatric and other issues.
With regard to the remarks made about the essential repairs and disabled person's grants, it is only fair to point out that, as the Minister confirmed, it is up to each local authority to determine its spend on both those programmes. My local authority has made it a priority to expand the scope of both programmes but I am concerned that both schemes are administered by the local authority while the housing aid for the elderly scheme is administered by the health boards. With all due respects, health boards currently have enough to do. The local authorities are the housing authority and they should be able to incorporate the needs of that scheme into DPGs and ERGs with a singular budget because despite the fact that we have the three schemes, there are people who fall between the stools and do not qualify, and there is duplication in other cases. That aspect needs to be examined from the point of view of streamlining and efficiency. Under the terms of the housing aid for the elderly scheme, it is necessary for three different health board officials to visit the applicant. It takes between two and four years from the time the application is made to have the works completed so the scheme is totally unsatisfactory from that point of view. The issue should be examined on that basis. Responsibility for the scheme should be given to the local authority and it should be incorporated into the essential repairs and disabled persons grants schemes.
I support what the Minister said about the claw-back. That should be considered in cases where the property is being sold and a substantial investment has been made by the State to provide comfort for the elderly person for the duration of his or her lifetime. If there is a profit to be gained, at least there should be a claw-back. Even if a percentage of what was invested was recouped, it could be used to help somebody else.
With regard to the voluntary housing scheme, in particular the rental subsidy which provides housing for families, that is a very attractive scheme and it is being implemented in my county, which is leading the way in voluntary housing. A distinct disadvantage of the scheme, however, is that the tenant can never purchase his or her own home. We have a strong culture of owning our own homes. People who are fortunate enough to be housed by local authorities after the 12 month period can go on to purchase their own homes under the tenant purchase scheme. With our capital assistance scheme I can understand the reason we keep these houses in stock, and we always require houses. When elderly people pass on the house is given to somebody else but when a young family is housed under the rental subsidy scheme, they will probably remain in that house for the rest of their lives. It is discriminatory that persons being housed by the county council can eventually purchase their houses but someone housed by the voluntary group in a rental subsidy scheme cannot. That is something that should be examined because it would make rental subsidy schemes far easier for voluntary housing groups to implement.
I am depressed by the statement the Minister of State has given to the committee. Presiding over the scale of the housing problem for which he is responsible, with the numbers on the housing list having increased so much and the budget cut back, it is unacceptable for him to come before us and try to explain it away by telling us that people who are single or single with children have less of a need for housing, that the homeless are not homeless but merely a category, that disabled person's grants are going to people who then live with their millionaire sons in Howth and that there will be a review, which will make the scheme even less accessible. It is an unacceptable response. The Minister is now responsible for the worst housing situation in the history of the State and the allocation of money from the Department is reducing.
The affordable housing initiative formed part of the Sustaining Progress agreement. Some 10,000 houses will be built without any impact on Exchequer or general Government finances. I have been fascinated by this scheme since it was announced. It is a bit like the immaculate construction: we will have houses that will not cost anything to anybody. The Minister has been reported as having said he would give away State land at half price to private builders for this scheme. Is that true and what are the plans? Last week during Question Time with the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, I received confirmation that these houses must be built by the time the agreement expires in December 2004. I presume by now there is a plan for the provision of 10,000 houses that will not cost anything. I would like to hear what that plan is. Specifically, I would like to hear there is truth in the report that State land will be given away to private builders at a knockdown price.
Deputy Cuffe spoke about money being given to private landlords. Of the €39 million we will spend in Dublin this year on the homeless, about €22 is earmarked for the self-catering or bed and breakfast sector. Many of those will be built by private developers. That can be applied to any form of rental accommodation. When that accommodation was initially used it was regarded as addressing a short-term emergency. As we now know, some people can be in self-catering or bed and breakfast accommodation for weeks. We are evaluating that to see if we are getting good value for money and whether paying by the night or the week is the best system. One idea, particularly for self-catering or apartment blocks, is for the local authority to make a long-term arrangement with a property owner to take a block of apartments. The local authority would then house people as needs arise. While the individual arrangement would be between the owner of the property and the local authority, it would not be paid for on an emergency nightly or weekly basis.
The remaining €16 million or €17 million will be spent through many of the voluntary agencies that run the hostels. In recent years the support staff they employ has been considerably improved and there are many additional outreach and settlement workers along with the provision of additional day services. This year we will spend €50 million, whereas last year $43 million was spent and four years ago the amount was €12 million. In addition to the money spent by the Department of the Environment and Local Government, the Department of Health and Children also pays money to many agencies for those services. The Department of the Environment and Local Government essentially pays for the accommodation. Much of the care and support services are paid for by the Department of Health and Children. It is a combined effort. Although it is not working perfectly, the strategy clearly lays down what should happen and I believe we are getting there. The strategies have been in place for a few years and will be evaluated later this year.
