I regret that due to commitments earlier in the day I had not an opportunity to pay as much attention to this debate as I would wish and perhaps as a result I may repeat items that have already been discussed by other Members of the House. Perhaps it will not be too bad if I do that because obviously the persons most concerned about the introduction of this Bill are members of local authorities. I have been noticing from the monitor that those who have been contributing to the debate are for the most part members of local authorities with the dual mandate of being Dáil Deputies also. They are the persons most experienced to speak about this Bill and the general problems besetting all local authorities at the moment.
With hindsight it is easy to be wise. Probably every Member of this House and the majority of local councillors and certainly the majority of city and county managers would say, with hindsight, that in 1977 the implications of removing rates were not studied sufficiently. But perhaps it was expedient in 1977 to remove the rates; the removal of rates was something that was politically desirable; there was a movement from the people themselves for the abolition of rates and equally there was a problem that the implementation of rates was unconstitutional in its form at that time. All these matters combined to bring about the abolition of rates without a real understanding of what would happen. Around the year 1977, certainly in the greater Dublin area, an enormous amount of development was taking place and of all the times to abolish rates that was the worst time because the responsibility and the onus on Dublin city and county council became enormous with the development taking place in the city and, more particularly, in the county, where the three new satellite towns were being planned and commenced. If the implications of what would happen in the running of local authorities had been studied more closely perhaps we would not have this Bill before us today. We might have had a change in the rating system but perhaps not a Bill such as the Bill before us today.
I agree with what Deputy Sean Walsh and other speakers have said, that making these charges an executive function of managers is regrettable from the point of view of local councillors. I would like to remind the House, however, that the implementation of water charges by county councils has always been an executive function of the manager. The confusion that arose at county council meetings in Dublin was not so much the fault of the manager or anybody else as of the councillors because the water charge had been so small — £4.50 is what I was paying in Dublin. Very little discussion took place about it and in my time on the council nobody bothered to ask about the water charge except to discover that it cost half the amount of money that was brought in to collect and one of the comments made to anybody who delved into the matter was that it was the manager who imposed that charge. So far as the imposition of a water charge or an increase in the water charge was concerned that was always a manager's function. This Bill is extending that function to give managers authority to raise other charges and to give local authorities who had not that authority the power to raise water and other charges.
I would say, and I have already said it to the Tánaiste, that he should put a time limit on the provisions of the Bill. That would allay the fears of many local authority members that they will have very little role in the running of local authorities. I do not think that is what the Tánaiste envisages. I do not think any reform of local government should have that intention. We should consider the words "local" and "government". The thrust of local government reform must be to make local government more local. This is what I hope will happen when we come to apply ourselves to discussing local government and I hope this House will have an opportunity to thrash out how best that can take place. Many Members of this House have enough experience from their work on local authorities to come forward with a new structure that will be more applicable to the day-to-day living of people in housing estates, of schools and youth groups.
Some people may consider that this Bill is taking powers away from councillors that they have at the moment. However, they have not, for instance, authority to strike a water rate: this power resides with the county manager. All local authorities are burdened with enormous debts. Councillors do not have powers to expand services unless they cut back on other services. When we deal with the estimates all we are doing is moving draughts on a draught board. The Minister is trying to get the whole system of local government back on the rails again so that it can become local. As a councillor, I should prefer that all financial matters remain reserved functions but I accept the reality of the situation. This Bill will improve matters. As I have told the Minister of State privately, there must be a time limit on this Bill to allay the fears of councillors and to ensure that we mean what we say when we talk about local government reform. A time limit will ensure that this reform is carried out. We do not want the matter to stretch out ad infinitum. If I am standing in years to come for election to a local authority I do not want us to be still talking about local government reform. It must become a reality in the next few years.
I do not think the implications of the abolition of rates were properly examined. While abolition of the rates may have been of benefit to the ordinary people, with hindsight it has been accepted that it was an undermining of our democracy. The abolition of rates took from local authority members the powers they are asking for now. Perhaps people did not examine that aspect sufficiently at the time: if they had, a different decision might have been made.
