Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Friday, 12 Jun 1987

Vol. 373 No. 7

Estimates, 1987. - Vote 29: Environment ( Revised Estimate ).

Minister for the Environment (Mr. Flynn)

I move:

That a sum not exceeding £864,608,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1987, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for the Environment, including grants in lieu of rates on agricultural land and other grants to Local Authorities, grants and other expenses in connection with housing, and miscellaneous schemes, subsidies and grants including certain grants-in-aid.

Is áthas liom an deis seo — an chéad uair mar an tAire i gceist — chun an caiteachas sa Mheastachán Comhshaoil a phlé. Cé nach bhfuil a lán ama agam, caithfidh mé tagairt a dhéanamh dos na príomh-sholáthair amháin sa Mheastacháin.

I welcome this opportunity — my first as the Minister concerned — to debate the areas of responsibility relating to the Estimate of the Department of the Environment. Because of the limited time available I will refer only to the major areas falling within the remit of my Department.

The net total of the Environment Estimate is £864,600 million. This will be increased by a token supplementary estimate for £1,000 for which I intend to seek the approval of the House at the close of this debate and to which I will refer later. The provision in the Estimate gives part only of the picture of spending in 1987 on the services provided by my Department and by the local authorities with which the Department are concerned. Money for those services is also provided through the Public Capital Programme, mainly from the Local Loans Fund, and by local authorities from their own resources, including rates on commercial premises.

In total the Department and the local authorities — county councils, county boroughs and other urban authorities — will, it is estimated, spend close on £1,805 million in 1987. This is approximately 10½ per cent of the estimated Gross National Product for the year. Put another way, the services provided by my Department and local authorities are absorbing almost £11 of every £100 of estimated national output for the year. A review of this expenditure shows that it is spent on services that are indispensable in a modern society and contribute in a major way to the national wellbeing. All but about £185 million of the £1,805 million will be disbursed through the local authorities. In other words, the local authorities are the ultimate spending agency for about £1,620 million this year. The local authorities will themselves raise about £621 million of these funds. Central Government will be making about £1,000 million available to local authorities by way of grants, subsidies and capital issues from the Local Loans Fund.

My Department are committed to obtaining the maximum possible value for money from this expenditure. The Comprehensive Expenditure Programme approach to the Department's areas of expenditure is undergoing continuous development so that policy, objectives and targets are enunciated as precisely as possible and all the costs associated with each programme are identified and taken into account in the evaluation process.

Local authorities must at all times strive to obtain the best value for their expenditure. I appreciate their co-operation in this regard. However, continuing effort is needed to ensure that, within their area of responsibility, the best use is made of the scarce resources available to the local authorities. I and my Department will continue to work with the authorities in this respect, in searching out and applying the most efficient and effective methods to their various expenditure programmes.

It is, of course, essential that the local government system should work efficiently within the expenditure limits set by the Government. The question of improving the structure of the system in ways which might make it more effective has been under consideration on and off for several years. This is a complex subject with wide ramifications.

One of my priorities as Minister for the Environment will be to take action to bring about a fully effective and modern local government system. The Programme for National Recovery states our intention of undertaking a comprehensive reorganisation of local government structures, and of giving local authorities a bigger part to play in promoting and supporting the development of their areas. I will bring forward as soon as possible a comprehensive programme for reforming local government, based on the measures contained in our programme. In conjunction with this review, I am giving special attention of course to the difficult question of the future form of local authority finance.

Two thirds of all local authority expenditure on current account is funded by the Exchequer; £547 million is provided in the form of subsidies, grants and recoupments for specific services — £466 million through this Estimate and £81 million through various other departmental Estimates. The remaining £256 million is made up of the rates support grants, which are applied at the discretion of the authorities themselves.

The continuance of the important services which local authorities are called on to provide for local communities and in the national interest would have required a higher level of financial support in 1987 — much higher if the expectations of the various interests were to be met. In present economic circumstances, local authorities could not reasonably expect to be exempt from the constraints which affect the rest of the public sector. These restraints have forced local authorities to make very difficult decisions in framing their own local estimates for 1987. I must commend local councillors who, in general, faced up to the realities of the situation and took the decisions in a responsible way. I have every confidence that they and their staffs will be equally responsible in continuing to control and regulate their services in such a way that the hard decisions taken in their Estimates will be fully implemented in relation to the services affected.

