Deputy Lynch gave notice that he wished to raise the subject matter of Question No. 10 on the Adjournment.
Adjournment Debate. - Waterford County Council: Road Fund Allocations.
I gave notice that I should like to raise this matter because for years I have been endeavouring to get some information about it. Even on Estimates I was put off by the Minister's predecessor, now Minister for Agriculture. He then assured me he would write to me, and let me know the answers to the questions I had asked on the Estimate but he never did so. Then he was transferred to the Department of Agriculture and I had to wait again. I have to thank the present Minister for anything I know about road grants because it was through his putting down a question on 9th May, 1956 to his predecessor asking about the various road grants that were made that I discovered that the grants for upkeep and improvement of County Waterford roads were £137,000 in 1953/54, £136,000 for the following year and £132,000 in 1955/56. We got £5,000 each year in tourist road grants. We got £250 in 1953/54 for employment schemes. I was stunned by this figure of £250 when I considered that other counties were able to obtain £13,000, £14,000 and £15,000. The tourist road grant to Waterford was £5,000 while other counties received £55,000 and £25,000.
I have been watching these road grants. Last February I put down a question to the Minister, as follows:
If he will state the amount of road fund grants allocated to Waterford County Council in the years 1953/54, 1954/55, 1955/56, 1956/57, 1957/58, 1958/59 and 1959/60.
The Minister's reply was:
As the reply is in the form of a tabular statement, I propose, with your permission, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, to circulate it with the Official Report.
Following is the statement:
WATERFORD COUNTY COUNCIL
Grants allocated out of the Road Fund
|
Year |
Amount |
||
|
£ |
|||
|
1953-54 |
142,328 |
||
|
1954-55 |
141,721 |
||
|
1955-56 |
137,921 |
||
|
1956-57 |
127,421 |
||
|
1957-58 |
127,420 |
||
|
1958-59 |
127,421 |
||
|
1959-60 |
127,421 |
In his reply to my question today the Minister said:
It is not correct to say that the total allocation from the Road Fund has been consistently reduced for the past six years; it has in fact varied up and down, due principally to the effect of special grants such as the grants for bridges.
I am not interested in grants for bridges. I am interested in grants for roads.
The Minister could say that the total allocation did go up and down because I notice that in 1956/57 the exact figure was £127,421; it went down in the following year to £127,420; it went up the following year to £127,421 and was £127,421 in the year after that. That is it went up by £1. That is about the measure at the treatment that Waterford County Council has got.
On 13th July Deputy Russell asked the Minister the basis on which allocations are made. The Minister said:
The basis, as may be gathered from the reply, rests on a number of factors, such as population, number of vehicles registered, valuation, etc. Actually, before the war an improvement grant was made available on such a basis...
...There are a great number of factors, population, number of registrations and the need. Apparently the question of need comes into this matter. It is not very closely tied, as far as I can see, from the past record in regard to these grants.
As far as need is concerned, there are as many unemployed persons in Waterford as there are in any other county. My colleague, Deputy Kyne is here and he will be able to deal with that matter even better than I could. Waterford County Council have been hit very hard by the manner in which we have been treated in regard to road grants.
The figures I have obtained have confused me. On 31st May, 1960, I asked the Minister if he would state:
...the amount allocated to each local authority for the period 1960-61 in respect of (a) road upkeep and improvement work, (b) tourist road grants, (c) special grants for bridge works, (d) grants for schemes the technical aspects of which are administered through his Department, (e) the scheme for the improvement of roads and (f) the scheme for Fíor-Ghaeltact areas.
The reply was in the form of a tabular statement and the figures given in regard to Waterford County Council were that the main and county road improvement grant 100 per cent. was £108,100 and the tourist road grant 100 per cent. was £5,000. That is all we ever get. Waterford County Council never get any more than £5,000 in tourist road grants. I have never been able to discover why it is called a tourist road grant. I have been told that that has something to do with Gaeltacht and congested areas but what that has to do with tourist roads I do not know.
Waterford can claim to be a tourist centre. Waterford County Council have always struck ample rates and have had great roads long before there was such a thing as a Road Fund or road taxation. Yet there are many roads leading to beautiful places which are dirt tracks. The road into the Nire Valley, which is a most beautiful valley, is a dirt track. The road going over Kilbrien from Dungarvan to the heights that give a view of all the land that slopes down to the sea and on to Helvick is an old fashioned dirt road. There are such roads in the heights going down to Kilmacthomas and into places where there is wonderful scenery. It would be a great help to tourism if tourist road grants were made available for the improvement of these roads.
The Minister in his reply today referred to grants for bridges. There was a grant given for Bonmahon Bridge and another bridge. I am concerned with roads. I have the figures which show that the allocation consistently went down for the past six years but the Minister told me today that that was not correct. He said:
It is not correct to say that the total allocation from the Road Fund has been consistently reduced for the past six years; it has in fact varied up and down, due principally to the effect of special grants such as the grants for bridges.
I am not concerned with grants for bridges. I am concerned with grants for roads. If there was a special grant given for bridges, I do not see why there should not be a grant for roads. Other counties have received substantial grants of £45,000, £38,000, £77,000, £12,000, £54,000, £45,000. They were special grants of 100 per cent. and the main and county road improvement grants are not affected by the fact that these grants were given.