Reference has been made to planning charges. Naturally people do not like additional charges being imposed. However, if one contracts a plumber to do a job in one's home one has to pay a fixed charge before the work is done. The planning charges were a legitimate way of ensuring a better service in the planning departments of local authorities. Cases have been made that community halls and similar projects should be exempt from planning charges. When the finances of local authorities become healthier I would agree with such a proposition. Any project of a community nature has a good case to make for waiving planning charges or for reducing the charges, but I do not think it is realistic at the moment to start exempting people when the finances of most local authorities are in such a bad state.
Among reasonable people there is an acceptance that money is scarce. For a number of years we thought there was a magic wand that could be used when money was required. There was no question about the source of the money: there was a magic pot with money for every project. It was rather like Jack and the Beanstalk, with a pot of gold at the top. Unfortunately the beanstalk was chopped down and cold hard reality is facing people now.
Perhaps for the first time members of local authorities are really examining their estimates. I was elected as a member of a local authority in 1979 but for the two years it took me all my time to make sense of the estimates books. I was quite prepared to be a little more than a rubber stamp because I did not really understand all the problems. The money was available and members were content to nod through estimates. Dublin County Council deal with 450,000 people. This year it took us five meetings to strike a rate. I was impressed by the depth of discussion on the part of every councillor. It was an either/or situation: either we raised revenue or we began to cut back on services. There was no other choice. For councillors who were first elected in 1979, this year was the first time they really faced up to the reality that they had a function to play in striking a rate and in examining estimates thoroughly. We decided that next September a special committee of the council will sit down with the manager and heads of departments and go through the estimates. We do not want a situation next year of just nodding through the estimates. The councillors will have a role to play in finding areas where saving might be made.
If the imposition of charges were to become a reserved function of councillors the possibility of putting a time limit on councils should be considered. Perhaps they should tell the manager in October that they want to look at charges and the maximum amount of money they will allow the manager to raise by way of charges. They should tell the manager that a certain amount of money will be raised which will work out at, perhaps, £50 per house. Thus, the manager will know he will get, say, £3 million in charges and if he needs more money he must make savings, he must cut back on services and become more efficient. In other words, we must ensure that councillors have to take the decision because there is a danger that councilors facing a decision in the teeth of striking a rate and preparing their estimates will be told by somebody: "Hold it, cut that thing over there but do not cut in my patch" or "Put a charge on such and such a service" because some councillor knows that it will have very little relevance in his constituency. We must take it out of the realm where each councillor is fighting for his own corner. In September or October before we even know what structure the estimates will take we must plan for, say, 1985-86, to raise £2 million or £3 million on charges at the rate of £30 or £40 a house. Thus the manager will know the parameters within which he must prepare his estimates. Deputy Flynn might look at that when he is going over his plans for local government reform. It is important that powers be vested in the councillors and that they be masters of their own destiny, because whether it is the managers or the councillors who put on charges the public will blame the councillors anyway.
For many people councillors and council are synonymous. The people do not see the difference between an executive function and a reserve function. If it is explained to them at meetings they will see it, but generally speaking it is the body corporate of the council. Councillors, albeit locally elected, become one with the council when elected. Perhaps there is a fudging in the minds of the general public and whether the manager or council bring in these charges it is on the heads of the councillors and any acrimony that arises will fall on the councillors. The suggestion to give the responsibility back as a reserved function in a couple of years, perhaps when the finances of councils become more healthy, is worth looking at. Perhaps written into any Bill or any new structure should be the provision that prior to the year of striking the rate the council would come together as a body and decide how much money they will raise the following year in charges.
Most reasonable people who are trying to build homes for themselves, run businesses, go to jobs and colleges and so forth realise that there is a need to pay for services. There is no need to go overboard and say that you can gather in millions of pounds by charging, but most people will realise the need for a service charge of some sort if the service is to continue and be efficient. Deputy Molony talked about the burden on local authorities. I have mentioned this at many council meetings. It would be better if this House did not continue to bring in legislation which in turn is put on the backs of local authorities with none of the finances necessary to implement the measures. It would be better if we were not blinding the public by saying that we brought in this Bill or that Bill for the local authorities to implement, so complain to them. That is central Government closing their eyes to the reality of what they are doing and bringing unfair criticism on local authorities because something is not working when, in turn, they cannot make it work.