In answer to Deputy Cregan, we are looking for submissions from individual Deputies, local authorities or other bodies outlining what they feel should happen with the disabled person's grant scheme, the essential repair grant or housing aid for the elderly. People have different views as to whether they should be separate schemes and that is being reviewed by the Department. All formal submissions would be better if they were discussed by local authorities and SPCs so that we can hear the co-ordinated views of local representatives.
The Deputy also made a point about voluntary housing and I can confirm there is no sales scheme. I have met some of those groups, which should have considered forming co-operatives rather than looking at the voluntary housing scheme. There is a difference of opinion among some voluntary housing bodies. If all those bodies were making the same recommendations to the Department it would make our decision easier. Some of the bigger bodies that are building up a stock of rented accommodation appear to be strongly against a sales scheme allowing individuals to buy their properties. This is generally not the case with the smaller schemes down the country. While there are ways for someone in a voluntary housing body to move across to other private housing, there is no sales scheme as happens with local authority housing. However, not all the voluntary housing bodies are singing from the same hymn sheet.
Deputy Gilmore spoke about the waiting lists. It is not possible to make fair comparisons because of the change in the rules by different local authorities. Although the pay aspect of Sustaining Progress covers 18 months, as far as I am aware the agreement lasts three years. We hope to provide starter homes at a cheaper price and the Taoiseach has asked the Oireachtas all-party committee to consider that. I do not know if we have passed the closing date for submissions yet. It is hoped that committee can involve everybody to see if anything can be done to cap the price of development land. Everything is open for consideration including the much talked about Kenny report.
Anything relating to houses is a slow burner. Even the local authority affordable housing scheme that started a few years ago is only now becoming of real value. I said it would be marvellous and we are investigating whether there is land in State ownership, either owned by local authorities or State agencies, that could be used to provide starter homes at prices lower than those on the market. The fundamental issue is the price of land. If a builder got land for less than the open market price, presumably we could control the type of house to be built on it as well as its price.
Would it not be simpler for builders to build on the land rather than handing the land over to them?
We are not taking about handing it over. This does not apply to every site. Unfortunately some of these sites might be in the area that is most unsuitable. Just as with places like Clancy Barracks, we are talking about a relatively easy site where we could start the process. We want to reduce the cost of sites for starter homes, which many people say is €100,000 in Dublin.
Has the Minister of State identified sites?
No. Once one identifies them, as the Deputy knows very well, any State agency or Department which has sites will not willingly or easily hand them over unless they get a proper price for them. The issue is being looked at to see if we can identify such sites.
Is the Minister of State saying he does not have any idea where this land is? It is not that difficult to know where the State land bank is.
Funnily enough, there is no single register. Many people have registers of different State lands but there is no single register, although an attempt is being made to compile one. Naturally, locally authorities have a great deal of land. This affordable scheme was supposed to be different and not interfere with the social housing aspect. We do not really want to take any land from local authorities for affordable housing that they may wish to use for social housing but everything is up for grabs. There may be some local authorities that have land in excess of their requirements. In recent years, local authorities have spent about €300 million on land so some of them may have sites that are not within their five-year requirement.
The Minister of State has not done anything at all about this scheme, is that not the position?
It is not.
When will we see the details of it?
The value of it will be quite slow to materialise because it depends on the Oireachtas all-party committee. The Deputy knows that Sustaining Progress was only recently signed and that the first steering committee under it was only recently set up, so we will work with the social partners on that.
During question time in the Dáil, I described it as a fig-leaf to sell the deal to the trade union movement.
No.
Basically, I do not understand how the Government can deliver 10,000 houses within the 18-month timeframe. The Minister of State has confirmed that he does not have a notion as to how he will implement it.
I did not say that at all, somebody said it for me.
The Minister of State said it was a slow burner which would take many years. He mentioned that the Taoiseach was referring the land question to an Oireachtas committee but why has the Department of the Environment and Local Government not re-examined the Kenny report? Its recommendations included 12 different methods of dealing with the increasing price of development land. Why has none of the Kenny report's proposals been taken up? What constitutional impediment is there to implementing some of the Kenny report's recommendations? The Kenny report was published in 1973, so it has gathered a great deal of dust since then. The report presented 12 methods for dealing with land prices, including a designated area scheme and constitutional matters. It examined the situations in Italy and Northern Ireland, as well as recommending other changes. There was a majority report, an addendum by Mr. Ryan, and a minority report. There were many good ideas in the Kenny report, so what impediments are there to implementing it now? Or are the impediments the vested interests who want to hold on to land and drip feed it into a system so they can maximise their profits?
