This morning we will deal with the Vote 10: Office of Public Works, including flood relief, and later we will deal with Vote 25: Environment. Vote 10 has been further revised to take account of the transfer of heritage services to the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Coveney.
Estimates 1996.
Vote 10: Office of Public Works.
I understand that due to time constraints, it has been agreed that I would not speak at length in my introduction. However, I was anxious to speak about the transfer of heritage functions from the Office of Public Works and to explain what functions we have. The heritage function of the Office of Public Works has been transferred to the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht and I take this opportunity to confirm that despite this change, the Office of Public Works will continue to perform the bulk of its duties in the future.
For the record, I would like to outline the current remit of the Office of Public Works. The Office of Public Works is the Government's principal agent for the provision and maintenance of buildings for State purposes. In providing for accommodation requirements it builds, buys and rents premises. The Office of Public Works manages the State property portfolio of approximately 10 million square feet, including certain prestige buildings such as the Leinster House complex, the Custom House, Dublin Castle and so on. The Office of Public Works is also responsible for the management of State conference facilities such as Dublin Castle conference centre and is the main lease holder in respect of the Barrettstown Castle facility.
The Office of Public Works designs and supervises the construction of new buildings and provides a range of engineering services, in particular the execution and maintenance of arterial drainage. It is now responsible for localised flood relief schemes. The Office of Public Works provides, through the Government supplies agency, a central procurement in relation to certain supplies and services. It makes payments from the local loans fund and recovers money due as agents of the Department of Finance and, finally, it advises Government in relation to Dublin Zoo.
The Minister's speech has been circulated.
I thank the Minister for his courtesy in supplying his speech. I know he is working under time constraints so I do not intend to raise many specific matters with him on his Estimate. However, I wish to make some remarks on the transfer of heritage services from the Office of Public Works to the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. I do not particularly fault the Minister on the situation which has arisen. He found himself in the unfortunate position of taking charge probably two thirds of the way through the process so I hope he will not take what I say personally. However, his party in Government has presided over the emasculation of the Office of Public Works. As Members can see the Vote and the range of activities is substantial. However, to look at the figures only is to miss the point entirely. The decision to move heritage services from the Office of Public Works to the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht has emasculated the Office of Public Works. As the Minister has outlined, the Office of Public Works is responsible for a number of different areas and will continue to give a very good service to the State and the public. However, the heritage service played an important part in the Office of Public Works. Many of the other areas under the aegis of the Office of Public Works are dry and technical, but all sections took great pride in the heritage services. The Office of Public Works looked after our natural and man-made heritage and that responsibility is now being taken away from it for no other reason than that the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht desires to build an empire for himself. This change will be detrimental to the provision of the services. It is a backward step and I hope we as a nation do not live to regret the day this responsibility was removed from the Office of Public Works.
I pay tribute to all the people in the Office of Public Works with whom I worked, particularly the people in the heritage section, for the work done. This is a dreadful mistake; it should have been fought and it was not. We may live to regret it.
The Minister said the Office of Public Works will still be responsible for local flood relief schemes. I have a particular interest in local flood relief schemes because of flooding in my area. Like Deputy Dempsey, I thank all the people who have been involved in the Office of Public Works since January 1995 when there was major flooding in what was at that time my constituency.
I am anxious to clarify that the Office of Public Works is still responsible for arterial drainage and local flood relief schemes. It is no good the Office of Public Works being responsible for local flood relief schemes if those flood relief schemes are then subject to environmental impact studies or other restrictions which are not the responsibility of the Office of Public Works. Will the Minister clarify where the division of reponsibility between his Department and the wildlife section of the Office of Public Works lies? There is no point in giving sanction for a scheme if that scheme is then subject to another Department which for some reason says the work cannot be done. Despite the fact that in theory the Office of Public Works might be responsible for local flood relief schemes, in practice may not be able to sanction local flood relief schemes because of environmental impact studies or other requirements. I would like clarification on that.
Many issues arise in relation to what Deputy Dempsey said. I was not a Minister of State in that Department during the period when many of these decisions were taken. Deputy Dempsey was there when much of the conflict arose and I sympathise with what he had to deal with. I too pay tribute to the work the Office of Public Works has done through the years in the heritage area. It stands as a monument to the Office of Public Works. I hope the transfer of responsibilities will be accompanied by a similar level of commitment and achievement; I have no reason to believe it will not be.
Leaving aside for a moment the strong personality of the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, that Department has expanded greatly in the past number of years. There was a time when it was simply an adjunct to other Departments, such as the Taoiseach's Department. It is now a substantial Department in its own right and that is good. There is very compelling logic in the accepting that arts, culture and heritage are part of the same area. While we have regrets within the Office of Public Works that functions to which we had a great commitment and a great love of have been transferred, there was undoubtedly a potential for continuing conflict in the long run if arts and culture were the responsibility of one Department and heritage was the responsibility of another.
I agree with much of what the Deputy said. While this has been a fractious and difficult period for the Office of Public Works, and while there is a compelling logic in having the areas of heritage, arts and culture in one Department it was also in the agreement for Government between the parties that the change would occur. I arrived while it was in the course of happening. I was most anxious, despite strong views on all sides, to have an amicable settlement of the issue. We have that. The Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht and I have had good relations through what has been a trying time for both Departments.
In regard to Deputy McCormack's point, we are required by law to jump a fair number of hurdles before we can start any flood relief scheme and this can be very frustrating. There is a requirement to conduct an environmental impact study, we have to exhibit our design to the public, and the Department of Finance must make an assessment on the financial viability of any scheme. We have to interact with the Departments of Finance, Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht on the heritage side and in some instances with local authorities and the Department of the Environment, so we cannot have total control of what we do, both in terms of determining the programme and executing it, as the Deputy would like. We have to comply with the law and the law requires us to conduct environmental impact studies. They are, however, the longest single process through which we have to go to get a scheme up and running. This is very frustrating for the people experiencing flooding and so on, and very frustrating for us because we have the money to do something, we want to do it and we are sometimes delayed by this process. However, the environment is so important that we readily accept the necessity for doing things with an environmentally sensitive hand.
The Minister acknowledges that the Office of Public Works does not have 100 per cent control over what it does as regards flood relief schemes. I submit that it has no control. If the control of flood relief schemes must go through all those other agencies, the Office of Public Works does not even have 1 per cent control. The function of the Office of Public Works in its control or dealings with flood relief work is out of its hands.
My position is particularly interesting because another Minister also represents my area. I do not want to have any conflict with him and I am not interested in which Minister has responsibility. I am interested in dealing with the Office of Public Works and finding out what control it has over flood relief schemes.
When the Act, which gave the Office of Public Works control and authority to deal with flood relief schemes, passed through the Houses last year it was welcomed by all sides of the House. However, instead of having 100 per cent control, his Department has no control because the control is vested in all the bodies which the Minister named here.
There is no good fudging this issue. The sum of £6 million was spent nationally and at least £3 million was spent in south Galway in 1995 on various forms of compensation: rehousing, rebuilding roads, Irish Red Cross work, etc.
One scheme, which is mentioned later in the Estimates, relieved the flood, the Kilternan-Ballinderreen scheme which cost £250,000. It was the only real money which was spent in south Galway on addressing the problem. All the other problems still exist. The houses and roads, except those in that area, can flood again but the school, the houses and the nursing home in that area will not because there is now a relief channel to the sea. Thankfully, no water has flowed through this relief channel, so it has had no effect on the environment but people can go to bed at night knowing there is a channel to cope with bad flooding.
I bow to nobody in my respect for the environment, yet I believe that people are part of it. People are not officially considered part of the environment but the lowest type of weed growing in a turlough in south Galway is thought more of than people. That is wrong, people whose families have been living in an area for 200 or 300 years and whose houses are flooded are more a part of the environment than the lowest type of interesting weed in a turlough in Lough Fingal but there is no recognition of that.
We have been lax — and that includes me — because I did not want to get into a personal argument between the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Michael D. Higgins, and the Minister of State at the Department of Finance with responsibility for the Office of Public Works, Deputy Coveney, who are friends of mine. I did not want any conflict between those two people because it might be taken in my constituency as a personal battle with the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. Luckily, it is not my constituency now, so I can talk about it more freely. I am still interested in solving the problems of the people in that area which I had the honour to represent for seven or eight years.
Since the Deputy was talking about flood relief and as we are examining that matter, has any money been paid out of the £650,000 Estimate for 1996 in flood relief grants for home relocation assistance for the people in Clonmel, County Tipperary, and such areas? If not, when will those promised grants to be paid?
We have approved about 250 for relocation at present and paid out over 100.
Are they the Galway cases? What about the Clonmel ones?
No. Since there is no relocation in the south-east, we are speaking about the 1994 flooding. We are processing other applications.
Must the Minister deal with Europe for the south-east?
We have an undertaking from both the Commission — in fact, the Commissioner is in Ireland today — and the chairman of the Parliament's budget committee, who was here the week before last, that we would get 300,000 ECU, which is about £240,000. The Irish Red Cross expects to complete its assessment of the need by about the end of next week, so we do not know how much is required. We expect it will be in excess of the EU funding, I think the EU expects the Irish Government to provide some matching funds if necessary, and we will do so. I cannot tell the Deputy the amount because I do not know.
On Deputy McCormack's point, the EIS requirements for local drainage schemes are specific and the terms are short so I will read them quickly. They state that the effects of the scheme on the existing environment are considered and examined under a number of different headings, the first of which is human beings. It further lists flora and fauna, etc., but the first heading relates to the effects on people so I do not think it is true that people are ignored in favour of insects.
I am only telling the Minister what people in the relevant office told me no later than yesterday.
I will give the Deputy a photocopy of this document. It is clear that the effects on people is the first issue, but other issues also come into it. We are only one of a large number of Departments. The construction of major highways, for example, are subject to equal and much greater EIS requirements. The Deputy saw the situation in Galway in relation to disposal of sewage. These are onerous requirements. Apart from the fact it is right that we should be concerned for the environment, the EU funding requirements also place a heavy onus on us to ensure we demonstrate beyond any doubt that we have taken all the effects into account. I know how strongly the Deputy feels.
On flooding relief, does the Office of Public Works have any role with regard to the River Camac in Dublin?
The Office of Public Works could have a role although it is not on our immediate priority list.
There have been a couple of occasions when people have been flooded out in recent years as a result of heavy rain.
If you care to write to us, we will certainly look into it.
I accept that the transfer of the heritage function from the Office of Public Works to the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht has a certain amount of logic about it, as the Minister said, and it represents a tidying up. As far as I am concerned, there is a great sadness about it because the Office of Public Works was not just doing a good job in this area; it was doing an extraordinarily good job. Why interfere with it? I was Minister of State with responsibility for arts and culture and I was the first person who brought all the various areas now under the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht from the other Departments. We looked with envy at the Office of Public Works, which we decided not to interfere with because it was doing a good job in the area for which it had responsibility. We should pay tribute to the Office of Public Works for the extraordinary job it has done for as long as, if not longer than, most Departments. A person is never more popular than when they are dead, although that is not much consolation to the Office of Public Works.
I compliment the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Coveney, for his quick action under the new powers given to him in the Arterial Drainage (Amendment) Act, 1995. He recently visited my constituency of Sligo-Leitrim where he announced the first allocation of money under this scheme for the Owenmore and Arrow rivers. It is fitting that these rivers are the first to benefit under the scheme because the request to do something about them has been ongoing since 1927. Nothing was done about it and that is why no other constituency issue has figured more prominently or consistently in the Dáil.
Except the drainage of the Shannon.
That was the best one of all.
I also pay tribute to a former Minister of State, Deputy Dempsey. who worked hard on this issue, like many other people, and with whom I had many discussions about it. I am delighted something has been done. Deputy Coveney was in a position to announce it when he came to Sligo-Leitrim. The amount of money is small in comparison to what we expected for a major drainage scheme for the entire catchment area. However, the local farmers are extremely happy with what they have received and the new scheme will be implemented with the co-operation of the county council and a contractor. The Minister said the money available, £200,000, was a minimum amount and that more could be allocated depending on the evaluation of the engineers, etc. They are confident this will remove main blockages. We are using this money to good advantage and I thank the Minister, on behalf of the farmers in the catchment area, for his help in this regard.
