asked the Minister for Local Government if he will explain why an inspector from his Department rejected a site offered to the Donegal County Council despite the fact that the engineering section of the county council had passed it as being a suitable building site and that the County Manager had initiated purchase proceedings by compulsory acquisition months ago.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Donegal Building Site.
23.
On 21st September last I confirmed a compulsory purchase order for the acquisition of six out of seven cottage sites scheduled in the order. The remaining plot of land was omitted from my confirming order because I was advised that it was unsuitable in all respects as a site for a house.
Surely the Minister appreciates that this lady—he knows her as well as I do—is very poor. She applied for a house in August, 1961, and the county council, appreciating her difficulties, went out of their way to facilitate her. The engineering section passed the site as suitable for a house. Now, after three years, a member of the Minister's Department comes down and condemns the site. Surely this merits a better explanation than that the Minister has been informed that it is not a good building site.
There could be several explanations and one is that it comes into a category on which I have been considering changing the whole outlook of the Department.
Hear, hear.
Where a single site is concerned and where the site is on land already held by the applicant, then the onus of making a decision should be placed fairly and squarely on the local technical and administrative people.
Hear, hear.
If they make a mess of it, then that is their hard luck. I have gone very far into this matter of unsuitability and, in this particular case, I feel that, if there did not happen to be someone at the end of the line, like myself, to hold the baby, the site would not have been passed in the first instance.
Would the Minister explain that last bit more clearly?
So bad is it in all respects from the point of view of placing a house on it that, had the system been changed and the onus placed locally rather than centrally, it would not have been passed on to me to condemn.
Does the Minister imply that the engineer of the Donegal County Council, who passed the site as suitable, is not a competent engineer?
That is not what I said. It may be what is in the Deputy's mind, judging by his other condemnations of the same engineering personnel. That is not what is in my mind. This is tied up with the administrative procedure which I am hoping to change.
Would the Minister say what is in his mind?
I have.
If it had been one of the Minister's henchmen looking for a job——
I am surprised the application, having started in 1961, should only be queried now by the Deputy after his saying three years have elapsed.
It is queried now because the Minister turned it down two or three months ago.
Three years ago it was apparently on the stocks.
(Interruptions.)