That was in the early 1970s.
It is relevant today because it deals with the same problem - the supply of, and demand for, land.
Absolutely, but whatever Government was in office at the time - and I think it was a Fine Gael-led one - decided not to go ahead with the report's recommendations at that stage. It has been re-examined since then. In the mid-1980s, an Oireachtas all-party committee examined the report at great length but did not move forward on it either.
I am sorry, Minister, but——
Please allow the Minister to reply as we are well behind our schedule.
It goes back to the Kenny report, which talked about 25% added value but as far as I am concerned I would settle for far more than that if we got away with it. We are heartened by the Supreme Court's decision on part 5, which used language that was pleasing to our ears. Perhaps they did not have the value of it in the 1970s and 1980s, but the court spoke about the right and duty of the State to involve itself in acquiring and providing land for people who could not acquire it themselves, from a societal point of view. There was some good language used in that part 5 judgment, which has given us some satisfaction. It is a big issue and there will not be a decision on it next week, whether or not 10,000 houses are provided in 18 months or three years.
I guessed there would not be.
It is a target. Whether or not one house is provided in 18 months, if the State manages to acquire land and gets the site value for a starter home down from €100,000 or €120,000 to half that, and secures the future land base, I would be happy. The matter is being worked on at different levels, however, and we hope it will be successful.
We will move on to subhead C.
Is the Minister effectively saying he is not re-examining the Kenny report, which has been buried, and that we are now putting all our eggs in the Oireachtas committee's basket?
I am not saying that but the Oireachtas committee is examining the Kenny report, as is my Department. It has been looked at by different groups of politicians in between. We are looking at various things, including the CPO rules.
It will take another 30 years.
We are moving on to subhead C dealing with the environment.
I posed a number of questions for the Minister during my opening remarks so perhaps he could respond to them. Does the Minister want me to repeat the questions?
No, I have them.
I query the contribution to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Will the Minister quantify whether that is used for a specific purpose or whether it is simply a contribution to the annual running expenses of the agency? Presumably, the work of the IAEA replicates some of what the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland does. I would welcome any clarification about what exactly that does.
The first question raised today concerned my meeting with the British Energy Minister, Mr. Brian Wilson, with whom I had a forthright exchange of views. I made it absolutely clear to him that I feel very strongly that it is now past the point where any discharges into the Irish Sea from the Sellafield plant can be regarded as acceptable. I asked him what alternatives BNFL had and if the British Government would fund research into storage. There are methodologies that certainly do not resolve all the issues but when nuclear waste is discharged into the sea the environmental degradation continues for hundreds of thousands of years. I would have thought that new underground storage technology, with retrievability built into the system as technology develops for dealing with that waste, would be a better approach rather than simply pumping the waste into the Irish Sea. I do not think Mr.Wilson is in any doubt as to the Government's view in that regard. I have also sought permission for RPII and departmental officials to visit Sellafield to satisfy themselves as to all the safety issues that are of deep concern to me, my Government colleagues and the Irish people generally. I hope that request will be acceded to.
As a result of yesterday's report on a particular building at Sellafield, BNFL has said there are no leaks. However, BNFL went on to say - quite interestingly, I thought - that this was a 50-year-old building and would not meet modern standards. That is an extremely worrying position from my point of view and, I am sure, that of the Opposition also. I have asked the British Energy Minister to revert to me when he receives an information report on this matter, and he said he would do so. I am sure there will be further contact between the various Irish and British agencies. I would like all of this information to be made available.
I have explained to the Minister that it is quite legitimate for the Irish Government to take a view with regard to Sellafield as ultimately many of these plants have outlived their - I will not say their value - raison d'être. They have a life cycle and I think Sellafield is now coming to the end of its life cycle if it has not already passed it. It is interesting to note that the British Government has similar concerns to the Irish Government regarding some of the nuclear power plants in eastern Europe that should be closed down. If that is the case it is quite legitimate for me to say that would also apply to Sellafield and I have made my position absolutely clear to the Minister.
It was a very frank exchange of views and the Minister undertook to come back to me on a number of points. I acknowledge that there has been a substantial improvement in recent times in the exchange of information between the UK and Ireland by way of the various responsible bodies and institutes but it is not at a satisfactory level and I have made that clear. We need to be far more informed and far more involved in many of these issues. That forms the basis of the OSPAR case and also the upcoming UNCLAS case. We look forward to the outcome of those cases.