Unlike Deputy Nealon, I cannot support the drainage scheme. I assume the £9.946 million allocated this year is for arterial drainage and maintenance. The Office of Public Works pulled the plug on a scheme in my constituency last year which means there is unfinished work throughout the catchment area. The nickname for the Office of Public Works in my area — and justifiably so — is the "Office of No Works". I have said to farmers that if their land is flooded and drainage work is unfinished, the only recourse they have is to sue the Office of Public Works. I am sorry I have to say it but I hope they succeed.
It is disgraceful to inform people that a catchment area will be drained and then to leave 16 per cent of the work unfinished. If the 16 per cent was at one end of the catchment area and everything else was tidied up it would be all right, but it covers the entire catchment area. Nobody can say that represents good value for money or that it is a rational approach to work. We had a dry winter this year but we will have flooding as a result of this unfinished work. What can the Office of Public Works do for farmers in such a situation?
The programme overshot its time but that is a matter for the management of the Office of Public Works. It should have been tackled years ago. The argument was made that it had overshot its budget by £2 million or £3 million. There is something wrong with management if a scheme which was supposed to be completed in five years is still not finished after 12 or 13 years. The people who should not have suffered are the farmers in the catchment area whose lands were to be drained. There is £9.946 million for drainage this year. Can we use it properly and not leave jobs unfinished? It is a disgraceful waste of taxpayers' money.
Some £5.461 million has been provided for the maintenance programme, which is not working either. I live in a catchment area with hundreds of farmers and parts of it were drained in 1984-85. We were told they would be in line for maintenance in five years. It is now 11 years on and we have not seen any maintenance machinery. Many of the channels are now as blocked as when first drained in 1985. I do not know where the maintenance money is being used or how well it is managed.
As regards major projects of refurbishment or restoration of State-owned buildings in Dublin, I am delighted that further work is being done on Dublin Castle and on the restoration of the Ship Street buildings. The Department of Defence headquarters on Infirmary Road is due for further refurbishment this year. Restoration work will be carried out on the Department of Education's headquarters, Marlborough House, which is one of the finest buildings in Dublin. Work is also continuing on the Custom House. I am delighted that a new general register office for the Department of Health in Roscommon will be completed, as will other works to improve accommodation in the Department of Finance, the Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Many of these works are concentrated in Dublin. Although the buildings are worthy of restoration, there are many public buildings throughout the country which are almost in a state of ruin and which have never been restored. A couple of weeks ago I met a constituent who lives in a 17th century house in County Longford. There is no funding for such houses, which are the last of the smaller houses. Most of the great houses are gone. There is one left in County Roscommon at Strokestown, which is now a national park. There are hundreds of smaller 17th and 18th century houses throughout the country which were designed by leading architects, yet there is no programme for their refurbishment or protection. Many are occupied by families and the cost of minimal refurbishment is prohibitive. As a result, they fall into ruin. Perhaps this is more a matter for the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. It is a great pity we do not have a programme that applies to buildings of that kind because they are part of the national heritage. I am sorry to be critical but, as a representative of the taxpayers, one must say these things.
I thank Deputy Nealon for the tributes he paid to the Office of Public Works's role in heritage, with which we all agree, his description of the decisions that were made in his time and why. He also referred to the Owenmore and Arrow. I was careful to sound a note of caution when I went there. It is the intent of the Office of Public Works to carry out work on the Owenmore and Arrow but there are some hurdles to jump with regard to the design, costs and the EIS. There is a will to do it and money has been set aside but we are in the process of dealing with the hurdles. I hope we will be able to confirm our intent in the autumn.
It is no surprise that Deputy Connor raised the Boyle scheme because he has been consistent about it in the past year or so; he has given me many fleas in my ear on that subject. It is over 90 per cent complete. It ran hugely over time although it would not be fair to say it was all the fault of the Office of Public Works or management. It ran for 12 years and had a significant cost overrun. The balance of 10 per cent would not provide a great return and successive Ministers for Finance looked aghast at the scheme over a number of years. The Minister, after wide consultation, decided enough was enough and that the scheme should be brought to a close. Deputy Connor does not agree with that judgment but it was not made lightly.
The Deputy also referred to the predominance of Dublin in the context of investment in buildings. I can empathise with the Deputy to a degree as I come from a part of the country which believes that everything happens for Dublin. However, one must recognise that Dublin is the capital city and that many of these buildings are used by the State, not just by Dublin. The decentralisation programme carried out by successive Governments over the past ten years involved an allocation of £60 million to other parts of the country. It has been a successful decentralisation of moneys as well as of buildings.
It is easy for me to say that the great houses are a matter for the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. However, it is a matter the State will have to tackle because what is left is a diminishing resource and it will be negligible if we do not check the decay. It is expensive but very important. Undoubtedly there has been a greater awareness over the past decade about our treasures and a greater sadness about some of things generations before us let happen when, perhaps, there were not so many resources. I accept the Deputy's point that some of the finest examples of architecture are in rural Ireland. They have great potential for the tourism industry and particularly for the many millions of people of Irish descent abroad who often have more interest in them than the Irish at home.
A sum of £750,000 is to be expended on moving the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry in 1996. Was a cost benefit analysis or environmental impact study carried out on that or was it a vote impact study?
I recently read a magazine article about fraud in the Office of Public Works. It refers to a different type of drainage, the drainage of rental income from the coffers of the Office of Public Works. Will the Minister of State say if there is any truth in this article and, if so, what were the conclusions of any investigations carried out within the Department? The article claimed that up to 50 per cent of the Office of Public Works's property is susceptible to criminal hiving off rental income. Is that true?
The site for the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry is an urban site in Enniscorthy so it is not environmentally sensitive. There was an urgency about completing the site. With regard to the other matter the Deputy raised, I must be careful in what I say, for a number of reasons. The reference to 50 per cent of our rental property is nonsense except in the sense that one could say 100 per cent of everything is conceivably susceptible to fraud. We are not at risk in that regard.
A small number of discrepancies — five — were discovered through the normal systems in existence in the Office of Public Works last November. That was immediately reported to the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Department of Finance and the matter referred to the Garda, whose investigation is continuing. We did not just leave the matter to the Garda. We had all systems checked by an outside independent firm of accountants and no further discrepancies were discovered. However, we have introduced additional controls as recommended by the consultants and I am satisfied that potential fraud is ringfenced and identified.
I cannot tell the committee the exact amount involved because it is a complex and curious form of fraud and, indeed, extremely clever. The maximum conceivable loss that could arise from this is £176,000 but it could be much less. That is the current position. The Deputy tabled a question about this matter and it will be answered next week.
I wish to raise three points. Subhead F4 refers to fuel, electricity, water, cleaning and so forth. I am interested in the expenditure on fuel. The Minister of State said that energy efficiency and a milder winter were factors in the figure. Is it the case that capital expenditure allocations relating to energy give due priority to efficiency and renewable options because of the size of some buildings? This may appear to be expensive on a one year basis, but it may result in savings over succeeding years. Does this merely anticipate the next general election, when it will probably be of benefit to the next Government, or is it part of a long-term strategy?
I am concerned about the uncritical continuation of Government funding of the Zoological Society. I am aware that a report was made in this regard but I wonder if the Office of Public Works is insisting on the need for radical change. It seems that the current powers that be at Dublin Zoo are setting the agenda in the context of history rather than conservation. I am concerned about further expenditure on Dublin Zoo.
There are a number of references to the sourcing of different supplies in the Estimate. Is the tendering process now on a Europe-wide footing? I am aware that a number of Irish firms were stung and the explanation seems to be that they have been placed in a wider market than heretofore. I refer particularly to the production of badges, etc., of which I had experience with my constituents. Could the Minister explain the basis on which the Office of Public Works is obliged to offer tenders in order that I might relay the information to those constituents?
We are running into difficulties with regard to time constraints. A number of questions will be taken together and I will then ask the Minister to reply.
I have a brief question relating to expenditure on Leinster House. A figure of £10 million is quoted in relation to such expenditure which is approximate to the amount projected for prior improvements. However, I understand that much of the work being carried out in the Department of the Taoiseach by a particular group and the Office of Public Works has been laid aside. On what will the £10 million be spent?
The Minister of State met a deputation from the Clonbonny region in Athlone. I will not enter into a debate on draining the River Shannon but a large number of farmers in that area were affected by flooding caused by one night's heavy rain. I understand that expenditure of £500,000 would solve many of the problems in the area which is situated east of the River Shannon. During Deputy Garret Fitzgerald's term of office as Taoiseach it was proposed to establish a Shannon forum or authority to examine this matter which requires immediate attention. I thought that moneys would be provided to institute works during the current year.
I have read many newspaper articles about decentralisation, a process which managed to bypass Mullingar long before the new relief road was constructed there. I wonder why this is the case. People are reluctant to move to an area which is on the periphery, but Mullingar is the geographical centre of the country. The former Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Dempsey, lives in Trim and is also acutely aware of this fact. People living in Mullingar are astounded by this omission because the town is equidistant from Dublin, Galway and Donegal. It is an ideal area with an excellent infrastructure. The one thing it lacks is a departmental office. I appeal to the Minister of State on a parochial basis to consider the area in this regard.
In the region of £7 million was allocated for the restoration of the Royal Canal and I compliment the Office of Public Works on the programme of works it carried out in this regard. Messrs. McKeown and Sherlock and their staff have greatly advanced the part of this project which relates to the Dublin Bridge at Mullingar. When is this work, which will make the Royal Canal navigable from Dublin to Abbeyshrule to Tymonbarry and on to the River Shannon, likely to begin?
For what use is the former headquarters of the Department of Defence intended when its refurbishment is completed?
On Vote 32, a grant of £190,000 was provided in the Estimate for 1995 for the Kilternan/ Ballinderreen flood relief scheme while £50,000 was provided in 1996. This represents a total figure of £240,000 earmarked for the agricultural relief scheme. However, the original figure quoted in this regard was £255,000 so it appears that £15,000 has gone missing. I would like an explanation as to the whereabouts of that money.
The entire £255,000 will be spent.
It has already been spent.
The Department will be reimbursing the entire amount.
The flood relief scheme will be seeking further funds.
I do not know about that.
The amount of £255,000 is a great deal less than the £2.5 million provided for the same work in 1991.
Deputy Sargent raised a number of detailed questions. In relation to fuel, the best example I can provide relates to the offices in Portlaoise which represent the Office of Public Works's most recently completed project. An energy efficient design was utilised on this project and we opted for a substantially higher capital cost for the good reasons to which the Deputy alluded. All new buildings are subjected to that kind of test and our consultants — many of whom are from outside the Civil Service — are asked to consider alternatives.
I do not believe that the Office of Public Works is in a position to institute many alternative energy designs as yet, but there is an energy audit in place. We are moving in that direction but it is not the position that we opt for the lowest capital cost, irrespective of the outcome in terms of wasting energy, for work carried out by ourselves or outside consultants.
The Chairman is involved on the board of the Zoological Society and informs me that it is following a full set of international conservation guidelines. The agenda is not being set from a historical perspective. Members who live in parts of the country where wildlife parks are situated would probably have gone further in this regard.
With regard to Deputy Ahern's point, there has been a request to consider the facilities and we will do so because the wildlife park comes under the ambit of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland. The park has been very successful in terms of numbers of visitors. We have a request to improve some of the facilities to take account of that. I cannot give the Deputy a categoric announcement but we are constructively considering it.
In regard to the Government supplies tendering rules, we are governed by EU requirements, of which I could send the Deputy a copy. We try, within the rules to ensure Irish suppliers get the work. As Deputies know, some countries are more skilful are working close to the limits of the rules than others. We are trying to become experts at that, however, we have to stick to the rules.
I will send Deputy Dempsey a schedule in relation to Leinster House.
On the points raised by Deputy Penrose about flooding close to Athlone, that is not on the priority list. If the Deputy sends us more information we will look at it, but we will not drain the Shannon, which is probably the problem.
It can be solved without doing that.
The Deputy should send us the information. In regard to decentralisation to Mullingar, the centre of Ireland has to be a logical choice at some point. There is a very strong local committee which articulates that view — almost as strongly as the Deputy does. It is not our decision. The Office of Public Works is the agency which provides the buildings for the Department being decentralised. It is a matter for an individual Department and Government. However, we would not be slow to provide the facilities if some body wanted to do that. I thank the Deputy for his comments on the Royal Canal — he will have to speak to his colleague about the future. The answer to the chairman's question is that that is to be the headquarters of the Department of Defence.