Examples are the Casual Trading Act, 1980, the Litter Act, 1982, various Acts relating to the control of dogs, social welfare payments — although local authorities get back grants on that. The Casual Trading Act, 1980, came to my local authority, Dublin County Council, and it is probably more relevant in Dublin county than anywhere else in the country, particularly in view of the enormous numbers of travelling people and itinerant population in County Dublin. The local authority in County Dublin have not done one iota to implement that Act, nor can they do so because they have not one single penny left over after striking their rate and preparing their estimates.
That is where the advantage lies of a Bill such as this, despite complaints levelled against it. If at local authority level we could get the power back into our own hands and not leave it in the banks or the lending agencies perhaps we could start to tackle some of these provisions of good Acts which have to be implemented by the local authority. We continue to get complaints from local residents about all the problems associated with casual trading and that will continue for years because Dublin County Council have no money to implement the Act.
The Litter Act, 1982, was a fine Act welcomed by everybody in this House. It is absolutely essential to raise the stupid fine of £5 for somebody who pollutes or litters the countryside and is brought to court. It is worth the fiver to him because that is less than the cost of petrol to take him to the tiphead and it is worth his while to dump in the ditches and roadside, in north county, south county, east county and west county and into the sea. The Litter Act was good legislation but it was put into the hands of the local authority. After a few months Dublin County Council from the on-the-spot fines — the only financial provision available to the county council to implement the Act — had raised £35. That is seven fines at £5 a go and it would not pay for even the printing of the tickets they had to give out to people on the spot and certainly would not pay the salaries of the litter wardens who had to implement the provisions of the Act.
I would prefer to see a maximum fine of £500 imposed on somebody convicted in the courts under the Litter Act and that money should have come straight into the coffers of the local authority on whose back the job of implementing this Act was laid. I hope that central Government will see the wisdom of that and when they hand these Acts to the local authority to be implemented they will allow the local authority to get the revenue from such implementation. Thus the local authority will not end up with the nasty part of it, with all the funds going into central Government. At least the local authority then would have the power, having obtained £X,000 from fines, to make available depots for cars and so on, so that people who have finished with their cars can bury them at the local depot and not leave them on the side of the road for the litter warden to collect.
These extra burdens which have been put on local authorities without the finance necessary to implement them have given rise to unfair criticism of local authorities and of local authority members, because all they can say at meetings is that, while we have a Casual Trading Act, and a Litter Act, they have not the money to provide the people they represent with the various advantages of these Acts such as special dumping grounds for old cars, old television sets and so on that we find in the ditches. Present policy is somewhat shortsighted. If those Acts could be implemented properly savings would accrue elsewhere and litter wardens and other staff in the administration would not spend weeks writing to councillors saying that such a car should be removed and so on. I would prefer that we did not continue to pass Bills here unless we can make local authorities work on them.
The Bill we are dealing with is giving an executive function to the manager, but it is a discretionary executive function. In other words, there is not automatically an onus on the manager to impose charges on any county council, city corporation or urban council area. It is discretionary — in other words, if a county council are already dealing with their financial problems properly and have managed to balance their books, there is no need for these charges. It is a discretionary executive function which I hope will soon be on the Statute Book, but the discretionary element would come into play when the manager had balanced the books but may want to bring in a new scheme. The charges will come into their own when, perhaps, the public would like to see a golf course built. If there was no money, there would be a good case for introducing a small charge so the public could see what they are getting for their money, because people complain about having to pay when they are not getting a good service. We can all recollect times when we did not get a good service in water and so on but, generally speaking, most of us are satisfied. Nine out of ten times our bins are collected, water comes out of our taps and we are able to flush our toilets. Local authorities provide a good service in most areas. I had someone complaining to me this week that two bags of garden refuse were not collected. Dublin County Council do not normally collect hedge and grass cuttings. After she had complained for some time I asked her how many times her bin had not been collected in the last six years and she said that, in fairness, it had happened only once. It would be wrong to imply that local authority services of the kind that are most relevant, the provision of water and bin collections, do not work properly.