The Minister was left in no doubt that as the Government's representative I will pursue any avenue open to me with regard to all these issues and that we are not satisfied nor anywhere near satisfied on a number of fronts. We respect the sovereignty of the British Government but these are issues that clearly can have a very serious effect on the people here. I think he has gone away with an understanding of those issues.
I have no more information on this issue than seems to be available in the public domain. My Department and the agencies under its aegis are trying to establish the facts. I have asked the British Government and its Minister for assistance in establishing the facts. It is in the interest of the British Government as much as ours to establish the facts.
Commitments were given two years ago regarding inspections by the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland. Is there a total block on visits by our officials and what is the level of interaction between the British Government, British Nuclear Fuels Limited and the RPII? Did the Minister make any comment today on the refusal by the British Government to carry out its commitment to allow our officials to inspect Sellafield and to ask questions? Was the Irish Government informed at any stage before the release of the statement to the press today that the 50 year old plant, a B2111 building that stores the medium active concentrate did not meet modern standards and is therefore possibly defective? Was the story fabricated by The Guardian newspaper.
My original question was in regard to the funding for the International Atomic Energy Commission. Will the Minister clarify where the funding to the International Atomic Energy Commission goes? My second question is in regard to technetium 99. I am not an expert on radioactivity but it seems to me that at the moment technetium 99 is being flushed down the kitchen sink in Sellafield and then out into the Irish Sea. An alternative would be to simply store the stuff in the kitchen cupboard but a third option is to use a different method of treatment. Polymer filtration has been developed in the United States as a method of breaking down technetium 99. Did the Minister raise the possibility of using this technology in Sellafield so that the discharges into the Irish Sea could be stopped?
I apologise to the Minister because I must leave the meeting shortly as I have another meeting the time of which I was unable to change.
The Minister has my support and I am sure the support of the committee in his efforts with the UK Government regarding Sellafield. The issue I wish to raise under the general heading of environment is not so much to do with the Minister telling the Secretary of State Mr. Wilson how he should do his job but more the Minister's own immediate stewardship in relation to aspects of the environment in this jurisdiction.
I am concerned about the issue of drinking water. In his statement the Minister stated, "A compliance rate of 96.7% is reported by the EPA in relation to the standards for faecal coliforms in public supplies in 2001." This conversely means 3.3% of drinking water from public water supplies contains faecal coliforms in excess of the required compliance levels. That is one glass of water in every 30. It seems to me that the biggest environmental and health risk to the Irish public now comes from the simple exercise of drinking a glass of water and that is utterly unacceptable. In his statement the Minister seems to be taking comfort from the rate and seems to regard it as satisfactory. It is anything but satisfactory that one glass of water in every 30 has faecal coliforms in excess of the allowed limits. It requires much more urgent attention than it has received up to now.
I have given a fairly definitive dissertation on the meeting today. I am conscious that two cases are currently in court and I do not wish to jeopardise them. I will not evade any questions and I am quite happy to deal with them.
In reply to both Deputy Allen and Deputy Cuffe, they can be assured that I raised all those issues with the Minister today. I probably went further than he expected me to do but that is a matter for himself to judge. I am deeply concerned and conscious of the responsibility that goes with trying to pursue these issues and equally aware that the UK is a sovereign government with its own rights. I acknowledge that there has been substantial improvement in the flow of information and that is very welcome but there are still steps that could be taken and I made that clear to the Minister today. I asked specifically that the RPII be invited to the Sellafield site in a proper and open manner to examine all the issues that it may regard as relevant, being the expert in this field. The international atomic agency has even greater and specific expertise in this area and they could also be invited. I await a response in that regard.
While we acknowledge what has happened, we believe there could be a better exchange of information on a range of issues. I have made that perfectly clear to the Minister. I have equally made it perfectly clear and probably for the first time that the discharges of technetium 99 into the Irish Sea are no longer acceptable and alternatives must be found.
I am a realist and I understand this poses problems and there are issues to be resolved in that context and Deputy Cuffe has elucidated one of those problems. I spoke very directly to the Minister in the context of developing alternative technology. We are concerned with the financial base of BNFL which, according to reports in the Financial Times and other magazines, would not be the strongest. I hope in a general sense the British Government may take a view on the research and development side that there is a responsibility on the state in terms of the totality of the nuclear industry to put many resources into this area for research and development technologies. It would be of great assistance if it did, not only with regard to Sellafield but the broader industry. However, these are matters for the British authorities. I can only be direct in making these points to them. We are awaiting a result in the OSPAR case and will shortly, in the next few weeks, start on the UNCLOS case. We will see what arises from these and what the international arbitrators have to say.