It will revert there?
Yes.
That concludes the consideration of the Estimate for the Office of Public Works. Does the Select Committee agree that the Estimate should be reported to the Dáil? Agreed. I thank the Minister and his officials for appearing before the Select Committee and the members for their valuable contributions.
Sitting suspended at 10.34 a.m. and resumed at 10.39 a.m.
Vote 25: Environment.
This is the second occasion on which I have presented the Estimate for the Department of the Environment to the Select Committee. On the previous occasion, we had a constructive debate and exchange of information and I look forward to a similar interaction today. To facilitate this, a briefing note has been circulated giving details of the overall Vote structure, the different programmes and the purposes for which the expenditure allocations are provided. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Deputy McManus, and I will be pleased to assist the Select Committee in any way we can during the question and answer session. My Department will spend more than £960 million this year, and about 90 per cent of this will flow to local authorities in grants and subsidies. Put another way, these funds will make up almost half of the overall local authority expenditure of over £2 billion.
This expenditure gives rise to direct employment for about 30,000 people, and indirectly supports many thousands of additional jobs in the private sector. The end result of this spending is real and tangible, and is manifest in the enhanced social, economic and environmental infrastructure to which it gives rise around the country.
Housing, roads, environmental and other amenity services are the cornerstones of our local government system. Progress on these services has forged ahead rapidly in recent years, and the Estimate before the committee will allow this progress to be maintained and, in many cases, accelerated in 1996. Social housing output will be sustained at around 7,000 new starts; the improvements which are already evident in our road network will be intensified; and investment in water and waste water services will increase by over 10 per cent on last year's outturn figure.
I will return to these individual programmes later but first, I want to address two major issues facing my Department which are the focus of particular attention. These are the restoration of the network of non-national roads and the future of the local government system generally.
At £369 million, the 1996 Estimate for roads involves a 9 per cent increase over 1995 expenditure, and a 22 per cent increase over the 1994 provision of £302 million. Within this increased provision, the really significant feature of the 1996 Estimate is the huge injection of funds into the restoration programme for non-national roads.
There is no argument about the need to go on investing at a high level in our national roads but there is little point in improving them if our non-national roads, on which many journeys begin and end, are to be allowed to deteriorate as they have done in the last ten years. I am adamant that the neglect of our regional and county roads must stop. There are two reasons for this. First, non-national roads are important for economic development — agriculture, tourism and industry all rely on them to access the major transport arteries, but equally, non-national roads serve a vital social function in rural areas. Roads are important for the simple everyday activities which make up daily life, such as travelling to school, work or shops, and visiting friends and relatives.
When I presented my Department's Estimate for 1995 to this committee almost 12 months ago, the position in relation to our non-national roads was not encouraging. We had experienced one of the worst winters in recent years, and the already poor condition of these roads had been exacerbated by the effects of severe weather and flooding. We were also facing into one of the hottest summers on record which was to add a different set of problems. I made it clear to the committee last year that I was acutely aware of the difficulties and that I would be taking steps to implement the Government's commitment to upgrade and adequately maintain the network throughout the country.
Twelve months on, I can now come before the committee and say that, not only have record grants been provided for non-national roads this year, the Government has also given a firm undertaking to provide the necessary resources to restore the network over the next ten years. In short, the outlook for these roads has been transformed in a year.
As a first step, an additional £20 million was provided last July to finance a special programme of improvement and maintenance works on non-national roads towards the end of last year. This £20 million financed the completion in 1995 of almost 1,000 additional road improvement schemes, with nearly 1,600 kilometres of road benefiting.
The momentum built up in the second half of last year is being built on again this year, with record grants for non-national roads of over £146 million allocated in February. This represents an unprecedented increase of more than £40 million, or almost 39 per cent, on the base allocation for 1995. It also brings to over £73 million the funds available for works associated with the restoration programme this year.
It is important to note that the restoration programme will operate within a new framework which will ensure that the significant additional funds provided for the programme in 1996 and future years will be spent efficiently and effectively, and that the greatest possible level of outputs will be achieved. This framework will be crucial to the success of the overall effort.
First, county councils have been requested to prepare multiannual programmes detailing the schemes they propose to carry out under the restoration programme. Selection of schemes is to be subject to criteria which reflect the importance and the extent of the deterioration in the roads in question. These programmes will allow for better planning, management and execution of road works and will allow all of us — at central and local level — to review progress, and to monitor output.
Second, I have commissioned a consultancy study to determine, in detail, the backlog of deficiencies on the network and the overall cost of dealing with it. The study will allow us to firm up the overall cost of the total restoration programme and to target resources with precision on actual, rather than estimated, need in each area.
Third, I have decided to commission an efficiency audit into county councils' operations in the roads area to determine where improvements in management, work practices, etc., can be achieved. This is largely in response to a very clear message I received from local authority members. Steps towards this have already been introduced, by specifying engineering standards, minimum lengths of schemes, and mechanisms for monitoring outputs and achieving value for money.
Significant progress has been made since I announced details of the restoration programme in February. The response of local authorities and their officials to the new arrangements has been very positive, and the Government's commitment to long term funding of the programme has generated, at local level, remarkable commitment and enthusiasm to making a success of the initiative.
While the restoration programme is 100 per cent Exchequer funded, I have made it quite clear to county councils that the marked decline in own-resources funding for non-national roads must be reversed. Decreases in own-resources expenditure on these roads can no longer be tolerated; an increase that will at least match the actual rate of inflation is the minimum acceptable. The Government has shown, in the most practical way possible, its commitment to restoring regional and county roads, and this commitment must be reflected in the allocation of resources at local level.
With this local commitment, and the investment of Exchequer and EU funds, I am fully confident that there will be further substantive progress to report to the committee this time next year.
In tandem with the special programme for non-national roads, progress on the national network continues apace. The Estimate this year includes a total provision of £225 million for these, of which £202 million has been allocated to the National Roads Authority for construction and improvement works. These funds will enable the Authority to complete projects such as the Northern Cross Route in Dublin and to maintain progress on projects such as the Arklow by-pass, the Portlaoise by-pass and the River Lee tunnel in Cork. To complement the improvement of the network, £23 million has been provided to the Authority to finance maintenance works on the national network.
The extension of the Strategic Management Initiative to the local authority sector should bring with it an enhanced awareness of the need to deliver services of high quality efficiently and effectively. One of the strengths of the initiative is that it provides the framework for local authorities to do this themselves — by focusing on the needs of the citizen as opposed to those of the organisation. I expect this central concern to be mirrored in the strategy statements which local authorities are now preparing. With the Convention on Quality in Local Government which I will sponsor next week, the Strategic Management Initiative represents a unique opportunity for local government to take stock of its activities, and to make improvements where necessary.
Efficient provision of services is also a recurring theme in the recommendations of the recent report on town local government which I hope to have published very shortly. The report seeks the development of joint services between town and county authorities, with a view to offering integrated and comprehensive services, and I will be giving very careful attention to its proposals.
The Devolution Commission, established by the Taoiseach, is looking at the potential for enhancing the capacity of local government to act as a focus for local development generally, including co-ordination of the existing bodies active in this field. As its title suggests, the Commission is also examining the potential to devolve functions to local level and give form and substance to the subsidiarity concept. A first report is expected from the committee very soon.
However, today we are concerned with finance, and my Department's Estimate and local government finance are largely two sides of the same coin. At present we finance local authorities both centrally and locally to a level that permits a certain standard of service provision. The KPMG stage 1 study, also to be published very shortly, concluded that existing fiscal structures and financing levels will just about permit us to maintain the status quo for another few years at least. We can choose to do exactly this and, by not making conscious choices for many years, we have done so by default. However, the structural weaknesses inherent in the system could give rise to a future local government system which lacks finance, accountability and, ultimately, direction and belief in itself.
This is not inevitable. The study sets out a number of options which require careful analysis, taking account of many factors, including the needs of local government, interaction with the wider taxation system, and acceptability by the public at large. It does not come down in favour of any one option, but sets out to ask a number of options and to see what is required in a much more detailed study which then could be adopted.
There is no certainty in life. If we are to have meaningful reform of our system of local government finance it must be on a collective basis; it will not be implemented by one individual, by one party, or by a Government on its own. I can think of no other fiscal issue which requires such a large measure of agreement among the body politic if real progress is to be made on this long standing thorny issue. I wish to explore the possibility of moving ahead with some degree of consensus on this critical issue, and I will take steps towards this end. I would especially welcome the views of the committee on this project.
The environment is the name of my ministerial office as well as one of its biggest challenges. Protection of the environment is important both in itself and as a vital source of comparative advantage for Irish industry. Many of our main economic activities — agriculture and food, fisheries, tourism and high quality industries and services — rely on a clean and unpolluted environment. Pitting economic growth or jobs against the environment is a false choice. Ireland will only remain competitive by maintaining and enhancing its most basic natural resource — a clean and good environment.
An excellent and up to date assessment of our environment has just become available with the publication last month by the Environmental Protection Agency of the State of the Environment Report for Ireland. This confirms the basically good condition of the Irish environment. However, the report does not leave room for complacency. Furthermore, it underlines the ongoing threat to environmental quality from different sources of pollution, such as farm wastes, transport emissions and post consumer waste and litter. It identifies eutrophication, the urban environment and solid waste management as areas which will need priority attention in future.
Two kinds of response are required in the face of these challenges. In the first instance, we need appropriate countermeasures to ensure that pollution of water, of the air and of land are all directly combatted. The second form of response is more preventative. It is about getting the fundamentals right so that we manage our agriculture, our transport, our industrial production and our tourism in a way that does not compromise our environment. In other words, we need to develop a sound relationship between the economy and the environment. This is what we are working on in the preparation of a national sustainable development strategy which is now in its final stages.
We have made progress on many fronts in the past year in promoting better care of the environment. The Waste Management Act is now on the Statute Book and will be implemented actively. The Action Against Litter initiative, which I launched, has been mobilised. The Environmental Protection Agency licensing has been extended to many new sectors, including intensive agriculture, and the EIA threshold for forestry development has been significantly reduced.
Environmental protection depends also on good international co-operation so as to address difficult transboundary or global environmental problems. The Irish Presidency of the EU will present important challenges and opportunities to us in this context. We will advance the major review of the EU Fifth Environmental Action Programme, which is a leading influence for sustainable development within the Union. Ireland will strive to ensure a progressive influence on the negotiations for a binding Protocol under the Framework Convention on Climate Change. We intend also to start on an ambitious Union plan of action to secure major environmental improvement of the next generation of motor vehicles and fuels.
What is driving today's environmental debate is the unprecedented increase in pressures on the environment which has taken place in our time. The pace and continued expansion of economic production undoubtedly raise major issues for us and for upcoming generations. A consensus on the importance of sustainable development has grown out of these concerns. We need to give people a better quality of life, but with lower intensity of consumption and less stress on our environmental resources. The National Sustainable Development Strategy will seek to accommodate and harness this broadly-based support. I intend that it will provide practical and influential guidance of all relevant Government policies for the benefit and betterment of the environment.
The Estimate before the committee includes an amount of nearly £122 million for water and sewerage schemes. This is the largest component of my Department's spending with a specific environmental focus. This provision is among the largest ever for the programme, and continues the high levels of investment in recent years. Overall, there are approximately 80 major public water and sewerage schemes in the programme announced last January. Since the beginning of the year, new contracts valued at over £25 million have been approved. Many of the other schemes are being advanced through the planning and design process with a view to getting to construction in 1996 or early in 1997. The prioritisation of schemes for inclusion in the 1997 programme is ongoing, taking into account changing environmental and economic conditions and national and EU priorities.
