Before I moved the adjournment of this debate last week I was referring to the general conditions in Leinster House. I complimented those involved on the good features that exist here and I complained about the changes that are needed. We in Fine Gael find it hard to get the necessary telephone extensions on request from whatever section is supposed to deal with this matter. Due to some rearrangement of the staff that is taking place at present in our rooms and in the rooms on the second floor of the old building a request was made for more power points but there is some delay in providing them. The Minister of State should investigate those matters and have them attended to. I am of the opinion that the general condition and cleanliness of the House should be attended to. Some of the facilities opened here recently, such as the bar, were left unfinished. In the bar a radiator is propped up and is not connected while another radiator is still in the condition it was when delivered to Leinster House by the supplier. The person responsible should attend to these matters. This House, the home of the national parliament, should in general have a better standard of cleanliness than at present. I hope this matter is looked into.
I am particularly interested in the question of arterial drainage. It seems that the Government do not have a commitment in that direction because the amount of money being spent on one aspect or another of arterial drainage or on cost-benefit analyses or surveys has not increased to keep pace with inflation. In fact, the amount has been reduced somewhat. I note that in 1980 £105,000 was provided for arterial drainage surveys and that this year it is proposed to spend £110,000. In 1980 £95,000 was spent on comprehensive drainage surveys, including cost-benefit analysis and cost-benefit investigation, and this year it is proposed to spend £100,000. The scene is the same in relation to arterial construction work.
As the Minister of State is aware, over two years ago we got a package of £42 million from the EEC and it was decided then that £28 million would be spent on field drainage with the remaining £14 million being spent on arterial drainage. It was also stated at the time that every pound we spent on those schemes — we are not too concerned with the £28 million now because field drainage comes under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture — would be matched pound for pound by the Government. I should like to know where the £14 million was spent or how much of it has been spent to date? Did we back it pound for pound? When the scheme was announced the people of Galway complained that not one shilling that was allocated for arterial drainage would be spent in that county. We are also under the impression that that money is not being backed pound for pound. I would not totally rely on what we get from the EEC. As far as arterial drainage is concerned we should have a special allocation annually of about £20 million.
It is hard to identify who is responsible for the running of the Office of Public Works. If it is being run by the commissioners I am not happy that it is being run in a proper fashion. The Minister of State should introduce a certain amount of imagination and his own thinking into the working of the Office of Public Works in relation to arterial drainage. I cannot say that that was done by his predecessor. Have the Government a commitment or a will - they must also have the political conviction - to carry out arterial drainage schemes? I am a farmer from an agricultural area where an extensive arterial drainage extension was carried out and I am in a position to state that the benefits from such work are enormous. If we are concerned to increase agricultural production here the natural thing to do would be to remove the water from our land. If that is done those whose land was flooded will be in a position to avail of the other grants available. If the arterial drainage scheme is not carried out it will not be possible for the farming community to avail of the field drainage grants.
It was represented to us in the House, and reported in the newspapers by Deputies Geoghegan-Quinn and Hussey and by every Minister or Minister of State west of the Shannon, from west Cork to Donegal, the great work the promised £300 million would do for our infrastructures and so forth. We were told that some of it would be devoted to arterial drainage and that the work would start on 1 January this year. We do not know where that money is going to go and unless we have a definite programme to carry out drainage work close to all our rivers, big and small, a lot of the money we are supposed to be getting from the EEC will go towards field drainage. Even if we had an announcement to the effect that the money was on the way, we could think in terms of spending it, though I suspect that a large portion of it will be diverted towards farm drainage. However, if the Office of Public Works fail to do the groundwork in advance, the farmers will not be in a position to avail of this money.
Because of the size of the Estimate for this office — almost £68 million — I suggest that a Minister of State from some other Department be appointed to the office in addition to the one there already and that this additional Minister be made responsible for arterial drainage and for drainage generally. Indeed, I would go further and suggest that that drainage which is undertaken by local authorities under local improvement schemes be transferred to a section of the Office of Public Works which, if my suggestion were to be adopted, would be dealing exclusively with drainage while the other section of the office would deal with such matters as buildings, the restoration of ancient monuments, archeological finds and so on. I might mention that I was pleased to hear today on the news bulletin that there has been a further find of a large number of objects at Derrynaflan. It would be much more satisfactory for the office to be divided into two parts as I have outlined with, of course, that part dealing with drainage working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture where necessary.