On the question of drinking water quality, when I say 96.7% was acceptable, that was not based on volume but on the testing sites on schemes. In many other cases there was an acceptability level of 100%. It is based on the schemes rather than the volume of water.
I was annoyed to discover in recent weeks that we are only one of three countries that make any report on water quality to the European Union. It, therefore, focuses on Ireland. If every country submitted the kind of detailed, transparent analysis that Ireland does, we would be at the top of the league. It is wrong to single out this country on the basis that we provide the information while the other countries do not. The EU would be better employed pursuing those countries that provide little or no information by comparison with the great depth of information provided by this country.
I am never satisfied if anything less than 100% compliance becomes the target and objective for anyone charged with responsibility in this area. A 100% target is often difficult to achieve because at times incidents can occur that cause certain results. However, overall, I do not believe anybody could deny, even at a European level, that this year there has been a phenomenal investment in water in this country, although I recognise it has been built up over the years.
I acknowledge the role of the National Federation of Group Water Schemes, which has been significant in pulling all of the schemes together. Without its help we would not have been able to advance matters. The problem resides in around 50,000 houses. We will deal with 38,000 this year, which will make an enormous impact in terms of addressing outstanding issues. Approximately 255, or almost 300 schemes will be placed in DBO while another 100 schemes will be included in the public schemes. It is a huge investment. The impact of the funding of €276 million I announced for urban areas in respect of the conservation element will not only deal with old piping, but will feed directly into quality of water issues.
I was very impressed with the personnel from Dublin City Council who are working directly on these schemes. They showed me the level of technology involved and the changes that have been made in a comparatively short space of time. They also indicated how much the investment in the technology has meant in terms of up-skilling their ability to deal with the outstanding issues. There was a great sense of pride among these people which should be acknowledged. They are as important as anybody else at management level in the city council. They are determined to work to achieve their targets and they have greatly welcomed this investment.
I want to resolve this issue. There are times when we should not be so quick to criticise each other. We should acknowledge that we are very proud of our water quality. Visitors to the country are not obliged, as one of their first acts, to attend the local supermarket to buy their fresh water. The water quality here is excellent and we have the most transparent system in Europe. To my knowledge no other country reports on their water quality at the micro level prevalent here. It is wrong and misleading to distort this openness and transparency by criticising Ireland when the European Union has no information from other countries.
Perhaps the Minster will comment on the position regarding the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA's budget is funded by contributions from member states. Funding is arranged as a regular contribution from member states for ordinary activities and voluntary contributions for the IAEA's technical assistance and co-operation fund. We support many different institutions in Europe and world-wide and provide them with funding. It is part of our involvement in the international community.
The IAEA promotes the use of nuclear power as well as being concerned with the safety aspect.
The Deputy knows this country is not involved in and does not wish to support the development of nuclear energy. We put forward our views and try to shape and influence policy. We have a legitimate concern because we must acknowledge there is a nuclear industry, some of which is very old. Like other countries, we have legitimate concerns about the question of security and safety at these plants and will play our full role in making sure that remains at the top of the agenda.
Are we not simply giving funding to various agencies to try and shut down nuclear power while providing funding to others to maintain it?
No. The Deputy should not put the matter in that disingenuous way. Ireland is unique in going to two courts of arbitration. We should acknowledged this, and the respect in which Ireland is held among non-nuclear states and even some nuclear states who would like to change their ways. Ireland is seen as a leading, consistent, respected and forceful country on this issue.
We will proceed to subhead D, dealing with local government.
What responsibilities have local authorities to provide their audited accounts and financial statements on an annual basis?
There is an annual cycle in which local authorities have to produce audited accounts. I would like all local authorities to have their accounts as current as possible. That would be welcome in other areas, including Departments.
I submitted a question on audited accounts, not only with regard to 2002 but 2001. Of the 29 county councils concerned, only ten had returned audited accounts for 2001. Of the city councils, only six had returned audited accounts for 2001. Nobody had returned annual financial statements and audited accounts for 2002. In the context of better local government, what is happening here?
The Deputy is right to highlight this. The reason is simple. New financial management systems are being put in place which has initially slowed down things. We are at the stage where the systems are being put in place. They are to do away with the old way of doing things, modernise the system and have what the Deputy and I want - up to date accounts. It has taken some time from the Department's point of view for the local authorities to put the system in place and to get the private sector companies to install it. That has happened over the period to which the Deputy referred. I hope we have all the systems now and the Deputy should see - and I sincerely hope I am right in saying this - a complete correction as we go forward.