The EU is now providing approximately 70 per cent of total funding for the programme through the EU Cohesion Funds, the Environmental Services Operational Programme and the INTERREG II Initiative. The Cohesion Funds provide the mainstay of this support with 34 applications involving expenditure of just under £200 million approved to date. These approvals include a wide range of schemes, the largest of which are water projects at Tuam, Limerick, the Lough Mask area, Ballyjamesduff, and Monaghan. Sewerage projects have been approved for Dublin, New Ross, Athy, Cork, Drogheda, Dundalk, Waterford, Clonmel, Ballinrobe, Wexford, Limerick, Greystones, Sligo, Tralee and the Lough Derg area. Exchequer moneys continue to be a vital source of funding, especially for important schemes which do not qualify for Cohesion funding. A special feature of the programme in recent years has been the construction of schemes for specific employment generating purposes. My Department maintains contact with the industrial development agencies to ensure early identification of needs of this kind, and to ensure that we can provide industries with the water services infrastructure they require to provide jobs.
In addition to the major public water and sewerage schemes, other works will get to construction under a number of special sub-programmes. The water conservation sub-programme has a long-term focus and projects have started in Galway and Waterford. A major £35 million programme is due to start in Dublin later this year. Leakage reduction and water management systems will also be introduced in some towns and rural areas. Other schemes will be advanced under the tourism resort, pump-out and natural wetlands sub-programmes. The last sub-programme represents a new method of dealing with sewage sludge with the use of constructed wetlands, reedbeds and other natural disposal methods. I can report solid progress with the water and sewerage programme. We can look forward to accelerating that progress in the next few years in a programme that is vital both to economic development and environmental protection.
This year has seen a significant increase in resources allocated to housing with an overall housing capital provision of almost £360 million — an increase of 12 per cent on expenditure last year. We are building on the remarkable progress of recent years in increasing social housing output. In 1992, accommodation was provided for 6,000 households in housing need by the range of social housing measures available at that time. Since then, social housing output has been increased year by year, with more than 9,900 households catered for last year. This year, I expect more than 10,000 households will be accommodated under the programme.
More than 30,500 new houses were built last year — the highest annual total on record. This remarkably strong housing market is underpinned by the general upturn in the economy, the plentiful supply of mortgage finance and the historically low level of mortgage interest rates. It is not just the private housing market that is performing well. All elements which make up the total of housing completions — private, local authority and voluntary — have performed well in 1995.
Despite the pressure on public expenditure, increased resources have been provided this year for the local authority and voluntary housing programmes, for the shared ownership and other schemes and particularly for special housing needs for those such as the elderly and homeless persons. The Minister of State, Deputy McManus, will be happy to give the committee a full briefing on our housing achievements and on our objectives for the future in the course of the question and answer session.
The limited time available for opening statements does not permit me to refer to the many other functions and services for which my Department is responsible but, with the assistance of the Minister of State, I will be happy to deal with any issues members may wish to raise. Of their nature, Estimates and speeches about Estimates tend to be dull, laden with figures, percentages and statistics. Yet, in a real sense, the Estimates reflect the choices we make as a society. They speak, if we care to listen, of the concern we show for those less fortunate than ourselves, of our willingness to cherish our environment and of the wisdom of our investments. I can, with confidence, let this Estimate speak for me and my Department, and I commend it to the committee.
There are a number of aspects to the Estimates as the Department has a wide variety of responsibilities. I look forward to conclusions on the thorny issue of service charges. However, it requires a broader approach than one Department can give it, although I know the Department of the Environment is at the coalface. The Green Party believes that whatever form of local government funding is considered it should be more than a matter of raising revenue. By its nature, it should have a bearing on behaviour. We find the water charge somewhat senseless because, rather than encouraging the conservation of water, a flat charge has provoked a wasteful use of water.
Would the Deputy support metered water?
Metering has to be brought in where possible. I know it is not easy to introduce it overnight as it requires a large infrastructural change. It needs to be part of the overall trend towards the conservation and prudent use of resources. It goes without saying that it will be a hollow change until the leakage in the system is tackled effectively — as the English experience shows. A greater reduction in central taxes is required before the water charges can become credible.
The urban renewal provisions are having a welcome effect on a number of towns. Are guidelines available or could they be provided so that local authorities do not get away with doing maintenance work under the guise of urban renewal? There may be tension in local communities which feel the local authority is getting away with doing maintenance work in that way.
I am surprised that the amount provided for serviced sites is down on 1995 given the need for serviced accommodation for travellers. Are there hidden costs on account of protests? Do protests push up the cost of providing serviced sites for travellers? Is money provided for the maintenance of sites or does the local authority have to meet those by itself? Until we provide credible facilities the traditional view will militate against change.
I am glad to see an increase in the amount available for the repair of thatched roofs. They have been fast disappearing in north County Dublin. The decline has taken place despite the money available and, although the amount is not great, it is welcome. Is there any prospect of giving funds to help with insurance? Insurance companies have had a greater effect on the demise of thatch than any other factor by refusing to provide cover.
I spoke briefly with the Minister on the issue of rural resettlement. It needs full interaction. Although the Minister of State has day to day responsibility for the issue, I ask the Minister to meet with Rural Resettlement Ireland.
With regard to housing, is the Minister pushing out the boat when it comes to energy audit for public sector or local authority housing? If so he would be setting a trend for energy audit becoming a factor in the price and value of housing generally.
Will we be able to comply with the EU waste water directive by the deadlines or will we be looking for a derogation? A lot of work remains to be done and I wonder if we are being realistic about it. I welcome the increase in funds for waste management, although of course it is never enough. Will composting be an essential part of it? Recycling is mentioned but composting is often forgotten. What monitoring is there of the international organisations to which we contribute? We give money to international organisations and international co-operation is important.
I welcome the increase in the allocation to the litter initiative. Does it involve transferring Garda powers to litter wardens? Will that be a part of the new regime? I had expected to see an allocation for Mutton Island but I cannot. Does the Minister still hold out hope of EU help with that project?
The Environmental Protection Agency report was very educational. It mentions something the Minister did not mention. Car pollution is our biggest source of air pollution. I wonder whether new generations of cars are really tackling the problem. I know that the Minister established an office to encourage the use of public transport, but can he see a genuine decrease in car use on foot of those efforts?
The report is monolingual. Gaelscoileanna and Gaeltacht has asked me whether the Environmental Protection Agency has forgotten about the part of the community which works through Irish. I mentioned this to the Environmental Protection Agency but ministerial influence would have a greater bearing than my words.
We should structure the discussion. That is a comprehensive list of questions from Deputy Sargent but they represent a grand tour through the Vote. It is my fault for not indicating otherwise at the beginning. If Deputies are agreeable I will allow Deputy Dempsey to make a general statement but I ask other Deputies if we could go through the Estimate and have questions afterwards. We will deal with the points raised by Deputy Sargent at that point.
I received notice of this meeting on Tuesday and I had made other appointments. Rather than be discourteous and not turn up I want to express my apologies to the Minister. I am not a member of the committee and I am not blaming anybody. I just want to apologise to the Minister and the chairman for the fact that I cannot stay. I do not think it would be fair of me to make a statement and then walk out of the meeting without giving the Minister a chance. If the Minister and the committee accept my apologies, I will withdraw at this stage.
I agree with the chairman's suggestion about structuring the discussion. However, Deputy Byrne wants to rush away to another meeting and he said he has one brief question to ask. I will believe him for once and pass to him.
This is an agricultural question no doubt?
I am not a member of this committee; I am just waiting for a quorum for the public accounts committee, which is dear to the chairman's heart. I could not miss the opportunity to put to the Minister a question on housing management initiatives.
I see there is an increase from £56,000 to £1 million in the Estimate this year. Is the Minister aware of the outrageous disintegration in communities, particularly in inner city flat complexes? Will he take time off to tour what has been proven to be an absolute disaster and a waste of £5,5 million of taxpayers' money and visit Fatima Mansions in my constituency? Notwithstanding the expenditure of £5.5 million it is an example of the total failure of estate management in the form of 80 empty flats which cost a minimum of £25,000 each to refurbish.
When the previous Minister made this funding available I understood it was conditional on estate management being put in place. It has not happened and I worry on behalf of the taxpayers about the money going into refurbishment. I understand that there are other examples on the northside of the city where refurbishment has ceased because of in-house vandalism. Will the Minister contact the local authority, in this case Dublin Corporation, and insist that no money is injected to the refurbishment of complexes unless it is accompanied by a sophisticated housing estate management proposal?
It is probably the biggest scandal and, sadly in this instance, waste of public money. Does the Minister share my concern? Lest I am not here for the Minister's answer, I would be happy to accompany him to some of the inner city flat complexes in my constituency which have no estate management and are controlled by mobs who deal in drugs of death, That is not an exaggeration. I extend the hand of friendship to the Minister and the Minister of State and welcome them on a private visit to see what I am talking about.
This is one of the main items on my own list of points I want to make to the Minister, so I will add to what Deputy Byrne said. Councillors and TDs in the Dublin area have been screaming to the city manager about this problem for years. There is a unanimous view that it is wasteful to spend money on new estates and refurbishment unless there is proper estate management. The problem is that the response of the city manager in Dublin is to increase the number of people in the housing estate supervisor's office from three to five which goes to show that there is no conception of what is needed.
In the case of Fatima Mansions a few more million pounds were needed to privatise and control access to the area. One needs concierge facilities in these new flat complexes. In Elephant and Castle in London rundown flat complexes were transformed. If we spend this money, as in Fatima Mansions, without providing proper on-site management and servicing we are wasting our time. That is what happened in Fatima Mansions and it will be the same in other estates.
This committee has written to every local authority asking for views as to the extra powers they need in respect of estate management, but we also see the need for extra responsibilities. The local authorities, especially Dublin Corporation, are the worst neighbours anybody can have. Vast areas of my constituency have been destroyed by poor management by Dublin Corporation. It radiates to all the neighbourhoods and it is a very serious problem.
We urgently need new legislation and new thinking on estate management. A small percentage of people, maybe 5 or 6 per cent, are destroying these estates, whether they are flats or housing estates, because of lack of effective management by the authorities. During the recent Dublin West by-election I was shocked to see the condition of estates and the extraordinarily poor delivery of public service. Strangely, the Government was blamed for it even though it is a local authority function. It is an urgent matter. The local authority management system is not delivering.
I agree with the concerns expressed by the last two speakers. It is a major problem and I do not know where to start. Ballymun has a concierge system there and it is working well, although it is not perfect. I am concerned that reports that some refurbishment has not been successful will act as a damper on the Department's willingness to approve other refurbishment. I said in the Dáil a few weeks ago that the Minister was not putting extra money into it this year. Perhaps that is why he says he wants to re-evaluate and re-examine. In a way that is understandable.
Reports are coming back that refurbishment has not been a success. While it may not have been in some places, it would not be fair to say it is a failure everywhere. If people are not treated well and provided with good accommodation, one cannot expect them to act as good tenants. However, there is no doubt there is an element of messers or scumbags who do not observe normal standards of reasonable behaviour.
I know there are committees working on estate management but even at local level people seem to have different understandings of what it means. If one suggests that people should try to organise some tidying, grass cutting or flower planting, some of them are horrified. All they want to know is when they are getting control of the budget. Their mind is racing ahead and that is what they regard as estate management. One must walk before one runs and just giving local people control of the budget would not be the right way. However, they must be consulted and have a say.
I do not totally blame the corporation's officials. The Minister spoke about local authorities giving employment to 30,000 people. Before 1987 they probably gave employment to 35,000 or 40,000 people. The squeeze was put on other Departments. The Minister would know from his time in the Department of Health that staff numbers were reduced by approximately 3,000 in 1987 but the figure has increased again. The squeeze was also put on the Department of Education at the time but staff numbers there have also increased again. The same has happened in other Departments, with the exception of the Department of the Environment and local authorities. We ask local authorities to do a job without giving them the necessary resources. They seek funds from the Department for everything they do.
In one of this morning's newspapers I read that the Minister of State met groups yesterday to discuss this and other issues. I do not exactly know whom she met. In many places local groups spring up like two a penny and disappear, unlike NATO, which is an established group. These groups engage in infighting but do not have any lasting power. Would we better off ploughing all our resources into one organisation like NATO, which has a structure throughout housing estates?
This is a big problem. We must put the boot in with regard to many tenants who feel they can be given nice houses or refurbished flats without having to take proper care of them. I do not know who is to blame but there would certainly be support for attempts to sort out this problem. I am concerned about the Minister's possible reaction to other refurbishment schemes and that this problem may act as a damper on them.