There is a wider aspect to the services that people have come to expect and do not always associate with local authorities. They provide for the maintenance of graveyards, community grants systems and so on and they give a human face to the local authority. Local authorities are no longer synonymous with sewers and drains, roads and pot holes. They provide a community grant for scout dens, play groups, tidy garden and art competitions, things which are relevant to day-to-day life. That is the best part of local government and we should be capitalising on that aspect. Last Sunday I was present at the Dublin County Council civic award ceremony involving a number of youth groups. This scheme was introduced last year and there were 30 entries from schools with children whose ages ranged from 11 to 16 or 17 years. Two of their projects have been selected to get further financing through a community grants scheme. If we not get rid of the debts that exist in local authorities these will be the first schemes to suffer because, strictly speaking, they are not essential services. You cannot close all the sewerage works in an area because you are short of money but community grants would almost certainly be cut. These are the schemes which give the most satisfaction to all hard working councillors in the county. We must not have a situation where money put aside for community grants is used to fund more essential schemes which do not give so much pleasure to the community.
There is an onus on the manager to introduce charges but he must be very careful to recognise that there will be people who literally will not be able to afford them. Undoubtedly, in any scheme there will always be a need to waive charges for some people. Humanity must be shown to people who cannot afford charges. In Dublin County Council, where we have increased our water charge to £30, we have introduced a scheme recommended by the manager which will allow people on certain State benefits to apply to have the charge waived. It would be a sad day if an elderly person felt that because they could not pay for water they could not use it and perhaps, as a result, would suffer ill-health or death. However, some of the schemes we have introduced over the years have perhaps left a little bit too much leeway and have cost more to implement than the revenue they raise.
We must look at the advantages of this Bill because any local authority member who is doing his or her job has to face up to the fact that we are no more than rubber stamps until we get our county council finances into a healthier state. City and county managers have a very strong, active organisation and they should use it to ensure that there is uniformity of ideas as to how charges will be implemented so that we do not run into further serious problems. In a case where a city and county border on one another, or where a dividing line between the two areas is between No. 60 and No. 61 on a road, we must ensure that the occupant of No. 60 is not paying more than the occupant of No. 61 for what appears to be the exact same service. One of the advantages to be gained from this Bill is that the city managers are a smaller body than that of councils and local authorities and perhaps there is a better chance of having fewer problems related to the introduction of charges if they discuss this matter very carefully before they come to the council and say they are putting on a charge. City and county managers should sit down together and decide how best to implement these charges in the most humane of ways.
I look forward to the day when this Bill becomes redundant and when even the introduction of charges could become redundant except in cases where a new type of service or scheme is being introduced into a council area. In other words, the charges would be in the background as a way in which, for a short time, a county council can raise money to buy, perhaps, a public park for an area, open a golf course, a new graveyard or provide some new libraries. The public could then see that these funds were being used properly. If local authorities got down to the job, they could make many savings in present expenditure. It is a fair comment and a warranted criticism that many areas in public spending at local authority level are not giving good value for money. The many councillors who are also Members of this House have a special duty because of this dual mandate and know how difficult it is to get any more money for anything. We have a responsibility at local authority level to carefully scrutinise expenditure. There may be areas of waste and inefficiency. Perhaps banks of land are building up which may never be needed for a productive purpose at council level. Now is the time, when faced with the introduction of charges, for councillors, managers and staff to examine acreages of land which have been owned by the council for many years and which they will never be able to develop because they are landlocked or waterlogged. If this land were sold for a more productive purpose that finance could be used in a better way at local level.
I do not welcome any diminution of the authority and power of local authority members. However, this Bill at present is essential. If councillors examine their consciences they will realise that it is needed. I hope the Minister will amend the Bill to make it of limited duration and follow its introduction with sound proposals for local government reform.