The Government, through the Public Capital Programme, are providing £1,150 million in 1987 for expenditure affecting the building industry. This is a large sum, especially in difficult economic circumstances. The primary cause of the decline in output in the construction industry in recent years is now accepted to be the result of the reduction in private investment in certain types of development such as office and commercial developments.

In seeking to increase private investment in various areas of the economy including the building industry, where there is unsatisfied demand, the Government have recognised the absolute necessity of securing strict discipline in all areas of public expenditure. This has, of necessity, required careful examination and reappraisal of a range of expenditure programmes, some of which impact on the construction industry. A principal feature of the Government's strategy, as indicated in the budget, is to create the conditions necessary for improved confidence and performance throughout the economy and for lower interest and tax rates by reducing public sector spending and borrowing. Demand for the industry's products, including new housing, is highly sensitive to changes in interest rates and taxation and the industry stands to benefit more from the success of the Government's overall economic strategy than most other sectors.

I am glad to say that there are encouraging signs of improvement in certain sectors of the construction industry this year. The office and commercial sectors, which are a key indicator of private confidence in the industry, are about to record their first increase in volume terms since 1981. In addition, cement sales to the end of April are up 3 per cent on the admittedly very low figures of last year.

Mr. Boland

Congratulations.

Mr. Flynn

I am also very pleased to see the major building societies reducing the mortgage rate by 1 per cent which reflects the overall downward trend in interest rates since the budget. The cost of borrowing, if excessively high, can seriously depress economic activity. This is, of course, particularly true for the private housing sector of the building industry.

I hope to be in a position to finalise arrangements for the establishment of the Construction Industry Development Board provided for in the Government's Programme for National Recovery. The brief of the board will be to encourage both the economic and technological development of the industry. A sum of £40,000 has been provided in the Estimate to finance the administrative costs of the board. The board will provide the Government with the opportunity to work in co-operation with representative interests of the industry towards recovery, development and growth.

All income related loans approved since 1 July 1986, are now the direct responsibility of individual local authorities who had previously acted on an agency basis for the Housing Finance Agency. As well as annuity and income related loans, local authorities offer a convertible loan option which combines the best features of both the fixed interest annuity loan and the income related loan. This loan option provides for repayments on an income related basis for the first five years, converting thereafter to the conventional annuity repayment. Local authorities now offer potential house purchasers on lower incomes a comprehensive range of house purchase loans to suit their individual circumstances. The total amount provided in 1987 for publicly financed house purchase and improvement loans is £173 million. The sources from which the Housing Finance Agency can obtain long term funds have been broadened to enable funds to be raised by conventional borrowing, including foreign borrowing and a wider range of potential investors. A sum of £9 million has been provided in the Estimate to enable an interest swop arrangement to be operated with the Housing Finance Agency thereby matching the cost of the funds raised by conventional borrowing with the return from income related repayments by borrowers.

Returning to building societies for a moment, my aim is to ensure that we continue to have a thriving building society movement that will remain a prime supplier of funds for the housing programme. If they are to do so successfully, the societies must operate within a framework which is suitable to the present day situation in the financial world — a world which is rapidly changing with intense competition and where traditional barriers are breaking down. In this respect, it must be acknowledged that the present legislation governing building societies has become somewhat out of date and unduly restrictive. I intend to introduce comprehensive new legislation concerning all aspects of the operation of societies and their regulatory arrangements. This will be designed to ensure both the necessary degree of freedom for societies to expand their services and a reasonable and effective degree of regulation to secure the interests of members and the public generally in the new situation. To this end, I established a working party who are ironing out the practical problems arising from the recent regulations and will then put forward recommendations regarding the much more comprehensive measures which I intend to bring before the House.

In our "Programme for Government", we undertook to consult with the representatives of local authority tenants on the question of a national rent scheme. I have already met NATO and I advised them that discussions on the revision of the rents scheme would commence when their withholding campaign had been ended and arrears payments in the cases involved had been made. Our approach to local authority rents will be to evolve a national scheme which will maintain the social character of local authority housing but will also provide housing authorities with an adequate rental income. In order to achieve this objective, it will be necessary to ensure that those who can afford to pay for their houses do so.