This is the primary responsibility of the Minister of State and she will respond. I will speak on the issue in a general way because some questions were directed to me. Both the Minister of State and I regard this as an important issue. I have received deputations and representations on the future of difficult estates, particularly in Dublin but also elsewhere. I visited Ballymun and saw the concierge concept in one restored tower. There is clearly a major issue to be addressed and a number of sub-issues will require a degree of co-ordination which goes beyond my Department. In direct discussions I had with the assistant manager of Dublin Corporation with responsibility for housing, he raised the difficulties of evicting troublesome tenants, even those who have convictions for drug dealing. These difficulties have lasted in some cases for months with adjournments in the courts. We will have to find a comprehensive solution to this if we are to build the community confidence we need to tackle not just housing problems but broad social problems. These problems need a complete focus and this will be provided by the Department working in consort with local authorities and other agencies who need to be involved.
I share many of the concerns which have been expressed and I believe strongly that good housing management is an essential part of housing policy. We have done a considerable amount of work in this regard. The setting up of a housing management group is geared towards developing methods and ways of ensuring we have good management practice throughout the country. I accept there are difficult problems, particularly in Dublin, with regard to housing management. We are ensuring that in new housing developments we do not create this kind of problem over again. The scale and approach with regard to new buildings is different.
Refurbishment schemes have been successful in some areas but less so in others. A scheme is in operation in Ardbhaile in Cork City which started extremely well and looks like progressing well. With regard to ensuring good estate management, I am working closely with the housing management group which consists of senior officials from local authorities and the Department to ensure that we have not just physical refurbishment but serious changes in estate management and tenant participation. None of us underestimates how difficult this is but it is an important objective to which I am giving great consideration. I have visited areas in Dublin and I am aware of the problems in them. Local authorities have a central role and we must make sure there is a focus on this issue at that level. We must appreciate, as the Minister said, that there are factors outside housing policy which impact on these communities and that a more integrated approach is beneficial.
Deputy Noel Ahern asked about the conference which took place yesterday. The housing management group will report to me shortly. I asked it to hold a conference to ensure tenants and residents would have an input into the process. The organisations which participated had made submissions to the group or were involved in pilot schemes. The fact that there is a network of such schemes throughout the country may form the basis for the kind of organisation the Deputy seeks. We are ensuring that schemes do not simply start up without being monitored and without our learning from them.
In certain areas schemes are not working as well as in others. I accept some resident groups want to do more and may have overly ambitious views on what can be achieved. This is like rungs on a ladder. In some areas groups will be able and willing to take on more responsibility. Tenant participation is critical and we are committed to that principle. I am determined to pursue the course on which we have embarked. I will take on board the points made by the housing management group and work out an effective follow on from them. I would be interested to discuss this matter further with Deputies who have direct experience of this issue, particularly in local authority areas.
I am open to further initiatives. However, refurbishment is not a cheap option and we must make sure the resources we use are deployed effectively. Many of our refurbishment schemes are relatively modern and have resulted from misguided housing policy. We must make sure we do not spend money in a way which does not deal with the essential problems. Deputy Noel Ahern had a valid point. A shadow is cast over refurbishment if we find it does not provide long-term benefits to local communities. I want to ensure we have a good and effective refurbishment programme which has long-term effects in building and supporting local community development.
The views expressed by the Committee should not indicate that we should slow down refurbishment. On the contrary, in the inner city there is an ever more urgent need to complete refurbishment programmes. Much anti-social behaviour undoubtedly arises from the alien environment in which people live.
I will deal with some of the points which acutely affect my constituency and the surrounding constituencies. The Minister mentioned the difficulty of eviction. The courts are notoriously reluctant to evict people. It is understandably, a last resort, but we must be think of interim measures.
Rather than being seen to advocate eviction as a solution, the problem brought to my attention by the assistant city manager was where somebody sold the key of a flat to a squatter the day before he or she left. It takes months to remove squatters who have no entitlement to be there and who, in some cases, move in to run unlawful businesses. It is amazing such people cannot be evicted, and the best efforts of Dublin City Council have not been effective to date.
Eviction has to be the ultimate option if tenants persist in anti-social behaviour, but we also need interim measures. Provision should be included in local government legislation for going to court to have people bound to the peace for such behaviour. In certain cases penal rent additions could be made so that people would not ignore the clamour from their neighbours. Some other measures will have to be considered other than eviction which has to remain the ultimate sanction.
The scale of the problem in some small core areas is such that those sorts of measures will be ineffective. People will not pay and if we tried to fine them by having the legal capacity to increase their rent, they would laugh at us. In some areas people cannot even get private firms to take on security tasks. We need to have a broader strategy including the justice area, looking at the courts and examining the type of refurbishment we are doing. The ongoing debate on refurbishment concerns its merits versus other strategies.
Eviction must be available to local authorities but it is not the solution to the problem. Sometimes, however, it is the only solution left. I am impressed by certain schemes where a clear relationship has been established between a drop in crime and refurbishment programmes. It would be heartening if we could emulate that in other schemes in the Dublin area.
We must also understand what is going on. As Deputies know, one of the primary reasons for this breakdown is drugs and drug dealing which cannot be dealt with by a refurbishment programme. It requires an integrated approach, particularly with the Department of Justice. We have to tackle this issue and I am keen to ensure we can make progress in that regard.
I accept the validity of what the Minister of State said but it should not be an escape hatch for local authorities that do not face up to the need for proper management. I could name local authority estates in my own constituency — I will not do so because I do not want to stigmatise areas — where the main problem comes from 8 to 12 year olds for whom drug abuse is not the direct problem.
There is a management problem. Every estate in that area has problems radiating from one estate. There are not proper boundary walls or railings which would greatly help and neither is there financial provision for them. There is a danger the local authority will say the problem is so big it can do nothing about it. The basic problem lies with local authority management.
If the problem emerged from private rented accommodation in the area, the corporation would come down on the private landlord. There are many multi-occupied private landlords' dwellings in Dublin Central. While we have some problems with these, we do not have nearly the same amount of difficulties with them as with local authority estates because somebody is in charge and pressures can be brought to bear on the landlord. From that point of view, Dublin Corporation is the poorest of landlords.
There is no question of our neglecting the issue of good management. We are energetically promoting and developing policy on this. I set up a management group, which will report back shortly, precisely because I am aware of how serious the problem is. It is vital to make progress and ensure good management practice. In itself, that will not solve some of the extremely serious problems in our urban areas.
We all look forward to the report and we will see the way forward from there. There are, however, different degrees to it. With severe cases of squatters' anti-social behaviour, local authorities should have some sort of power to go to the Circuit Court or the High Court to get someone thrown out at 24 hours notice. The normal court system does not live up to what is required.
If someone is evicted for anti-social behaviour he should not be allowed to get a rent allowance for a nice house in a private area from the community welfare officer. We are making fools of ourselves by allowing that system to operate. We should not have to wait six months for the courts to allow us to evict a squatter who has run someone out of his house. I accept the chairman's idea of binding people to the peace, or something similar, where people are legitimate tenants and their children are not living up to an acceptable standard of behaviour. There should be some sort of formal warning rather than a letter from the estate supervisor's office.
At present, if people neglect to return their rent assessment form they get a penal assessment. Their rent is increased and that causes action. We need to think of instruments like that in anti-social behaviour cases. We need funding for footpaths, walls and railings in appropriate places.
We have raised the issue and the Minister knows the anxiety of the Dublin Members of the Committee. We had a special session on this some months ago and we hope urgent action will be taken on it. Can we move on now to the Estimates?
I am glad of the opportunity to talk about housing as I have been a member of a local authority for a number of years. Although there are none of them in the Chamber now, I address my remarks to people of a particular political persuasion who bleat on daily about controlling public expenditure. I want to tell them a few home truths because they are the very people, the Progressive Democrats in particular, who were in Government in the late 1980s. I thought at the time we would never again have any local authority housing because only four or five houses were being built to cater for housing lists of 350 plus. Those people who are now pontificating about the control of public expenditure destroyed the heart of local authorities in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
People should evaluate the change that took place in 1993. I am proud to have participated with my colleagues in that change which is significant and should not be glossed over. It is significant that County Westmeath had a 350 per cent increase in housing allocations. I salute the Minister on that achievement and long may it continue. The Minister will always have my support in seeking further funding for local authority housing.
Will we continue to say selfishly that everybody who is in a position to provide for themselves should do so, but that we should exclude and marginalise those who are not? Will we condemn people to mobile homes and caravans? That has happened. It was great to hear the Chairman talking about local authority estates. If we had another few years of the Progressive Democrats in Government, we would have no estates about which to be worried. We should be clear about that. I am sick of the Progressive Democrats pontificating about ensuring public expenditure is under control and that tax concessions go to the rich. What about poor people who are not in a position to provide for themselves? I was elected to the House to make sure they are included. There has been a firm measure of achievement, but more needs to be done. I wholeheartedly support local authority and voluntary housing programmes which have been undertaken and I salute the Minister and the Minister of State in that regard.
I am sure the Progressive Democrats can look after themselves. The slow down in funds for housing probably began before they came into office. I was first elected to the city council in 1985 when there were about 400 empty flats in Ballymun. Funding for housing probably began to slow down in 1985 or 1986 and it did not begin to flow back——
It died in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
I accept that. There were 400 empty flats in Ballymun at one stage and the problem was that we were too slow to turn the tap back on after the money stopped flowing. We all support what has happened over the past three, four or five years. The tap has been turned back on, although probably too slowly initially.
The Minister visited Ballymun a few weeks ago. Has he any word on the refurbishment of the flats? As regards inner city flats, a Rolls Royce type job is not always necessary. There was a very successful window replacement programme a few years ago. Sometimes a cheaper job can satisfy the need. We hear rumblings in Ballymun and in the Minister's statements that the roofs will be done this year and the lifts next year. I know I am contradicting myself by saying a Rolls Royce type job is not always necessary, but will the Minister clarify his thinking on that matter?
A report stated the amalgamation of the rent allowance scheme and the local authority housing list scheme would go ahead. How far has that got? What are the problems as regards the mechanics of that? A person can get rent allowance very easily, but they could be on a local authority list for God knows how long. We are buying more houses than we are building in the Dublin city area. Is Dublin the only place in which this is being done? Is the Minister happy about that or has he any concerns? I believe it is a good idea, but I have doubts as to whether it will continue to be acceptable to some people.
If the corporation buys 300 houses at a time when house prices are going through the roof, we may be adding to that problem. Many of the house we have bought have probably been good value. Some of the tenants are getting exceptionally good value. Is it logical to charge them cheap rents? I am not suggesting that rents be increased, but I understand in the UK there is an economic rents system whereby the local authority gets the proper rent. I do not know if the tenant would pay it or if they would get a rent allowance. If we are buying houses for £60,000, they should be properly maintained so they will not fall to pieces in years to come.
Deputy Sargent mentioned the rural resettlement scheme. While we all slagged the surrender grant scheme in 1985, has it been given any consideration in relation to rural resettlement? We could justifiably bring it back for those wishing to participate in the rural resettlement scheme. Will the Minister up date us on the transfer of houses between the county councils and the corporation?
Given that I sounded off on about a dozen areas at the start, is it sufficient for me to hear the answers as each section is dealt with rather than having to repeat myself? I hope to be able to attend another meeting at 12 p.m.
If the Minister can facilitate the Deputy, I will permit it. I would like to accommodate the Deputy as far as possible, but we do not want to keep repeating ourselves. Tenant purchase applications by the unemployed have been consistently refused by Dublin Corporation, although the differential rent payable may be comparable to or higher than the purchase payments. Can the Minister do anything about that? Is adequate progress being made in relation to the settlement and housing of travellers? Is any progress being made on the sale of local authority flats?
The Minister of State will deal with the majority of housing questions but I would like to respond to Deputy Ahern's question on refurbishment generally and whether a Rolls Royce type job will be done on foot of my visit to Ballymun. The Department has a number of specific proposals from Dublin Corporation. We are evaluating those proposals and discussing them with the corporation, but no decisions have been made on the best way forward. However, they are important enough for myself and the Minister of State to be working on them. While they are in the designated area of the Minister of State, the level of financing involved may ultimately require a Government decision rather than a departmental one.