I referred to this matter on the Estimate but the Minister did not extend to me the courtesy of a reply. I thought he would have referred to the matter when he was concluding the debate. Unfortunately, I was absent from the House when the Minister concluded. Had I been here. I would have intervened and asked him to reply to what I had said on the Estimate. I prefaced my remarks then by saying that I hoped the Minister would be tolerant of my appeal for the people of my constituency because—this is nothing to blame him for; this is something of which he can be proud and of which his predecessor can be proud—I understand that these road grants are allotted not on any basis of valuation or rates paid or on the basis of need but on the basis of who is the Minister for Local Government. I discovered that in the allotment of tourist road grants, Cavan got £10,000. I never heard of any Gaeltacht in Cavan, but we have Ring in county Waterford. Maybe it was because the previous Minister for Local Government, Deputy Smith, was returned by the people of Cavan.
However, my attention was drawn to this by the present Minister when he put down a question to his predecessor, Deputy O'Donnell. Deputy O'Donnell is a Donegal man and I notice that during his term of office the Donegal road grants crept up all the time. I would be tolerant of that and I would say that he followed the example of his predecessors. I suppose it is a good man who looks after his own people and if the Minister has that sentiment for his own people, he surely cannot blame me for having that sentiment for my constituents.
There has been a big cut in this allocation since 1953-54. It has been reduced from £142,000 in that year, on these figures the Minister gave me in February, to £127,000, notwithstanding the fact that a considerable number of new cars and lorries have been registered and increased revenue has come into the Exchequer and notwithstanding what the Minister said to Deputy Russell. The Minister said:
There were uniform grants for a number of years and more recently these grants have not been uniformly applied.
Mr. Russell: As the need increases will the grant go up?
Mr. Blaney: Provided the money is available.
Surely there must be increased money available to this Vote over the past five or six years, but as the revenue has increased, our allocation has constantly decreased. Waterford should get special consideration. Waterford city pays about £65,000 into the Road Fund and gets back £5,000. We are getting £8,000 this year but we were getting £5,000 for a long time. We have entrance roads similar to those in Dublin and there is great difficulty in keeping them up. They must be kept for the whole country and that is only right seeing that our people in Waterford use the roads of the whole country.
However, we pay out much more than we get back. I was going to refer to the extraordinary way Dublin Corporation is treated but the Dublin Deputies do not bother about it and it is their pigeon. This is the first time I have raised any matter on the Adjournment. I think my colleague Deputy Kyne has a word to say on this matter and there are five minutes left for him to speak before the Minister replies.
As a member of the local authority by which these roads are controlled and administered, I am interested in the subject raised by Deputy Lynch. May I express my appreciation of his courtesy in giving me five minutes out of his time to express my views? I do not want to say that Waterford is in any way victimised as compared with any other county but Waterford roads have been kept in such good condition over the past ten, 15 and 20 years that we are now suffering from the fact that we were such good citizens, that we obeyed the suggestions of the then Minister by keeping our roads up to a good standard. Unfortunately the counties that did not do that now appear to be reaping the reward and getting bigger grants.
Without having any opportunity of seeking figures to support my arguments, I think what Deputy Lynch says is true, that the employment possibilities for the workers in Waterford County Council were never lower than at present. Whether that is due mainly to the introduction of machinery, as in most other counties, plus the fact that the Local Authorities (Works) Act has been discontinued, the figure is almost 50 per cent. under what it was, say, five or six years ago. That is a most unfortunate position.
Waterford County Council is a very essential employer of labour in the county. Any saving or any reduction that had to be made did not come from the county council. The amount of money put up for main roads and for county roads has continually been increased by the Waterford local authority. Proportionately these grants to main roads have increased but the total amount of money being made available to the county has lessened. The reason for that is not for me to indicate but with all sincerity and with no desire to gain Party advantage, I say that the Gaeltacht or tourist grant of £5,000 is a very small amount of money. Either from a tourist or a Gaeltacht point of view, Waterford county is deserving of more than the £5,000 allocated.
The money allocated has been well spent. How insufficient it is is indicated by the fact that it is partly this year and partly next year we have to carry out the schemes our engineers have submitted to the Department.
Numbers of other schemes of utmost importance from a tourist point of view, even in the Gaeltacht area, have been put before his Department and will be put before it again if the need arises and if the Minister indicates there is any use in doing that. I appeal to the Minister to see if any concession can be given to a county whose only sin is that in the past it carried out the requests of Ministers and contributed over and above what was done by other counties by providing some of the best roads in the country for the tourist industry. Our secondary roads are comparable to the best in the country but there is still a need for further moneys to be spent for the sake of the tourist industry, for the sake of the employment of Irishmen in Ireland and for the sake of a continuation of the policy of road-making for which Waterford has been famed in the past.
