andMr. G. Fitzgerald asked the Minister for Local Government the amount of housing grants received to date by Irish steel and coal workers from EEC funds.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Workers House Loans.
14.
I presume the Deputies are referring to the low interest loans by the EEC for the building of new houses and the modernisation of existing houses for coal and steel workers. No such loan has yet been advanced. However, as I indicated in my reply to Parliamentary Question No. 36 of the 30th April, 1974, pending the finalisation of the arrangements for payment of these loans, I have asked the National Building Agency to consider the possibility of making house-purchase loans available to the workers concerned at 9½ per cent, adjustable in due course to take account of the interest rate on the EEC funds.
Have applications been received from some of these workers and, if so, how many? At what stage does the Minister expect to have these loans finalised for these people? Is it possible, in addition to this loan, to get a loan from the local authority in the event of the loan not being adequate, in other words, to get some from this loan fund and the balance from the local authority?
Discussions took place yesterday between the firm concerned and representatives of my Department to try to finalise the question of granting the type of loan to which Deputy Fitzgerald has referred and also to arrange for loans at the normal rate of 9½ per cent pending a decision on the EEC loan. I am afraid I could not give a definite date as to when the EEC loan will be cleared because there appears to be quite considerable difficulty in having this matter dealt with not alone in the case of Ireland but in the case of the other two countries who joined the EEC.
Why is there such a delay? Is it true that our Department were slow off the mark in making these applications? I asked in my first supplementary how many applications for the loan there were from qualified people.
I have not got the number of applicants. My Department were not slow off the mark. They made the application as quickly as possible. It is the usual EEC way of dealing with things. It is being transferred backwards and forwards between two bodies. Unfortunately it is something over which we have not got very much control. We are doing everything we can to try to get the matter finalised.