As regards Deputy Ahern's point on buying houses, it is not a feature of Dublin Corporation only; it is being developed elsewhere. It is certainly helpful in developing the principle of social mix. There is a role for the acquisition of houses, although there has been some resistance to the idea. As it is becoming more common, I expect that resistance will not be so problematic. It is happening in many local authority areas and evidence shows that it is very successful. It is an important part of what social housing is all about.
As regards the SWA allowances, I set up an interdepartmental committee with the Departments of Health, Social Welfare and Finance and asked them to come up with recommendations on this transfer. As Members are aware, it is part of the Government programme that it takes place. Obviously, there are implications that must be considered carefully. When one considers how much of an increase in funding has occurred in this payment, it makes sense to transfer it to local authorities and bring it into the housing policy arena.
Considerable progress has been made on the transfer of houses in Dublin Corporation and county council areas. This transfer is a complicated arrangement because five local authorities are involved. I hope we can achieve an orderly transfer within a reasonable time. We have covered a lot of ground and much documentation is involved.
On tenant purchase applications, local authorities have been clearly instructed that they cannot discriminate against the unemployed. Each application must be judged on its merits. That is a simple and clear direction. I am not satisfied with the progress made as regards traveller accommodation. I have Cabinet approval for the national strategy for traveller accommodation, which is an indication that the Government as a whole is not satisfied with the progress to date and that we are serious about achieving the targets set out in the strategy. I have set up a special unit in my Department and it is already functioning. I am committed to making progress on this matter and introducing legislation at the earliest possible date.
There are difficulties with the sale of local authority flats. I support the principle of people being given the option to buy their own homes but there are difficulties involved. A legal problem exists and there is also a problem with the long term maintenance of people living in flats.
The rural resettlement idea has functioned well. I have assisted Rural Resettlement Ireland in a number of ways. First, the grant it received for administration and expenses has increased to £60,000, which is a considerable amount of money for the work it does. I am also involved in developing a pilot scheme with the banks in funding the acquisition of houses by people wanting to make this move. We have not yet completed that because there is a problem with the bank, but I hope we will be able to overcome it.
The other development is under the rental subsidy scheme where Rural Resettlement Ireland is building houses in a few areas. The idea of regenerating rural areas with new populations is a sound one. It does not work in all cases because there is a big difference in the way of life but it has been generally successful, there is considerable interest in it and we are supporting that drive.
The guidelines on the urban and village renewal programme are clear. Local authorities have been given comprehensive guidelines in relation to what this money will be spent on. None of them is under the misapprehension that it is for normal maintenance. They have been asked to produce action plans, which they have done, with the clear emphasis on the regeneration and economic and social development of the various centres. Indeed, in the last month I initiated a successful seminar, where all local authorities were represented, to reinforce the message of what this programme was about.
Is that information available to others, apart from the officials in the local authorities?
I am sure the Deputy can get a copy of the guidelines; I will send him one if he wants.
It would help.
There may be a slight confusion about what service sites refer to here. Traveller accommodation is a separate heading. Service sites provide for people in need of housing to build their own homes. Halting sites are a separate item. Money has never been a problem; the problem has been political which is what sparked and generated the national strategy. The Deputy can rest assured on that score.
Do the protests increase the cost of providing halting sites?
Yes. The fact that infrastructural costs are so high indicates the difficulties. We cannot continue the way we have been functioning on traveller accommodation, but I do not want to pretend it is possible to provide it cheaply; it is not. However, we must ensure that we get the best value for money and the best results. I have run out of patience on this matter and I am determined to make progress. You have strongly supported this, Sir, and I welcome the support of Deputies. We all find it difficult but we must ensure we make progress on the matter.
There is an increase in the Estimates and the rate for thatching houses. While I appreciate that there is a problem with insurance, it is not our brief and it might be more appropriate to raise it elsewhere. On the energy audit, a circular has been prepared and sent out to local authorities, encouraging them to develop better energy conservation policies and approaches. There is an emphasis on energy conservation to ensure that where refurbishment programmes are being carried out, local authorities are using it to the maximum in relation to energy conservation. While the standards of new houses are high, we must still ensure that when opportunities arise, local authorities take on board the needs for sustainable housing and energy conservation.
Do they not have to provide an energy audit? Is it only a guideline?
No. A circular has been sent out but that is as far as we have gone at this stage. I am examining ways in which we can develop this idea further. There is always a danger of overloading local authorities but I would not put it on the backburner by any means, even if it is a gas burner.
Confining Dublin Corporation to the city for its housing programme is creating enormous problems. It means it wants to grab every site or house that becomes available in the area. As each year goes by, the problem will become more acute. Is that policy set in stone?
What we are talking about as regards a transfer, where there clearly is a problem at the moment, is where corporation houses are in county council areas. County councillors, naturally, have these houses in their areas but do not have any responsibility for them, which is not very efficient. If we are talking about good management, we must streamline the matter properly.
The corporation has made some efforts as regards meeting the housing provision within its boundaries. The new approaches in the type of housing being developed in the core of the city are welcome. We must be more conscious about developing in city areas rather than spreading out further into the countryside. This requires changes in the approach to designing houses. I appreciate there are restrictions, but it is also an opportunity for an imaginative approach to housing which should not be missed. It is a fundamental principle of sustainable housing that dwellings should be built in cities rather than indefinitely extending suburbia.
The corporation has a tendency to grab every site and ultimately this may defeat the purpose of social mix. Private housing develops and extends the boundaries of the city, but one may not get a social mix in the city. The problem will eventually become acute. It is already serious in certain areas.
Deputy Sargent commented on local government funding. His view is that whatever funding mechanism is used, it should not only be successful from a fiscal perspective but also from a behavioural perspective. I presume he means the behaviour should be environmentally focused. The Deputy indicated he would welcome charging for water if it was metered.
Central taxation should also be reduced.
It must all be placed in a package. I am inviting all parties, local authorities and their members to engage in the building of a consensus and a way forward. I will not place traps in anybody's way. I do not seek to entrap anybody in relation to openness on this matter and I realise I have a responsibility to lead the debate with concrete proposals. I hope I can soon.
Change in local government funding will not implemented by one political party or a combination of parties in Government unless a much broader consensus is built. Experience over 25 years has demonstrated that patchwork, ad hoc arrangements to meet immediate needs do not involve a comprehensive overview. The public is willing to have an efficient local government system and many of the matters in the housing area which we discussed could be dealt with effectively if resources and powers were available to people to take control at local level. I welcome the Deputy’s comments and I hope a debate will be sparked in the near future which will work towards the achievement of consensus.
In relation to water generally, I strongly agree with Deputy Sargent's view that the water supply policy in Dublin is askew if, as the analysis shows, 40 per cent plus is leaking from the system. I made the right decision soon after I took office to spend £0.5 million on an analysis of the system rather than immediately sanctioning increased capacity and the pumping of more water. We are now much better placed to make good decisions and some £35 million will be spent on the Dublin system to prevent leakage. In addition to being fiscally sound, it is a much more environmentally sound attitude to take rather than simply pumping more water through the system. I look forward to significant improvements. Given the scale of the Dublin system, it will never be the case that there will not be a leak. However, it can be remarkably better than at present.
It is the Government's intention and commitment to fulfil the waste water directive and put treatment facilities in place by the year 2005. I also stated repeatedly that this will be done to the highest standard. Some countries, including our nearest neighbour, have designated some of their coastal zones as less sensitive. However, Ireland has not done this and provision has been made for the building of at least secondary treatment facilities for all outflows to our coastal zone. In general it will be post secondary treatment in the inner waterways and most of the coastal zones.
What about the earlier deadlines?
There are earlier deadlines for sludge management. We are working towards meeting the deadlines and have not sought any derogations from the component structure measures which are to be reached at intervals up to the year 2005.
On waste management, we did not wait for the Act to be signed into law by the President to do the preparatory work. We are well placed now and local authorities are already preparing waste management plans. Industry is taking initiatives and REPAK will be launched soon, which is a significant initiative waste packaging. Deputy Sargent was not disparaging about an initiative on waste packaging but he wanted a comprehensive attitude.
It was not enough.
Composting will be a component of waste management and targets will be set in terms of taking material which can be composted out of the waste stream. Some submissions from local authorities, such as Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council, have been received already and I hope other progressive authorities such as Fingal County Council will follow suit——
Wishful thinking.
——in relation to having a composting plan as part of an overall recycling and waste minimisation strategy. It is very much the order of the day. I announced recycling grants for local government plans and for the private sector. They will be important catalysts in bringing about the change which was signalled during discussions on the Waste Management Act in the past 18 months to two years.
A component of the waste management policy is the litter initiative, which is most important from an environmental perspective. On the litter initiative and the new legislative changes proposed, I broadly outlined the legislative changes in replies to parliamentary questions. They will, for example, give new powers to local authorities in relation to specific points of litter pollution, such as fast food outlets. Organisers of events which generate litter, such as gymkhanas, field days, county finals or other major crowd pulling events, will be required to have a litter management proposal as part of their application to hold the event. They will then become responsible for the litter generated by such an event.
Following direct discussions with local authority members, I am most concerned about enforcement. There are real difficulties in that regard. It is not the same as a parking offence where the data of a car registration is available and the offender can be reached. If a person is stopped in the street for dropping litter, it is difficult if he is truculent with the litter warden. Some mechanism must be found to deal with this problem. Many of the prosecutions to date have been for dumping rather than littering. I hope the components of enforcement and education will bring about a change in attitude which will make it socially unacceptable to drop litter and that people will be embarrassed by being accosted by litter wardens on the street. I am anxious that the maximum number of litter wardens be appointed.
Deputy McCormack might be interested in my response to Deputy Sargent's question about Mutton Island. The Deputy sought the subhead in which funding for Mutton Island is included. Particular projects are not identified in the Estimate but a sum of £115 million is included under subhead D.1, which is a bloc allocation of resources to such works. In terms of the specific question about Mutton Island, I am still in discussion with the Commission.
Another question related to car pollution. Deputy Sargent and the committee are aware that the Dublin transportation office was inaugurated this week. The greatest volume of traffic is in Dublin and traffic there is one of the most important environmental problems we face. I have responsibility for the Dublin transportation initiative. It will involve the expenditure of well over £600 million and deal in a comprehensive way with the traffic problems in Dublin. It will try to find a rational, efficient, environmentally sound solution.
I would like to refer to the remarks of the new Chief Executive of the Dublin Transportation Office, Mr. John Henry, who made a powerful speech at the inauguration of the office. His mindset in giving the city back to the people rather than to cars is something that will certainly gladden Deputy Sargent's heart. It will give an indication of the attitude of the Dublin Transportation Office. A great number of people would use public transport if it was efficient and available. The investment programme in strategic bus corridors which has been front loaded by the DTO this year is a great signal of where they are heading.
Earlier this year I transferred the ability to allocate funding to the various local authorities in the DTI area through the DTO to the Dublin Transportation Office. I was interested to see what their priorities would be and they readily identified quality bus corridors as number one and allocated funding accordingly. Eleven strategic bus corridors are envisaged under the initiative and I look forward to them being in place. The building of the light rail, the completion of the sea ring and, within this year, the appointment of a director of traffic for Dublin are other priorities. With all due respect to Dublin Corporation, I did not want to simply appoint a director of traffic to be subsumed into the existing set-up. I have taken time to do an analysis of how the office of the director of traffic will work in parallel with the existing structure because they will be given real and important powers.
Answerable to whom?
That has to be defined but two things will be clear. The director of traffic will be an employee of Dublin Corporation and thus answerable to the city council. I do not want it to be another officer under existing management, simply to do a job. It is a very important new role to transfer functions from the gardaí and other agencies to this new office. For example, freeing up the gardaí from the traffic management of tow-away; gardaí are towing away vehicles. That can be done by civilians and free up gardaí to do other work and they will also be empowered to wheel clamp etc. That office must be right and I am taking time to ensure it will be, but I am intent on having the director in place by the end of this year.
Will the traffic wardens be transferred back to Dublin Corporation?
That is the idea. The traffic function in total would be under the new director of traffic managed by the corporation under the control of——
What about enforcement of the bus corridors or the bus lanes, for instance? There is no enforcement.
They will have to be enforced.
There is no presence.
The gardaí will not have any powers taken from them in that regard but we might look at it being enforced by another agency such as the director of traffic.
Traffic police?
Yes. That is something to be considered.
