The Minister has been doing quite a lot to have swimming pools built as, indeed, did his predecessors. They have been talking a lot about it. I was rather surprised when somebody was recently accused of going too fast in providing a swimming pool in Newbridge. The pool had to be locked up for a considerable period because there was not enough money to operate it. This is a short-sighted approach. If somebody does succeed in getting a pool built the full support of the Department should be given to ensure that it is used. It is a dog-in-the-manger attitude to say that these people jumped the queue and got a pool before somebody else who wanted one and therefore the pool would have to be allowed to deteriorate, that they cannot use it. I understand that at present the Department are active in having the pool put into use but it should not require newspaper headlines to have something like this done.
One thing which worries me about the provision of swimming pools, which are an absolute necessity particularly in view of the pollution of some of the waters formerly used for swimming, is the high maintenance cost. In many towns people who are anxious to provide pools do not seem to realise the high cost of maintenance. It should be made very clear to those providing a pool that when the pool is built every effort must be made to provide the necessary money to maintain it. There is no point in providing a pool if it is subsequently found impossible to protect it—unfortunately a swimming pool, like everything else, does need protection—and to ensure that it is kept in order, that heating and cleaning are provided. There is not sufficient attention given to this aspect.
A very sore point in my constituency is the question of malicious injury. The Minister is the person in the gap to take the necessary steps to have the Malicious Injuries Act repealed. It can be replaced by insurance, voluntary or otherwise. It is too ridiculous for words that persons, allegedly from outside, can come into Meath, cause hundreds of thousands of pounds of malicious damage and then can just go back to wherever they came from, leaving the ratepayers of the county to shoulder the burden. In their former colonies the British used the old selective punishment system. Somebody did something and everybody in the area was punished unless the offender was produced. This has been repealed even by Britain. In this country even though the offenders are produced—in many cases they are the sons and daughters of wealthy people—they are not asked to make recompense but the ratepayers of the country in which the damage occurred are asked to bear the burden. There must be a better way of dealing with this matter. It is not right to continue the system whereby local rates carry the impost.
Over the Whit weekend there was an invasion of the east coast and north-east coast by young hippies—I suppose that is what they call themselves—from this city. They did not exactly improve the appearance of the place and when they got a few drinks they proceeded to do a considerable amount of damage. They broke windows and damaged cars. Is it not just too bad that they were able to hike off home again leaving the ratepayers of the country to pay for the damage they did? Even though some of the offenders were arrested, the damage will have to be paid for by the ratepayers. There is no reason why this system should be allowed to continue. When the top of Nelson Pillar was blown off and a considerable amount of damage was caused, the Government introduced a Bill which indemnified the ratepayers against paying for the damage. The amount was paid out of State funds. The Malicious Injuries Act should be repealed.
I mentioned last year, and it is no harm to mention it again, a case where two mentally defective boys of 12-14 years of age destroyed by fire a school they had broken into in order to get a few pennies that they had seen in it earlier that day. It was a school for mentally defective children. The damage cost £11,000 to £12,000. The children were taken to court. The justice decided that as they were mentally defective he could not punish them. The insurance company refused to pay unless there was a case taken for malicious injury against the county council. The judge decided that the two children were able to commit a malicious act and the ratepayers of Meath paid £11,000 as a result. I do not think anything could be more ridiculous than that. There should be a way of preventing this sort of thing from happening. The Act should be repealed and replaced by something more up-to-date.
This matter has a connection with fire services. Every local authority attempt to provide as good a fire service as possible but the situation is that the insurance companies, who benefit by the fire service because if fires are prevented the insurance companies will not have to pay for fire damage, have consistently refused to pay anything towards the maintenance and the cost of fire services. A fire service is a relatively expensive item. A number of people give their time to training in the fire service and in fighting fires. The Minister is aware that representations have been made to him on a number of occasions to have something done about the remuneration of part-time fire fighters. As in the case of the overtime that I referred to earlier in relation to the payment of rents for council houses, income tax is deducted from the money earned in fire fighting. It is assessed as income for all purposes, including rent and medical cards. As a result, those who engage in fire fighting usually find themselves, if not at a loss, with very little gained for frequently spending a night out fighting a fire in order to save somebody's property, or in some cases public property.
The question of dumps has been mentioned. We have reached the stage where if we are really serious about eliminating pollution of water, roads and woods, we must do something about a refuse collection on a county scale. Some counties have been collecting refuse from villages, towns and sizeable groups of houses but for the past few years it has become a common occurrence for somebody to buy a site, perhaps one-third of an acre, if he is lucky, or one-eighth of an acre, if he is not, and to build a bungalow on it. He has no place to put the household refuse.
Long ago, a farmer could burn or bury refuse but the person who has only a few yards at the back of his house has no way of getting rid of refuse. In some areas it has been found to be extremely difficult to acquire sites for dumping and the lack of such sites has resulted in people dumping refuse where ever they found it convenient to do so. Indeed, some beauty spots have been spoiled by this practice. People who are guilty of such practice may think it is all right so long as the dump is not near them, in the same way as others regard itinerants. Perhaps the answer to this problem would be the provision of lorries that would collect over wide areas. The material collected could then be compressed and dumped at a central site that could be attended properly and covered when full.
The Minister referred to the granting of votes at 18 and said that while he was of the opinion they would be granted, he did not think they would be put into operation until after a referendum had taken place. Of course, in the case of local elections, there would be no need for a referendum to allow for voting at the earlier age. I agree entirely with the suggestion that this would be one way of testing public reaction to the change. There is no reason why persons who have reached the age of 18 should not be included on next year's register for local government elections.
Another matter in regard to local Government elections which should be attended to by the Department concerns electoral areas. Down through the years electoral areas have not been changed in many counties with the result that in some areas there may be the ridiculous situation of 17,000 being represented by five councillors while in a neighbouring area there may be seven councillors representing 10,000 people. This is a matter for the local authorities but perhaps they might be sent a reminder from the Department that before the next local elections they might attempt to redraft their areas. This would be a good start towards having the matter dealt with properly. It would not affect party strength very much because what one gains on the swings he loses on the roundabouts. The only result would be fairer representation.
I represent a county council area which starts near The Naul on the Dublin border, continues to Balbriggan, to Drogheda, to Ardee, to Carrickmacross and finishes beside Kingscourt. That is a ridiculously long stretch of local council area. It is bigger than some of the Dáil constituencies. These areas should be redrafted in a way that would render them more manageable. After all county councillors are unpaid representatives of the people and the least they are entitled to is a little more co-operation.
One final point relates to the changing of the name of An Uaimh to Navan. On two occasions I have asked the Minister by way of parliamentary question whether he proposes to make this change before the 30th of June. A vote was taken there on the matter, practically everybody who could vote cast a vote, and most of those voted for the change to Navan. Some people would have us believe that there is something unpatriotic about the use of the word "Navan" but that was the name of the town before ever An Uaimh was thought of. As every schoolchild knows it is a lot easier to spell Navan than it is to spell An Uaimh.