So far as drainage is concerned, this whole area could usefully be categorised in three parts. Basically the three categories involved might be one dealing with schemes of 100,000 acres or more, another dealing with schemes of between 50,000 acres and 100,000 acres, and yet another dealing with schemes of up to 50,000 acres and which would include those small schemes that now come within the ambit of the local authorities. I suggest also that a complete survey be carried out of the entire country with a view to ascertaining the needs within each of the three such categories. The primary necessity is to identify the problem. The Office of Public Works seem to be reluctant to do this, but it is necessary that it be done. It is possible that at some stage in the future we will receive a flush of money from the EEC. It is possible also that with a change of Government here, with a new Government who would have a definite policy, we could get back to the days when there were a few pounds to spend. Perhaps we will be granted a specific sum of money from the EEC for the specific purpose of drainage, but if such money were to come our way now we would not be in a position to use it because of the failure of the Office of Public Works to do the basic groundwork. If the Minister of State were to do little else during his tenure of office but to ensure that this groundwork is carried out and that drainage is divided into the categories I have mentioned, he would be doing a good day's work.
At least the Minister should try to do something in this whole area of drainage during his time in office instead of allowing the Office of Public Works to continue in their happy-go-lucky way without having any particular commitment to arterial drainage.
I hope that, when replying, the Minister will be able to tell me how much of the £14 million we received from the EEC has been spent on arterial drainage, in what areas it has been spent and whether we backed it pound for pound. The amount being spent in this area decreases each year in real terms. I suspect that we are not living up to the conditions under which the £14 million was paid to us.
There are a couple of specific items in the sphere of arterial drainage on which I should like to comment. Generally speaking, the arrangement whereby maintenance work is undertaken by the Office of Public Works but paid for by the local authorities has been satisfactory, though there are a few exceptions in this regard. Before Christmas I referred here to the condition of the Cregg river at Corrandula, County Galway. This river is very much silted up with the result that the arterial drainage scheme that was undertaken there in the past is not as effective as it would be otherwise. I was promised by the Office of Public Works that maintenance work on the river would be undertaken in 1980 but that has not happened. This work would involve cutting weeds and generally clearing away the silt. But it was not done. I talked about it in the House last year. I talked about it when the Supplementary Estimate was introduced before Christmas and no effort has been made since. I can appreciate that this is a difficult time to carry out maintenance on that river.
There is also a problem in the Tuam area regarding a tributary of the Clare known as the Nanny. Work was done on part of the Nanny under the Connaught-Clare drainage scheme and stopped in about 1960 for the simple reason that the Nanny was and is being used as a water supply for the town of Tuam. But between the Office of Public Works and Galway County Council we are getting nowhere. Much effort has been made by politicians of all parties to get the Office of Public Works and Galway County Council together on this matter with a view to draining the river. Years ago money was allocated for it. I assume that it was spent in another direction since the Nanny could not be drained at the time. The people in that area are getting very militant because so many years have gone by. This drainage scheme has been closed down since October 1964; that is a long long time and still we are getting no co-operation between the Office of Public Works and Galway County Council with a view to completing the drainage of the River Nanny. I would ask the Minister of State to pay some attention to what I am saying and to get something done about it this year.
Since I came into this House I have contributed to this debate in one way or another. I have talked about the Dunkellin and I am going to talk about it again now. As far back as 1972, almost nine years ago, the then Parliamentary Secretary in charge of that office, the late Deputy Lemass, put it in writing that work would start later that year. This is 1981 and nothing has happened yet. We were informed in 1980 that there was a lack of engineering staff in the Office of Public Works. Generally people make a laugh out of the Office of Public Works. Whether it was the commissioners or the present occupant of the post who made that statement, they are only making a laugh of themselves by saying something like that. These are basically two small rivers with a total catchment area of 91,000 acres, about 14,500 acres of which are severely flooded. The average farm size in the area is about 35 acres and the number of farmers is 2,700. Perhaps the Minister might tell me what effort has been made since we last talked about the Dunkellin with a view to recruiting the necessary staff with the necessary expertise to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of the Dunkellin. I listened to the Minister recently here in this House and there was an announcement that we were getting about £400,000 from the EEC for cost benefit analysis.