Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 4 Jul 1950

Vol. 122 No. 3

Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Rural Improvement Applications.

Mr. Smith

asked the Minister for Finance if he will state in regard to rural improvement applications in the hands of his Department (a) the number in which offers have been made to the applicant; (b) the number of offers accepted and the deposits lodged, listed under counties; (c) the number of works in progress in each county; (d) the number of cases in which no inspections have been carried out; (e) the numbers of offers refused in each county because of inability to put up the required contribution; (f) the number of such applicants who have been notified of the new conditions and to whom revised estimates have been sent and the counties where this has been done, and (g) if in fairness he will now arrange to have all such cases revised and make known through the spokesman the new contribution expected from them, especially in all cases where the revised scheme will result in a smaller contribution from the beneficiaries under the rural improvement scheme.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance (Mr. Donnellan)

As the reply includes a tabular statement, I propose, with the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, to circulate it with the Official Report.

Because the Deputy has not mentioned any time limit, I propose to give him the figures he asks for, so far as they are available, from the inception of the rural improvements scheme in 1943-44 to 31st May, 1950.

	(a)	(b)		(d)
County	No. of offers issued	No. of offers accepted	No. of works in progress on 31st May, 1950	No. of applications not yet reported on by Inspector
Carlow	91	68	—	9
Cavan	571	377	7	18
Clare	560	371	—	15
Cork	485	286	23	24
Donegal	129	72	—	17
Dublin	10	8	—	1
Galway	826	514	17	68
Kerry	428	243	23	59
Kildare	113	65	5	6
Kilkenny	294	224	38	8
Laoighis	176	113	4	2
Leitrim	233	145	57	29
Limerick	383	286	2	1
Longford	127	64	2	15
Louth	72	63	9	6
Mayo	331	157	3	35
Meath	215	148	5	13
Monaghan	257	141	7	9
Offaly	245	160	6	6
Roscommon	398	215	—	24
Sligo	153	95	5	18
Tipperary, N.R.	211	157	10	23
Tipperary, S.R.	246	155	1	15
Waterford	134	88	—	8
Westmeath	145	86	—	2
Wexford	158	77	6	6
Wicklow	61	38	4	3
TOTALS	7,052	4,416	234	440

With regard to column (d), the numbers given represent the applications in respect of which inspectors' reports have not yet reached headquarters, but a proportion of these cases have already been inspected on the site.

As regards (e), it would be impossible to say in how many cases offers were not accepted by the applicants because of their inability to pay the contributions asked for. The great majority of non-acceptances consist of cases in which the applicants make no reply at all to the offer.

So far as (f) and (g) of the question are concerned, the revised terms of the scheme are being made retrospective for all applications in which offers had not issued before the date of the announcement of the new terms. These latter were advertised in the daily papers for 3rd June, 1950, and in the provincial Press in all counties, in the week ended 10th June, 1950. Apart from this, no individual notification of the revised terms has been sent to earlier applicants who had not accepted offers made to them, because:—

(1) of the very large number of cases involved, and the amount of time of the clerical staff which would be required to ascertain the particulars from hundreds of individual files;

(2) as pointed out in reply to (e) above, in most cases there is no means of knowing which offers were not accepted owing to the applicants' inability to make the cash contribution asked for;

(3) in a large proportion of the cases, the original estimates would now be out of date owing to increases in wages and the probable deterioration of the works since the inspection was made. It is open to the applicants in these cases to submit fresh application forms which will be dealt with as far as possible in the order of their receipt.