This Vote is similar to the Vote passed last night. It is a very important Vote. The amount included in the Vote is not sufficient to meet the needs and demands of the people, particularly those living in rural areas. The Parliamentary Secretary, coming from an area west of the Shannon, is well acquainted with the needs of the people, especially small farmers livingin culs-de-sac off main and county roads.
There is a huge mileage of roads in County Mayo and, therefore, a great mileage of culs-de-sac and by-roads. A big percentage of the people were forced into backward areas in years gone by. Even under native Government these people have not been provided with suitable entrance to their homes and holdings. Relief schemes are made available on certain conditions in certain areas, but unless there is a certain number of registered unemployed in the electoral division it is not easy to have repair work carried out on a road.
The same applies to Land Commission roads. In the area that I represent, a great deal of land was taken over by the Land Commission and a big percentage of it was allotted by way of addition to small holdings to people who were resident or employed on the land prior to acquisition, or to tenants living a distance of one to three miles away. Roads were made to accommodate the people who got the land. They were made on very poor foundation. The land was mapped out and striped; fences were erected on both sides and the road was made between the fences. The foundations were soft. The roads were well made by the Land Commission and gave great service to the people and provided suitable entrance to the land from the trunk road or county road. However, the roads did not stand the strain of increased traffic.
I go further and say that inside the last five or 10 years extra traffic that was never intended 20 or 25 years ago has been passing over those roads, culs-de sac and by-roads leading off the main roads, the county roads, into a village. The traffic has changed from every point of view, from the time when it was possible that some of the people living in those areas would perhaps only go out on those roads on a very special occasion to get connected to the main road or the county road. Now all this has changed altogether and it is a daily routine with the people that they have to pass out to get on to the main road. The point I am coming to is that I know that on plentyof those roads you now have a new kind of traffic. You have the private lorry and the lorry haulier and the tractor all making use of those roads even from the main road, perhaps, into some place where some method of work is available to somebody who employs either the lorry or the tractor or there is some work on which the lorry or tractor man can make use of those roads. All that heavy traffic is making things difficult as far as some of the people are concerned in those areas.
I understand that the regulations as far as the local authorities are concerned and as far as this Vote is concerned provide that there is a percentage of the people living in certain areas who cannot by any method or regulation get anything done on those roads except in a very small way. It is just a chance from time to time that you might get one little road or two done in an area of, say, two electoral divisions.
When one road is done you might irritate people living in other areas where they say: "Such and such a road was done last year or two years ago, and why cannot something be done on our portion of the road?" I know that the Parliamentary Secretary has his own trouble as far as demands are concerned especially with roads like this. I also know all the difficulties that face the people of Mayo and Galway, and I think that the Board of Works and the Parliamentary Secretary should come to some agreement by a survey so that those culs-de-sac and roads that would not in the ordinary way qualify for a relief scheme grant from the point of view of the present regulations will be attended to. In our own county I am a member of the local authority where we had this question of the by-roads on every annual estimate. It is one of the burning questions, and every member of the council has a similar grievance in his own area because of the fact that those roads do not come under the control of the county council so that members of the county council have no authority to expend money or to make it available to those roads in grants. They feel that if the county council takes any responsibility for therepair of any of those by-roads it becomes a question of the council taking them over, and if the council take over one of those roads they have the full responsibility afterwards for maintenance. Contract roads are a fairly big responsibility with the county council from the point of view of the extra traffic and the general regulations as far as the contractor is concerned, with the result that the county councils are perhaps up to 100 per cent. as far as they can go where the contract roads are concerned, without the responsibility of taking over any additional roads. As far as these roads are concerned, to my recollection there was a suggestion that in the annual estimate we should make a small tax on the rates and by this small tax we could have a special repair grant scheme where a local contribution was necessary to qualify for the repair of those roads, and that in that way, over a period of, say, five years, we would have met a big percentage of the needs of the people living in areas such as I have mentioned.
I was, however, given to understand at the time that a contribution like that by a local authority would commit the local authority to responsibility for the full maintenance of the road. I am satisfied that I am quite safe in suggesting that because of the fact that the county council, as is stated here, have the responsibility of administering the distribution of this money and the working arrangement of it in the areas where the money is made available, in a similar way if the council were allowed to make this local contribution percentage and this Vote was entitled to make a reasonable contribution in that way we would seem to be reaching the stage at which the people living in those areas would have the accommodation.
