Vol. 249 No. 12
asked the Minister for Local Government the number of projects submitted by local authorities which are held up awaiting sanction by his Department at present; the total amount of money involved; and if, in view of the increasing number of unemployed, he will expedite sanction and help provide work for people in Ireland.
35.
asked the Minister for Local Government the number of projects submitted by Westmeath County Council which are held up awaiting sanction by his Department; the total amount of money involved; and when he will be in a position to sanction them.
With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 34 and 35 together.
It is a normal feature of local government administration that at any time the number and value of projects which are at various stages of planning or are the subject of consultations or correspondence between my Department and local authorities are considerable— covering as they do capital expenditures of the order of £45 million in the current financial year. It would not be possible without using an inordinate amount of staff time to list all of those projects or to calculate the precise amount of money involved. Many projects undertaken by local authorities do not, in fact, require specific sanction.
If the Deputy is referring to projects for which local authorities have submitted proposals for the acceptance of tenders, the number of such proposals at present is about 50 and the estimated total expenditure involved is slightly less than £2 million. Those projects are being examined generally on technical grounds. Capital expenditure by local authorities on them and on other projects in the current financial year, even taking into account the disruption caused by the cement strike and other factors, will be a record and should exceed last year's expenditure by about £7 million.
There are no tender proposals from Westmeath County Council at present awaiting sanction by me.
Surely the Minister is aware that a proposal was sanctioned to bring water to a factory in the Collinstown area. This factory began operations a few years ago with a staff of 15 or 20 people but it is now employing more than 100 people. However, sanction has been before the Minister's Department for the past four or five months.
I doubt that. My information is that there is nothing at the tender stage that is awaiting sanction.
That may be a clever way of evading the question.