Quite a few points were covered, particularly by Deputy T. Lynch, which were not relevant. In the time available to me now, it would not be possible to go into them in detail. I shall confine myself to the question the Deputy asked today and try to elucidate the position as best I can. The question is in two parts. He asked why the allocation to county Waterford from the Road Fund was consistently reduced for the past six years. On another occasion, Deputy T. Lynch got, in reply to a Parliamentary Question, a tabular statement showing the Road Fund grants paid to the county. That was in February of this year.
In that table, which the Deputy has, the grant for 1953-54 is £142,328; for 1954-55, it is £141,721 and for 1955-56 it is £137,921. That represents first the three years on the table I then gave him. In the £142,000 for 1953-54, in addition to the moneys paid from the Road Fund, is included a sum of £30,000 from the National Development Fund moneys to supplement the moneys from the ordinary Road Fund income.
In 1954-55, a sum of £28,000 from the National Development Fund also supplemented the Road Fund grant, bringing it up to £141,721. In 1955-56, the National Development Fund money was no longer available. We have then a drop in that year down to £137,000 which would have read £125,000 roughly were it not for a very late effort on the part of the then Government in late 1955 in allocating a sum of £500,000 divided out amongst the various counties, of which Waterford got £12,500. That £125,000 figure then would be consistent with the figures that follow for the remaining few years of the Coalition Government's term of office, in the region of £127,000 for 1956-57, and then we come to the change of Government again in 1957-58.
I am surprised at the Deputy, not so much for seeking this information as for misreading the situation to such a degree that he can come into this House and apparently in all good faith make the allegations that these figures of money have been reduced and that there is some mystery about how they came to be reduced. The solution is in the £500,000 which could not be afforded in 1955-56 but which, nevertheless, was brought in in the tail-end of that year. That £500,000 brought in at that stage and tacked on at the end of the financial year to try to boost the dying fortunes of the then administration could possibly have been got over were it not that in 1956-57 a sum of £500,000 was taken completely from the Road Fund and put into the general Exchequer Account. These two sums came to £1,000,000. I should like Deputies to keep the £1,000,000 in mind, because it is significant at a later date.
Over and above, we found then that in the tail-end of that year, 1956-57, in which £500,000 was whipped out of the Road Fund by the general Exchequer, in February or January, 1957, with the General Election impending and known to be impending by the then Government although not by the rest of us except by guess work, an extraordinary thing happened. No longer was it possible even to commit the Road Fund further because it had got into such a sorry condition, but what happened? An Order went out to all the county councils that they could start spending the following year's money, the 1957-58 money, and that they were free to do so in February of 1957 which was the tail-end of the "previous" financial year.
That is the position I should like to bring to the minds of Deputies. Some months later, when the Government changed, we found a problem even in maintaining the road grants at the figure at which they had been sitting in the previous couple of years and which were only brought to that stage by misuse of the funds then at the disposal of the Road Fund. We found when we came into office that to avoid cutting the grants by £1,000,000 or so we had to borrow from the general Exchequer a sum of £900,000. Only this enabled us to carry on the grants at the rate at which they had been allocated in the previous years. The situation has since improved, I am glad to say, to a considerable degree.
For the present financial year, for the first time in many years past, the funds of the Road Fund are now in the condition that I have been in the happy position of being able to allow certain increases to every local authority and to give new allocations to local authorities for certain road purposes for which they never got any moneys in the past. In regard to Waterford, this has meant that they have gone up to £130,800 in this current year. That in itself is an indication of our wish to increase these grants whenever and wherever it is practicable. But it has only been this year that it has been possible to do anything.
The trend is still in the right direction. The Road Fund is going back into some sort of shape but do not blame this administration or my Department or myself for any of the shortcomings that may appear in the list of Road Fund grants that it was possible to allocate during the past six or seven years because the real answer is that without the advent of the present administration and the raising of loans from the Exchequer it would not have been possible even to continue the grants at the level they have been enjoying over these recent years. Compare that borrowing from the central Exchequer with the raiding by the central Exchequer on this very much weakened Road Fund in 1956. Those facts should be fully digested by all Deputies before they start accusing anybody of reducing the grants. In particular, the allegation that there is some vendetta against Waterford is unfounded. Whatever may be the pattern of the grants, whatever they have been, are now or will be in the future, they are based on established practice and principle over many years. Nobody at any stage has seriously alleged—as Deputy Kyne mentioned; though he did not make the charge, the charge is being made— that Waterford has been singled out for very special disadvantageous treatment. That is not so. If it were so then it surely would be an accusation of the Deputies from Waterford over the years that they kept so silent about this system, and the same system is operating today as operated over the past 10 or 15 years. I can see no grounds whatever for Deputy Lynch's outlook on this matter.
I trust that on digesting the figures fully he will see the position in a new light. I agree with Deputy T. Lynch that replies to different questions he asked me give different figures to him. He may have intended the same question whereas if the details of the questions are fully gone into, he will find there are certain significant differences between them. The questions may appear similar to him and the answers dissimilar. Possibly, if the Deputy goes through all the various questions mentioned here tonight he will see the reasons for what appear to be discrepancies in the figures given in relation to different questions but those discrepancies are not real. If I can help the Deputy between now and the resumption next October in sorting out this matter, I shall be very glad to do so.
Give us some money.
I shall be back with it in October.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 20th July, 1960.