I want to remind the Minister that he did not mention bicycles. I just want him to bear it in mind because he was talking about an overall transport package. He mentioned light rail, bus, cars——
I did not go through every subset of the DTI.
He was heading that way.
A lot of what the Mininster says about moving people to public transport is excellent. The LRT will be a failure if it does not interact with the DART and if there is no development of the ARROW service. We have cut our cloth so far back that the very purpose of an integrated public transport system has been lost. It must interact with the DART and the ARROW service even if it means phasing it in over a longer period.
The Minister left out one point about the Irish language in the Environmental Protection Agency Report. The Environmental Protection Agency have taken note of it but the Minister might want to note it also.
The Deputy wants leagan ghaeilge don——
A leagan Ghaeilge or a leagan dá theangach.
I will note that and pass it on to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Minister stated that all dwellings will have bathrooms by 1998. The committee passed a motion saying all dwellings should be fitted by 1999. What about private dwellings still without bathrooms?
There are initiatives there for the private sector, depending on circumstance. For example, in the case of elderly people who require it and are not in a position to financially provide for themselves, the housing aid for the elderly initiative has been increased by £1 million or 33 per cent this year. It is something that I and the Minister of State in particular, are supportive of, so that facility is there.
I hope that the objective is there. The committee passed a motion to this effect weeks ago. We should set the objective of all homes having a bathroom going into the next century. The Minister will leave it on the local authority side.
The local authority side is houses in public ownership. We have to reflect on whether you can tell somebody they must have a bathroom because there are people, even in local authority housing who did not.
For many years people in rural areas were forgotten, especially those who lived on county roads and regional roads. The Minister may recall that 12 months ago I gave him a harrying time——
The Deputy did indeed.
——unashamedly so because I come from a rural area and I know the significance of an effective road infrastructure for people to carry on their business. I am also aware, particularly in north Westmeath, of the phenomenon of rural depopulation and rural degeneration in general. Our failure to address the deterioration of the county roads over the past decade contributed in no small way to that problem. How could you expect people to live, carry on their business, rear families and send children to school on roads that you would not put an ass and cart on? They were designed for that and that is what they were left like.
I salute the achievement and I welcome the huge increase in the allocation for non-national roads. I also welcome the thrust of the plan. Will it be value for money? Will we put plasters on the potholes and in three weeks' time be back where we started? The Minister has looked for stretches of road to be done and that is to be welcomed. Mr. Jim Hearn, the county engineer of Westmeath County Council was long an advocate of that system, in Westmeath people had waited a number of years to get potholes filled, but we had this value for money system and wanted to do it right. We are delighted to see that the Department of the Environment is taking a leaf from the book we applied there.
County roads are often the source of a lot of industry. That is where original produce starts and very often with the breakdown there was general despair. Failure to maintain, repair and indeed install county roads was having a major impact on the rural environment and on people living in rural areas. I compliment the Minister on that initiative. The Minister has recently announced an audit programme for this ten year programme which he has in place and county councils have already submitted their five year programmes to him. The initiative was sparked by his Department but he can rest assured that the signal he has given to rural areas by this extra allocation has not gone unnoticed.
It is important to note that one of the conditions was that the money would not be diverted to employing extra staff. I had a reservation about that. I believe, perhaps because I am the son of a county council worker, that the local authority has a role in generating employment. I have argued strongly over the last couple of years that if we had more people working on the roads, we would be able to carry out preventative maintenance. That is an important concept because years ago people very often carried out significant work by dealing with things pre-emptively. I would not like to see the scope for local authority employment hamstrung or hindered in any way by any conditions the Minister might place on the programme. Local authority employees are critical in the road implementation programme at this level.
The local improvement scheme is probably the best scheme ever from the Department, as the Minister will see if a cost benefit analysis of this scheme is ever carried out. It is very hard to get money from the Department for it. The Minister is still fiddling around; he is giving £500,000 extra this year. I will give the committee an instance of an old lady who lives on her own, a mile up a lane. It was not possible to reach the lady's house as the surface of the lane was in very bad repair. Her neighbour was living a bit further out — at least two people must benefit from the scheme — and the scheme has given a new lease of life to those two people and to others like them.
The allocation for this scheme was £2.5 million last year and it may be £3 million this year. This is small bread when it is shared between the local authorities. Westmeath County Council has been allocated £50,000. I said to the Minister in the context of another proposal that it would not be possible to build an igloo with the money we are talking about. One would not build much of a road for £50,000. I know the available funds are spread among various authorities.
The igloos in Westmeath must be expensive.
We do things the right way. We do not want to have to go back a second time to do them again. We get great value for money out of that £50,000 but I appeal to the Minister to send us anything that may be left in the pot at the end of the year. We have a huge waiting list under this scheme. This money goes to people living in isolated areas. I know the Minister gives discretion but the parameters are set. Westmeath has been stuck at a level of aid under this scheme of between £40,000 and £50,000 for the last ten years. There has not been much of an increase, so perhaps the Minister would increase it this year. It is money well spent and the rural people appreciate it.
I have a few questions about national roads. What is the reason for the delay in the southern cross part of the sea ring? When is it likely to start and be completed? Is there some legal problem and if so, when is it likely to go ahead? I know the Portlaoise by pass is under construction at the moment, but what about the section from the Curragh to the Portlaoise bypass, going through Monasterevin and Kildare town, which is an extraordinarily bad part of that road? Is there a plan or a timetable for bringing that up to date? What is the position with the road from Dublin to the Border at Dundalk? Do we have a date by which we will have a proper dual carriageway or motorway from Dublin to the Border? Why has there been such delay in improving that road? Finally — this will be a question close to Deputy Penrose's heart — what about the Kinnegad bypass?
I am not an expert on national roads; I will leave that to other people. However, it appears to me that a fortune is spent on roads every year. We hear that a certain amount was spent on roads one year, yet we do not seem to see the results the following year. The Department spends this money but farmers and landowners have a certain responsibility. There is no point in draining fields and directing the water onto the road, or in driving 30 tonne milk trucks on the roads and expecting them to stand up to this kind of treatment. Every road cannot be built to withstand wear and tear from heavy trucks. If there are three tonne limits on certain roads in suburbia in Dublin the different grades of roads throughout the country should have tonnage limits.
Many people in Dublin are upset that the Department will not fund the Cork Street by-pass. This area is not on my patch — the Chairman would know more about it than I do — but the road has been at the planning stage for many years. Now that there is final agreement and everybody wants it, the Department will not pay the money and expects the corporation to fund it out of its block grant, which it cannot do. I am concerned about delays on many projects, including the Dublin port tunnel and the light rail.
The same problems are now being experienced in regard to the Dublin port tunnel as were experienced when the Waste Bill was debated last year. Local communities do not know how to fight against what is proposed. While the environmental impact assessment is an independent study, the general perception is that officialdom has to do the study to justify whatever project is being proposed. Local communities are inclined to feel hopeless and helpless fighting bureaucracy. This might have happened with Mulhuddart or Kill. I am not suggesting that the Minister should write blank cheques for these people——
Is the Deputy complaining about delays or does he want to empower people to object?
Some will object anyway. I know there is a problem there and I know that to provide some of them with money would be to create trouble for yourself.
"Come and sue me; I will pay your costs."
I do not suggest that. I do not know how it could be done. One small grant could be given to an umbrella group in each case. Perhaps the philosophy is that we just have to live with these people, that encouraging them in any way is only causing more problems. Some of these groups have genuine concerns and consultation is effective. The issue came up last year when some group suggested that if the Department was going to put a landfill in a certain place, there should be a compensation fund, either for individuals or the community.
The same thing is now happening with the roads. I am in favour of the port tunnel and I have no time for the people complaining about the tunnel who do not live at either end. However, there are a few hundred people living at both ends of the tunnel who have a legitimate case. I would like to think that there was some way of compensating them. I do not know whether their houses will be bought by the State, but I would like to see them getting some form of compensation. While we know the environmental impact study is a fair report, we have to get that message across. More funding or compensation than they are already getting should be afforded them.
I thank the Chairman for his support for the Kinnegad by-pass. It was debated last month at a meeting of Westmeath County Council for a considerable length of time. We were very disappointed that it was taken out of the programme; we understood that it was in the 1994-1999 programme initially. Any sensible programme would have included it. We are very disappointed that it was taken out as a lot of consultation and work had been done in relation to it. It is the biggest bottleneck outside Dublin. It is impossible to get through it on a holiday weekend. Drivers are stuck there for up to two hours on the Bonard Road. Many people commute to and from Dublin.
I spoke to the chief executive of the NRA, Mr. Tobin, and we brought that to his attention. Indeed, Dublin and rural Deputies were vociferous in that regard. He said it might be possible to look at it in the course of the mid-term review, which I understand is in 1997. I strongly urge the Minister, although it is a matter for the NRA, to try to include the Kinnegad by-pass in the mid-term review.
Great work was done on the eastern part of the N4 and on the western part down to Rathowen, County Westmeath, but there is a bottleneck in one area between Portnashangan and Ballynafid, County Westmeath. A sum of £3.5 million is awaited for this work. The CPOs are in order and will not be valid for much longer. What will happen now? I would not give the relevant authority top marks for planning.
We have a dynamic roads programme. We spend huge sums on national and non-national roads, but it is clear that no matter how much we spend there will be pressure to spend more. All of us could identify roads which need to be upgraded and that is why we have a National Roads Authority which tries to independently assess needs, and plans in a rational and developmental way for all our needs.
I welcome the kind words of Deputy Penrose and contrast them to his attitude to the non-national roads allocation last year. The Government has taken to heart the view of rural Ireland and rural Deputies who wanted considerable investment in upgrading the non-national road stock. We have invested not only on a once-off basis but in a planned and co-ordinated rolling programme while demanding value for money.
The only caveat the Deputy entered was the permanent staff allocation. The first objective is to restore the roads and to do that does not require hiring many permanent staff. In the past in some local authorities road workers who were full-time employees could not be sent out to work because they had no materials and there was no funds to pay for materials. That is nonsensical. I want to get the best value possible for the considerable resources now available. Local authorities have matched what I have provided with as much of their own resources as they can, so we have in excess of £200 million to be spent on non-national roads this year. We will see remarkable transformations. I have instanced 16,000 kilometres of roads done last year under the initiative — 1,000 projects — and that will be doubled this year. It is having a remarkable impact not only in the concrete changes but in the enthusiasm and confidence of rural people who see something being done about a problem they felt would never be tackled.
The chairman made a few points about the national roads. I have a declared constituency interest with regard to the southern cross route. I would like to see the southern cross and the south-east motorway completed so that the traffic from the south-east can by-pass Dublin or go to Dublin Airport directly. We are working as hard as we can to achieve that objective. The southern cross is still the subject of High Court proceedings. We are trying to achieve a resolution and are captured until such time as the courts determine these matters. I am confident the objective of having the southern cross and the south-east motorway finished within the timescale set out in the plan will be achieved, that is, by 2002. That is the attitude of the chairman of the Dublin Transportation Office also because it is a strategic part of that whole scheme of things too.
With regard to the Kildare-Portlaoise link, I have signed the motorway order for the Kildare by-pass, which is the next major development on that road. That is an expensive development. The road linking Kildare to Portlaoise is not in the current plan and we must just see how the strategic links identified can by funded and undertaken.
The Dundalk-Newry road is an important link. I met Mr. Malcolm Moss, my counterpart in Northern Ireland, in this regard. The Dublin-Northern Ireland corridor has become an important one. Although it represents a small percentage of the total non-national road, it will set a much greater percentage of total investment than its road length would qualify. The Balbriggan by-pass was obviously next in line and will start this year. The line of the Newry-Dundalk road is being negotiated now jointly by a working party from my Department and the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland. I hope those matters can be settled and that we can have a first class motorway or dual-carriageway link from Dublin to the North. I could not give a time frame on that, but the component elements of it with regard to the Balbriggan by-pass, which will be a great improvement, the Dunleer by-pass and onwards to the Dundalk-Newry link are all well advanced in planning.
I cannot give the Deputy any more hope than has been given with regard to Kinnegad. It is identified as a bottleneck and certainly merits consideration. If resources become available, I know the NRA will consider that.