How can one forgive South Dublin and Fingal county councils who have not submitted as far back as 2000? Surely the new management system does not need a three year set-up and run-in period. What about the figures I quoted for 2001? Surely there should not be a two year run-in period before accounts can be brought together. I thought we were in the era of better local government. Are these 25 local authorities, at county, city and borough council level, in breach of the law?
I certainly agree with the Deputy. It is highlighted in some instances by the fact that we do not have the 2000 accounts. The old system was not working and that is the bottom line. I want to ensure we have all these up to date, especially as we go forward, because I want to ensure that Deputies and Senators have equal access to this information and on an up to date basis.
It is unacceptable. The State has made enormous investment through better local government. I will speak with all the city and county managers tomorrow and will emphasise strongly that the return for that investment is slow to appear in some, although not all, instances. This money must be used in a way that maximises the efficiency from the consumer's point of view. I am not convinced that has happened.
Another Dáil question I tabled regarding financial management informed me that €10.3 million was spent on staff training and systems support. That is not the cost of the Agresso computer system that has been put in place. Where is this system taking us? The Agresso financial management system was installed at a cost not disclosed to me, but I have a figure of €10.3 million for training and systems support to establish it. Hand in hand with that are the awful figures to which I have referred. What is happening? Where is better local government and financial accountability in this?
The irony is that, when this new accrual system is in place, it will be far ahead of anything the Government, Departments or the Civil Service have. It will be a much better system than exists at present. We will find that local government will be well ahead of the game.
I accept there is a frustration in getting all this bedded in. I want to see results for the investment made and for the training, technology and structural changes that have been put in place. My patience has come to the end of the scale, so to speak, and I want to see these results. I hope the system delivers. I am told it can, but we will have to reserve judgment, although not for much longer. I hope we will see these results. We should have a better system in local government than anything available to the Government or any other country.
I tabled a simple question about the cost of the system being installed by local authorities. I was told the information was not available. I was told the cost of the purchase and installation of the Agresso financial management system is a matter for each local authority and the Department does not have details of it. The Local Government Computer Services Board is spending €10.3 million on training and support systems.
Could the Department furnish us with the details of the overall cost? I am told that there are major problems and we cannot obtain information on the overall cost to local authorities and why the system is not working. We have evidence that audit accounts and annual financial statements are not coming from local authorities. The figure is frightening. Some 25 out of 39 major authorities are in default of their statutory obligations. I would like a more detailed report on what is happening.
The Deputy is not alone on the issue. I am anxious to obtain much more detail. I have given him in the parliamentary questions all the information available to me. I do not have a handle on the costs in each local authority area because different consultants are involved. They are also taking different lengths of time to complete their tasks in different local authorities. I do not know what the overall cost will be. I would like to have it and, if I did, I would certainly make it available to the Deputy. I intend to obtain it, but at present it is like asking how long is a piece of string. I do not know until everything is completed in each of the local authority areas. Clearly there will be different costs for different reasons in different local authorities.
I know the Minister does not have the information with him today, but will he obtain the information from each local authority, the cost to each one of installing the Agresso system and the ongoing training and systems support costs? Let us have a reason these people are not producing the facts.
This is happening at a time when we are cutting back on DPGs and housing allocations, I presume we are talking about hundreds of millions in this regard and the Minister and his Department do not know what is going on.
I will obtain as much information as possible. I do not want local authorities to hire consultants to answer these questions.
No.
I know the Deputy does not want that either. It is just that the possibility exists that they will engage in a costing exercise to give us this information. I have no difficulty with giving the Deputy the information he requests and am happy to place all information I have on record.
We shall move on to subhead E - heritage.
I understand there are a number of questions on heritage and I have no problem answering them together.
I welcome the review the Minister is undertaking of the organisation of heritage functions within his Department. He has outlined his plans for the protection of built heritage. Will he outline his plans for the protection of wildlife, a subject matter that is topical and has been recently discussed by the committee?
Is the Minister reducing the funding available to local authorities for the conservation of protected buildings this year?
There was a disappointingly low take-up on that. To my knowledge, local authorities did not draw down anything like the funding that was available, which is an interesting commentary on the situation.
The changes made in terms of organisational structures and policy responsibility will be extremely beneficial to heritage going forward. I am one of the most experienced people in political terms in this area having spent five years in the Office of Public Works. I could not understand why two bodies were competing with each other when fulfilling the same functions and why all the skills could not be combined in one body. This is what I have done now with the Office of Public Works.
The Office of Public Works is one of the most decorated organisations in the world, having five ISO 9000 awards for its six business units. It is far ahead of the private sector and internationally recognised. Many Ministers from different countries have said to me that they would love to have an organisation like the Office of Public Works on the operational side. All the archaeologists remain within my Department. As before, policy on built and natural heritage proceeds.
