I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £3,000,000 be granted to derfray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1956, for the National Development Fund.
The additional amount I am asking the Dáil now to provide for the National Development Fund is £3,000,000. This sum, taken together with the £3,000,000 which the House voted last year and the £5,000,000 voted in the previous year, will bring the total amount available to the Fund to £11,000,000. In reply to the question by Deputy Aiken on to-day's Order Paper, I indicated the various projects towards which allocations have been made out of the Fund since its inception, the amount allocated to each project and the actual expenditure to date out of the Fund on foot of each such project.
The total of the allocations pre-June, 1954, came to £6,521,900; subsequent review of the picture as it then presented itself reduced this figure to £5,560,700. The payments out of the Fund in respect of these projects aggregate £3,599,493. As respects schemes approved since June, 1954, the amount allocated is £1,729,236 and the expenditure £197,870. All told, the allocations come to a total of £7,289,936 and the expenditure to £3,797,363.
This time last year I gave the House an account of all the projects approved to date both by my predecessor and by myself. The particulars I gave Deputy Aiken to-day cover these projects, of course, but they embrace, in addition, the allocations I have since made myself. Following are the figures:—
Department of Local Government: |
|
£ |
|
Local Authority (Works) Act (1955-56) |
250,000 |
Road Fund (for residual commitments in 1953-54) |
39,411 |
Repair of Sea-wall at Bray |
15,000 |
Special Employment Schemes Office: |
|
Supplementary Allocation |
250,000 |
Department of Industry and Com- merce: |
|
Grant to An Óige |
29,000 |
Roads at E.S.B. Hand-won Turf Stations |
200,000 |
Road to Coal Mine, Gubaveeny, Co. Cavan |
3,275 |
Limerick Harbour |
79,000 |
Dún Laoire railway station |
20,000 |
Department of Agriculture: |
|
Department's Schools and Farms—Improvements |
150,000 |
Drainage of River Rye |
48,500 |
Fish Station at Galway, Grant |
27,550 |
Small Farm Units, Athenry and Ballyhaise Schools |
8,000 |
Orchard Planting, Dungarvan area |
32,500 |
Peatland Experimental Station, Glenamoy |
45,000 |
Office of Public Works: |
|
Drainage of Swillyburn and Deele |
187,000 |
Provisional Allocation: |
|
Shannon Survey and Resettlement Scheme |
100,000 |
TOTAL |
£1,484,236 |
There were minor variations of earlier allocations giving an extra £20,300, making the total allocations since I introduced last year's Estimate £1,504,536. Deputies will see from the figures I have given that allocations out of the Fund come to within about £700,000 of the capacity of the Fund. New projects are liable to come along and develop at any time. To enable me to have an adequate margin for such contingencies, I am now seeking a further £3,000,000 for the Fund.
When speaking on last year's Estimate, I told the House it was the Government's intention that the Fund should be maintained to finance capital schemes of a productive character which would make a real contribution to the national economy. It was intended, I said, that the Fund should be drawn upon to facilitate the rapid expansion or the expedition of programmes of public works or to set in motion new schemes of development with a high employment content whenever we considered the employment situation so demanded. While that is still broadly the policy, it is now more than ever essential to ensure that projects financed out of the Fund do not generate undue demands for imports and so widen the adverse trade balance. In present circumstances, only projects that are essentially of a directly productive type can hope to gain access to the Fund. If the House wishes to hear the further details which I made available to Deputy Aiken I will give them. I presume, however, that will not be necessary.