With regard to Deputy Ahern's point about the Cork Street re-routing, that is obviously a matter for Dublin Corporation. A block grant of £3 million for urban roads was given to the corporation and if it wants to spend it, it can. The Department does not give special allocations for non-national roads any more. It is up to local authorities to spend their block grant as best they can.
The delay in some of the major works, such as the port access tunnel was mentioned. I am committed to the port access tunnel. It is important to get it built from an environmental as well as a transport perspective. There is genuine public anxiety about aspects and it must be met. The attitude which all local authorities adopted in the past was that they did not really need to convince people or be open with them and inform them about developments. I hope that will change under the SMI and the quality initiative which I launched, so officials can be open with local residents.
Sometimes there are irrational fears about houses being affected by underground trains. Every city in Europe has an underground system which does not obviously impact on the traffic, the people or the housing above. We must give clear accurate engineering information to such people.
On compensation to people disrupted by major development, do we give compensation to everybody affected by a road, a sewage plant, a halting site, a wind farm, a telecommunications mast and a dozen other infrastructural works which are necessary in modern times? I think not. The general point of having an open transparent process of evaluation for any scheme is important. The corporation is holding an open and transparent process of evaluation with regard to the port access tunnel. I hope it will allay people's fears, and any genuine issues can be addressed and resolved.
Let us move on from the subject of roads to other headings.
I have raised the matter of the Naas-Kilcullen by-pass before and have had no response. On the access point on the Dublin side, there is no lighting. It is absolutely deplorable and dangerous. I was nearly killed on it. I cannot understand why there are no lights on the Dublin side of such a major motorway junction. It is extraordinary, particularly when other less important junctions are lit up like Christmas trees. There is only one light in the middle of the road where it divides. Perhaps the Minister could tell me when lighting will be provided at that junction.
I will raise that matter with the NRA. However, we do not provide route lighting on every stretch of motorway and dual carriageway. I remember somebody coming from Dublin to Wexford for the first time at night and telling me she was surprised, when she left the Dublin area, that there were no street lights on rural roads. I will bring that dangerous junction to the attention of the NRA and I will ask it to reply directly to the Deputy.
One subhead shows a dramatic decrease, something on which Deputies usually like to focus. Subhead C4 shows an 87 per cent decrease for other road related services. One of the functions of local authorities is to collect road taxes and send them to the Exchequer. They are then recouped by my Department for expenses they incur in its collection. That is inefficient from a cash flow perspective. As a result, from 1 January this year I have allowed local authorities to deduct from the tax collected their expenses on an ongoing basis. There is no need for the subhead to pay them directly from the Department. This has greatly improved the cash flow capacity of local authorities.
Is it a first step towards letting them keep the taxes collected?
That might be a suggestion.
My grandfather was born in Cork Street in a pub which my great-grandfather owned and which is due to be demolished because the street is being widened. There is a convent beside the pub where I attended a meeting. An old nun of 86 years of age, who went to Cork Street in 1925, was waiting for me at the gate. I said to her that the house of my roots was being knocked down. She replied: "God love you, Mr. Mitchell, I was told that in 1926". The road is horrific.
As regards the second river crossing in Waterford, the Minister may be aware that Louisiana Pacific is now in full swing.
I have more than a passing interest in Louisiana Pacific which is on the border of my constituency.
I know that. It is a major expansion for the forestry industry and it is a joint venture with Coillte Teoranta. If we had traffic problems before this happened, I do not know how we would describe them now. The problem has escalated out of all proportion. Traffic has come to a standstill in the city because it is coming from the Dublin and Sallypark sides and from the other side. The consultants are studying this matter and I am sure they will make a positive decision about the second crossing. Will Department officials ensure that this major infrastructural deficiency in the south-east forms part of the mid-term review?
It will be a busy mid-term review. I am not sure what little resources, if any, will be available after the mid-term review. There are pressures in relation to road funding in Europe. Because the road network in most of developed Europe is well advanced, there is an environmental view of roads which is not as supportive of roads as we are because we lack that basic infrastructure. That is the backdrop to the battles we are continuously fighting in Brussels.
I am convinced of the need for a second crossing in Waterford. The ongoing consultancy analysis is to quantify it. We will have to look at location and traffic flows. The establishment of Louisiana Pacific is another factor in a situation which already merited examination. I was anxious that Louisiana Pacific should set up where it did. It is an extremely important development for the adjoining counties of Wexford, Kilkenny and Waterford and a huge source of business for the port. I will pay attention to it. Once the need is identified and the consultants' report is available to us, we will see what funding can be acquired to advance it to that stage.
Mr. Esben Poulsen is not only responsible for this but he has visited the area and he knows it well. I and many other people visited Brussels five or six times. There is no difficulty in Brussels because they know the area and the type of investment already made. They will be surprised if there is no attempt to include this structure in the mid-term review.
I did not say there would be difficulties with the project.
I know that.
I could probably name a dozen projects which would have no difficulty meeting European criteria. However, the total sum of money available is what I am talking about. I can only add a new project to the development plan if there is either an additional resource base available, which is possible, or if we drop some of the existing schemes. The latter is a difficult option to take.
In the past six or seven months President Santer announced specific funding in relation to the mid-term review. We do not know what Ireland's share is but we can anticipate new resources.
I do not want to go into the detail of the mid-term review because I do not want to put all my cards on the table. In balancing Cohesion Funding there is no guarantee that roads will be favoured above water or sanitary services, for example, which are also prioritised by the Commission.
I accept that but President Santer was specific about transport and the trans-European network of which this forms part. I am putting down markers in that context.
The Minister recently launched his litter campaign but the streets of Dublin are worse today than they were five years ago. Some progress had been made but we seem to have gone backwards in the past five years. Can we see a day when we will have clean streets in Dublin? There is an urban renewal scheme but it applies only to rural areas. It seems to be a dichotomy. It is called the urban renewal scheme but it is for rural villages. I raised this previously with the Minister of State. The village of Inchicore, for instance, in my constituency is destroyed by traffic and run down. It needs renewal but there is no coverage for city villages. Many city villages have been destroyed by traffic or other developments nearby. There is urban renewal in the city centre but nothing in city villages. I make a strong plea for my home village of Inchicore which is destroyed and needs renewal.
On funding, is the Minister talking about finding a new way to raise £60 million which is got from water charges now? Is the Minister talking about a new way of getting the cost of the rate support grant or is he talking about a new way of funding the £2 billion? What is the limit of his examination? Deputy Sargent talked about water meters. Is there any costing on that? The matter was discussed at local authority level on the grounds that you could have a certain amount free depending on the number of people per household. When the £3,000 first time buyer's grant is given for new houses should we insist that a condition is that a water meter is installed? It has been mentioned before to corporation officials. Their fear is that it would cost millions to install meters everywhere though it is a good idea.
The volume of packaging has increased phenomenally in the past ten years and packaging is a very significant proportion of the overall problem of litter. We did a litter survey to break down the components of litter. IBAL (Irish Business Against Litter) also did an analysis of public attitudes to litter. We need to take strong measures. We have launched an advertising campaign which has a good theme —"It is our country; do not rubbish it"— to appeal to a sense of patriotism. We have an education pack in every primary and secondary school now with a video and education module to talk about litter as an environmental issue because young people in particular are interested in global warming or saving the whale.
That is an easy option.
They are not focused on litter. There is nothing easy about changing people's attitudes and, unfortunately, the litter survey showed that the vicinity of secondary schools and fast food restaurants were two of the worst places. We need enforcement. We will have a new Litter Act published before the end of the year which will give the powers I described previously to local authorities and others. In a coherent way it will be a drive, but I said when I launched it is not a three or six months' initiative. It is an ongoing battle that will have a new unit in the Department to co-ordinate it. A number of initiatives will be taken up by local authorities but, until we change the public's attitude that it is not acceptable to drop litter on the street, we will have a recurrent litter problem and will be seen as dirty. There is no doubt part of that will be enforcement. I will leave the villages to the Minister of State.
I am looking for a new funding base for local authorities that would subsume the rate support and other grants; not the £2 billion. Rate support grants are just under £200 million now and were £193 million in the previous Estimate. We must find a funding mechanism to raise that volume of revenue and project it into future need as well
In lieu of the rate support grant?
I hope to work towards a new local funding mechanism instead of the rate support grant. It is taken from income tax, we could reduce income tax by that amount and have another mechanism to raise local revenue. Whatever system is put in place it cannot increase the total net tax burden, including charges. We have to find a system that allows local authorities to raise revenue on a guaranteed basis and allows them to function. That is my ambition and it is a tall order. I have no doubts about it. When we look at the specifics there will be objections to any model you think of. There is no enthusiasm for any model of raising money but we have a centralised way of funding everything in this country, PAYE income tax, and unless we start spreading the burden we will go nowhere. We can only do that on a consensus basis. I would very much welcome engagement in that debate. I am encouraged by it. I do not want to entrap anybody to try to score political points but it is crucial to real movement in local government that there is consensus on that.
When the Taoiseach and other party leaders came before this committee to discuss the Strategic Management Initiative, that issue was raised by Deputy Harney and put to Deputy Bertie Ahern and the response was encouraging. I agree with the Minister that we need to reduce income tax for job reasons because if local democracy does not raise the funds, we will not have local democracy and then he who plays the fiddler calls the tune.
I agree with the Minister. I am a firm believer in local government and its primacy. Funding is a major aspect but it must be coupled with a substantial change in legislation dealing with local government. It has been denuded in the last 20 years in terms of the role of public representatives and the primacy of local government in the context of the wider local community. It has been bypassed by all streams of other well meaning matters but there is no answerability at local level. Funding is essential and I agree with the Minister that he will not have an easy answer to it. I am supportive of local government and funding remaining within the local area, regardless of the mechanism.
We are not talking about what exists. I was staggered recently to find in the context of the new landfill site in our new waste management strategy the running costs involved. Everybody wants clean air and clean water but nobody wants to pay for them. There will be a psychological change there also. For Waterford, we are talking about £2.5 million per year. That is net after we take the commercial costs out of what we would get in income from the commercial side. That will drive local government costs through the roof and must form part of whatever assessment the Minister makes.
I would like to come back and have a full discussion in relation to this matter. I made no secret when I introduced the Waste Bill, as it was then, that we would quadruple the cost of waste management. It is industry related. We will have to have a "polluter pays" principle approach to that but the new infrastructure in water and sewerage supply will be expensive to run in future. We are spending tens of millions of pounds around the country. All that makes it essential that we now deal with the issue. We can no longer continue to simply put it on the long finger. I am willing to lead that debate and I hope there will be a positive, not partisan, response to that. I make that appeal.
Following the discussion it is important to clarify that this programme is based on the work of the local authorities and that a considerable proportion is spent on city initiatives designed and developed by the city authorities. It is the first time villages have been recognised as being in need of renewal. There is concern about the decline of villages across Europe and obviously we are experiencing the same phenomenon. It is largely FEOGA funded and that element of the programme is specifically geared to the question of rural decline. If we can maintain communities in rural areas there is an obvious benefit to our cities.
The city initiatives are a considerable proportion of the programme and money has been designated on foot of priorities set out by the local authorities of the cities concerned.
There is no serious city village renewal programme. There is not even consciousness that there is a problem. I see Clondalkin, Inchicore and other villages in the city being destroyed by traffic. They need a planned uplift. One need only look at the number of shops that have closed, the state of those that remain open and the general deterioration of the surrounding environment.
I am aware that the Chairman has made this point on many occasions. The sub-programme has been laid out, the action plans are in operation and it is now in its second year. The review of the urban renewal schemes, which is the other element in regenerating and improving areas, is comprehensive and I am looking forward to receiving that report relatively quickly.
It is clear that we must develop the mechanisms that urban renewal designation offers us. It has been used in the past and in financial and other terms has been successful. However, we must move on from that. The review is nearing completion and I hope we can look at all problems relating to urban renewal, particularly the financial, architectural and social problems, to see how to move forward into the next schemes.
I have a last question for the Minister. What is the meaning of "eutrophication"?
It is increased nitrates in the water system that remove the ability of the water to provide oxygen to life in it.
Is it agreed that the Estimate should be reported to the Dáil? Agreed.
I thank the Minister, the Ministers of State and Department officials for their attendance. I am very impressed by their attitude and approach.
The Select Committee adjourned at 1.7 p.m.