I do not like the phrase "abolishing Dúchas" because it was not an independent body. It was not an independent agency, as some newspaper commentators seemed to think, which I abolished. I have a good record on heritage matters in recent years and I do not intend to see that diminish. I want the heritage to be enhanced as it is part of us as a people and I am unswerving in that regard. I want to bring a balance to some of the issues in terms of how we deal with them. The structural reorganisation is very good. European models are not the same but the way the Department of the Environment and Local Government is shaped - it is soon to become the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government - it brings all these issues together and we can get a good, consistent understanding of the issues. There has been much unnecessary misinformation, misunderstandings and mishandled issues in recent years due perhaps to people focusing single-mindedly on issues without being aware of the competing issues and forces.
Deputies Allen, Cuffe and I are very aware of the need for wind energy. That is not incompatible with conservation and both can work well together as we have seen in different parts of the country. These issues were dealt with in a single-minded way - not a bad way - but in a blinkered way which did not consider other issues. We should see this going forward. It is an exciting challenge and I commend my officials and those of other agencies. This was an extraordinary process over seven or eight months which had not been done before; a new Government gives an order and it is carried out but we took time to involve all the bodies concerned in the process.
Deputy Cuffe mentioned fees. The fee on third party appeals went from €150 to €200. That is a €50 increase.
It went to €600——
That is first party appeals, which is different. It went from €380 to €600. The Deputy referred to third party appeals, and third party appeals from prescribed bodies like An Taisce went up €25, from €75 to €100.
The increase is significant.
We must keep this in perspective. The volume of work is equally significant and the charges do not come anywhere near the reality. We must keep organisations funded. The Deputy wants good people and enough resources to deal with this and so do I. There must be a balance between the volume of work coming through on one side and reasonable marginal costs on the other. This is the optimum in that regard.
It is prohibitive for many individuals to make an appeal.
There is no fall-off in the number of appeals coming forward.
That is not the best indicator.
We will move on to Subhead F.
Deputy Allen referred to retail planning. There are two issues which have become confused, not necessarily by the Deputy, but in the way this is being reported. On one hand there is the retail grocery order, which has nothing to do with me or my Department and is an issue for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment; on the other there are the retail planning guidelines. A number of issues have arisen in this regard in recent months, such as the national spatial strategy, which may give us the opportunity to look at the retail planning guidelines.
I will consult various bodies on this as I do not have a fixed view. I do not to start with the intention of changing the retail planning guidelines. There was sufficient commentary and enough organisations expressing views on this and I was very conscious of the spatial strategy. I felt there might be provisions within the strategy that might enhance the regional balance around the country. However, I have no views on prescribing the outcome. I am interested in what may come out - it may demonstrate that the planning guidelines are excellent and so be it if that happens. If there are issues to look at in the spatial strategy that may enhance regions other than Dublin, then let us have that discussion. I am not afraid to put issues on the table for discussion but I do not have an agenda. Issues of competitiveness have also been flagged.
Has the Minister been lobbied by the firm in question?
To what company is the Deputy referring?
Ikea.
I have answered that publicly. I will be frank. I had never heard of the company - maybe I am innocent - but half the country seems to have shopped there. Some ferry companies run specific day trips for thousands of people to the UK to shop there. I had heard from various Ministers and Deputies that this company was interested in Cork, Roscrea, Dundalk and so on. I did not know about the company so when I visited my Scottish counterpart I also visited the company and its management staff showed me their operation, which is a fine one. They asked me if I was reviewing the guidelines and I told them we would look at these matters and if we did they could make their views known. I have no involvement with the company and had never been in one of their stores before; I will hardly be in one again. Any company interested in investing in Ireland is entitled to make its views known. We must be very careful in what we do as a State and Government in responding. I am not in the business of making law on the basis of one organisation - that would be foolish. I met RGDATA informally but there was a suggestion this might be on the agenda; it would have strong views on the matter.
We should be mature enough to have an open mind regarding development of the economy on the island and so on. I have an open mind on this.
Is it possible to find out if An Bord Pleanála has written to local authorities stating that such bodies should not entertain opinions from elected representatives on planning matters? If so, would it be exceeding its brief?
I am not aware of that. It is obviously something that would be of concern and I will try to establish the facts. I acknowledge the absolute independence of the board.
Subhead F.11 relates to the national spatial strategy, which I mentioned earlier. I am concerned by the low figure mentioned here regarding its implementation. What commitment is the Minister making in terms of staff or funding for its implementation?