I know plenty of areas where turf and bogs are not as plentiful now as they were 25, 30, 40 or 50 years ago, areas where bogland and bog accommodation are running out, with the result that the people who were cutting turf in one direction 40 years must now go in another direction. In that way roads that were designed for traffic covering the bog areas 20 or 40 yearsago where people were living in perhaps two or three villages as far as four or five miles away from those bogs are now inadequate, and people going to the bogs have to pass into the culs-de-sac and by-roads through those villages, and very little is being done with those by-roads though they are available to a big section of the people from different parts. For the four, five or six people living on both sides of the roads, they are the only entrance they have into and out of the village to connect with the main road or the county road.
If the road was eligible for repairs by the county council and recommended for work in the ordinary way the number of registered unemployed would require them to be called on to put up a local contribution. The contribution, as I understand it, is based on the valuation of the people living in the area, and if we called upon the two, three, four, five or six people living in that area to make a local contribution, in a lot of areas they would be satisfied to make it for the repair of the road which is specially intended for themselves but the people who use that road at only one period of the year, to take their turf from the bog, feel that it would not be fair that they should be asked to contribute to the making of the road to the bog. In fact, some of the people concerned use the road only one month in the year and if there was a call for local contribution, not one penny would be subscribed by them. In view of all that has been done for the trunk roads, the main roads and the county roads, I think it is about time that something was done for the section of the people for whom I now plead. We are improving our main roads and our trunk roads in an endeavour to attract more tourists and we are making every effort to repair county roads. As a matter of fact, steamrolling has now been extended to the county roads. In all the long years, practically nothing has been done to tackle the problem of those people who live on the roads of which I have been speaking.
There is a road in the electoral division of Deel and many applications have been sent in by the residents inthe area: it is at a place called Rathmore. There are four or five families living in the area which that road serves. Many other people have occasion to use this road in order to get out on the county road and from that county road they get on to a main road and they have to do that round when they want to bring home the turf. I have a clear recollection of that road. I remember attending a funeral there some years ago and the road was in a desperate condition and certainly it was most unfair to the people there to leave it as it was.
I know that applications were made in respect of that road and I am making special mention of this matter now because I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will attend to it without delay and give it his sympathetic consideration. I am certain that if the road is inspected the Parliamentary Secretary and his officials will be only too willing to agree that the repair of that road should get priority in the repair schemes.
There is the possibility that there may not be a sufficient number of registered unemployed in the area to enable a 100 per cent. grant to be given in respect of the repair of that road but in the adjoining electoral division or within a radius of two or three miles you will find a sufficient number of registered unemployed and, though they may not be in the same electoral division, they are living along its border. I suggest, in connection with the making available of this money, that if there are areas in which there are not a sufficient number of registered unemployed to qualify for a grant, some of the registered unemployed in an adjoining electoral division should be considered in conjunction with the registered unemployed in the area in question.
It sometimes happens that, in a certain area, you will always find that there are a sufficient number of unemployed and that, in that area, money has been spent every year over a period of years with the result that it has the advantage of a good road, and so forth. It may also happen that, in an area immediately adjoining that electoral division, there may be a road which is in such a bad state of repairthat it hardly deserves the name of "road." I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will note that point for future consideration in connection with the giving of grants.
We must not forget the problem of culs-de-sac. I know how important this matter can be to the people living along them because I have had much experience of it as a member of a local authority. I know that every member of a local authority is anxious to assist, by every means possible, the residents of culs-de-sac and all those other people who have occasion to use these culs-de-sac.
I think that the Department of Local Government is the Department which is responsible for our roads. If the local authority were prepared to levy even a small tax on the ratepayers in their annual estimate, and if they were allowed to use the money derived from that tax on those culs-de-sac, back roads and accommodation roads for, say, a period of five years, and if that money were supplemented by a grant either from the Board of Works or some other Department dealing with roads, much good and badly-needed work would be carried out. It would be well if the county council were allowed to administer such a scheme on the understanding that the local authority would not be committed to any further responsibility so far as maintenance is concerned. If the job of repair were well done it would last for ten or 15 years and the local authority would have no further responsibility after having put the road into a proper state of repair. I believe that some scheme like that would go a long way towards giving suitable accommodation roads to those small farmers throughout the country who live a long distance from main roads and trunk roads.