I intend to introduce a new Housing Bill which will, among other things, deal with the problem of accommodating homeless persons. This Bill will be introduced as soon as possible following discussions with voluntary groups working in this area. In fact, I have now made arrangements for a meeting next week with representatives of Simon to discuss the issues involved. However, it must be stressed that, even in advance of any such legislation, significant numbers of homeless persons are being housed by local authorities. Last year, for example, Dublin Corporation provided accommodation for almost 600 single homeless persons.

The Supplementary Estimate which I will be moving at the end of the debate arises from the need to meet the expenses of the task force established by the Government following the gas explosions at Raglan House and at Dolphin House. The task force are examining the question of progressive collapse in multi-storey buildings and will provide technical guidance on practical measures which could be taken to minimise the risk of progressive collapse in such buildings.

In line with the Government's budgetary strategy, overall current expenditure will not be increased by the operations of the task force. The cost, estimated at £82,000, will be met from savings arising elsewhere in the Estimate as set out in the Supplementary Estimate which is for a token sum.

The first road plan was published eight years ago. In that short period the State has provided £750 million for the improvement of the road network and over £200 million for maintenance works. In fact, State expenditure on roads has almost doubled in real terms since 1980. In addition, local authorities have provided over £900 million from their own resources for road works in the same period. While expenditure by local authorities financed from their own resources has declined somewhat in real terms in recent years, the overall expenditure by the State and local authorities on roads in the eighties has been fairly significant despite competing claims for scarce resources.

The total Estimate provision this year for road improvement and maintenance works, including the local improvements scheme, is £170 million, or over £2 million greater than the 1986 outturn. Despite the difficult economic choices we faced on assuming office, I am happy that the Estimate before the House includes for increased provisions for roads in 1987.

Having decided on the overall roads allocation for 1987, one of the questions facing me as Minister for the Environment was how this allocation might best be utilised in present economic circumstances. I have been particularly concerned for some time about the deteriorating condition of our county road network. I think that Deputies from all sides of the House will agree with me when I say that these roads meet a vital part of the day to day transport needs of our agricultural industry. Although carrying only a little more than a quarter of the total traffic, they represent 80 per cent of our total mileage of public roads. I decided to provide £15 million for country road strengthening in 1987 which is £10 million more than the 1986 provision. This grant may also be applied, at the discretion of the local authorities, to the strengthening of regional roads. In apportioning this grant, I decided that the most equitable allocation would be on the basis of the mileage of county roads in each county and that is the basis on which I made the allocations. While referring to the special provision for county roads, I would like to take this opportunity to make it clear that investment in major improvement works will continue to have a high priority.

The 1985 road plan set out a detailed programme of works for the three-year period 1985 to 1987. We are now half way through the last year of this programme, so it is opportune to look back on what has been achieved and consider our options for the future. I am now reviewing the whole area of road development policy and I hope to be in a position to put my proposals to Government in the very near future. I am considering the question of the appropriate strategy to be adopted towards road development in the long term and the investment requirements in the medium term in relation to national, regional and county roads. In carrying out this review, I will consider how this programme should be funded by the State, local authorities, the EC and the private sector. My review will also consider value for money and cost control methods. Central to this whole process is the Government's belief that an efficient road network is vitally important to future economic prosperity.

The Estimate provision for the local improvements scheme is £4 million. This is £1.85 million more than the original provision by the previous Government. This scheme, which applies to farm road projects eligible for EC aid under the western package, has brought benefits over the years to landowners in isolated rural areas whose holdings had no proper access to a public road. The increased provision will enable local authorities to accelerate their programme of works under the scheme thereby benefiting a significantly greater number of applicants in 1987.

I am glad to be able to report to the House that considerable progress has been made towards securing the early redevelopment of the Custom House Dock area. The Custom House Development Authority recently completed and published a planning scheme for the area and submitted it to me for approval. A statutory period of one month is allowed to Dublin Corporation to submit any objections to the planning scheme. I will finalise my consideration of the scheme as soon as possible after this period has elapsed. The necessary arrangements are also proceeding for the establishment of a financial services centre on the site and Deputies will be aware that the 1987 Finance Bill includes provision for favourable tax rates for financial services based in this area.