I am hugely invigorated by the strategy and was before I came into this Department. It is something we badly needed but it involves at least a 20-year time frame. I am very encouraged by the activities of local authority members. Also, the involvement in the process at regional authority level, looking at regional planning guidelines, is crucial. That message has now come across. I have met some authorities, not all, and am aware they are all now fully engaged in this and my Department is working with them.
Equally, as the Deputy knows my officials held numerous public meetings around the country with regard to the spatial strategy. Such meetings were well attended and people's participation was very helpful. What is important, is what we can achieve within the next 12 months. We want the regional planning guidelines for all areas in place; we want substantial progress in integrating the national spatial strategy into the city and county development plans. That is crucially important. The main phase of implementation will follow completion of the regional planning guidelines. A great deal of work is currently being undertaken to make substantial progress on the integrated development frameworks for gateways and hubs. The NSS input into the mid-term review of the national development plan will be crucial. We are also seeking greater consensus on broader settlement issues especially in rural settlements. We are immediately engaged, as a follow-on to the launch of the strategy, in technical issues so that we can make it fly. We have to put such things in place at local and regional levels. We are working with all regional authorities to ensure they can do this. Completion in that regard will affect how we move forward. The review of the national development plan is crucial in terms of the overlaying of the spatial strategy.
Great effort was made by the Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, during the rail review to take cognisance of the spatial strategy. It was also acknowledged by the western corridor and western commission and that has been welcomed by many Deputies. I emphasise this is a 20 year strategy which will spread over 20 budgets and four or five national development plans. It would be wrong not to reflect the enormous enthusiasm and enormous direct engagement in it. The fact that people do not see anything visible in the public domain does not mean a great deal is not happening. I was at pains to emphasise at the start of this process what the next 12 months would bring. It brings enormous technical work with county and city development plans, regional strategic planning guidelines, the review of the national development plan and other departmental reviews which are required to build-in the spatial strategy. That is a great deal of work in the first 12 months of the launch of the spatial strategy. People are not seeing things but if one talks to local authority members on how engaged in this they are one will see this is feeding in. I welcome the fact that work is ongoing.
With respect, the Minister is spending as much on dog licences in the subhead two paragraphs further down as he is on the national spatial strategy. This money would not pay for the staff costs of four people.
Staff costs are not included. These are merely incidental expenses.
We are talking about €300,000 being spent on the national spatial strategy.
That is only incidental expenses. The real costs are included in subhead A1. I am not lacking in resources to do what I have to do immediately. The Deputy's argument is legitimate only if I were sitting before this committee saying I could do a great deal more if I had more resources. I cannot do any more until the planning issues at national, regional, local and departmental level are put in place. That is where the real effort will be made. All the officials required to be involved are involved, the costs for which are included in subhead A1. The moneys included in subhead F refer only to incidental costs.
So the Minister might not use that money?
We will have to wait and see.
The spatial strategy is unique in that we have never discussed it in the Dáil where we would have an opportunity to discuss it in more detail.
I and other Members of the House would welcome that. It is a question of finding the time. There is no resistance to that on my part. I would welcome a debate. It would be good for me to hear people's views good, bad and so on. Deputies would then have an understanding of what exactly is going on.
With regard to subhead G2, why are the fees for inspections carried out under the new house structural guarantee scheme down by 40% or more?
Under the structural guarantee scheme new houses can be guaranteed for up to ten years against major structural defects. The scheme is operated by the National Housebuilding Guarantee Company which operates under the name Homebond. Homebond is no longer carrying out foundation and completion inspections. The costs are lower because there is competition in the market.
Is subhead G2 agreed? Agreed.
I am not one for holding people up and do not say things for the sake of saying them but there are a number of outstanding questions such as that relating to electronic voting. The Minister committed himself to coming back to this committee to deal with questions relating to security and my questions in relation to the Agresso system and the failure of local authorities to report on their annual financial statements. He has also to come back to us with further information relating to Sellafield. We also had our differences on a number of issues which I will not repeat.
I touched on my areas in my introductory remarks. I do not see an allocation in the Department's funding for the year ahead in relation to climate change. That indicates a lack of commitment to addressing that issue at ministerial level. I am greatly concerned that this will lead to significant problems in future years. I have many more queries on other items. I am not convinced that the changes in regard to the abolition of Dúchas and the changes in the management of heritage will do anything to improve the safeguarding, protection or conservation of our natural heritage. I look forward to the results of these changes in the fullness of time.
I compliment the Minister on meeting his UK counterpart in regard to Sellafield and wish him well in the two court actions taking place over the coming months.
Are we not required to vote?
No.
When will we vote on them?
When they come before the Dáil.