I announced on 10 May, 1987, that the Government have decided to extend the Custom House Dock area to include, initially, the immediate quayside and, later, on a phased basis, lands to the east of the existing area. The Urban Renewal (Amendment) Bill, 1987, which is at present before the House, will enable such extensions to be effected. The Government believe that the redevelopment of the Custom House Dock area, and future extensions of it, will play a key role in promoting renewed growth in the building industry and the whole economy in the years ahead, as well as providing an exciting opportunity to revitalise the centre of our capital city. The Estimate before the House includes a provision of £600,000 for the Authority's current expenditure this year.

The effectiveness of the financial incentives to promote urban renewal under the Finance Act, 1986 and the Urban Renewal Act, 1986, are also being monitored and consideration is being given to the extension of the scheme to other provincial centres. Appropriate amendments to the Finance Act, 1986 are being considered and will be brought forward by the Minister for Finance in the context of the Finance Bill, 1987 at present before the House.

I have decided to dissolve the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission and to make a grant of £50,000 to the commission this year. The dissolution will take effect from 30 June, 1987, by which time I was assured by the commission that their improvement scheme for the metropolitan central area, on which work had started before I assumed office, would be completed. Implementation of the improvement scheme will be a matter for the existing statutory authorities — principally Dublin Corporation — who have indicated to me that they are willing to set up a special task force for this purpose. I have asked the corporation to immediately set about making the necessary arrangements to enable this work to be put in hands and I intend to keep in close touch with the progress being made by the corporation in this matter.

The physical environment is a prime national resource which in recent years has correctly become the subject of increased public concern. As Minister with overall responsibility for the protection and improvement of the environment, I welcome wholeheartedly this trend. Pressures brought about by urbanisation, industrial growth, changing patterns of agriculture and increasing demands for recreational facilities require careful monitoring and control. The problem is a worldwide one and the inclusion of environmental policy in the Single European Act is a welcome development.

However, without waiting for the EC to act, we can do much by ourselves to keep our country a clean and healthy place to live in and visit both for ourselves and for overseas visitors. In this regard the Government have given a lead. The first piece of legislation to be debated in the present Dáil was the Air Pollution Act which became law this week. We are actively participating in European Year of the Environment activities and I have taken other initiatives to improve the general appearance of the countryside. This is important both to give us all a sense of pride in our surroundings and also to make the country a more attractive place for home and overseas holidaymakers. As Deputies are aware, the tourism industry is labour intensive and it has the potential to provide additional employment. This is the main reason for the Government's recent major initiatives to promote tourism this year. We should all do our share to assist these initiatives by improving our local areas.

A provision of £230,000 is being made for the Environment Awareness Bureau, an increase of £105,000 on the provision last year. The increased funding has been provided to enable the bureau to participate more effectively in the European Year of the Environment which runs to 20 March 1988. The bureau have been designated as the national committee for the year and, as such, are engaged in an extensive programme of activities.

Activities for European Year of the Environment are not, of course, confined to those organised directly by the Environment Awareness Bureau. Special initiatives are being taken by Government Departments and local authorities and I expect that many projects will be carried out or sponsored by business, community and other groups. It is of the highest importance that these initiatives should succeed both because of their inherent merits and the encouragement they would give to future projects. For too long we have tended to regard economic progress and preservation of the environment as mutually exclusive objectives. Whatever validity this view may have had in the past, it has lost its force with the realisation that the preservation of nature and a healthy environment is necessary for the future wellbeing of society and that this objective can be achieved without hindering economic progress. It is becoming increasingly clear that it is those nations that take best care of their environment that will succeed on the economic front as well.

Litter creates an unfavourable impression for tourists and foreign industrialists and can have serious consequences for our economy. The Litter Act, 1982, provided local authorities with a wide range of powers to prevent and control litter and unauthorised dumping but the extent to which the authorities have availed of these powers varies considerably. Of course, the solution to this problem depends on the attitudes and actions of individuals as well as on public authorities. Real progress will be achieved only if there is a heightened public awareness of the need for a more enlightened attitude towards the environment.

The Government's document on tourism "Putting Growth Back into Tourism", includes a commitment to end unauthorised dumping and litter and to involve local authorities in a concerted clean-up-Ireland campaign. With this in view and as a means of drawing public attention to the problems created by litter, I was happy to be able to promote a "Clean-up Ireland Week" during the week commencing 4 May. Local authorities were asked to prepare action plans for the week and to incorporate specific projects suggested by my Department. The efforts of the local authorities were backed up by my Department by way of an advertising campaign on television, radio and press.

I would urge the local authorities to engage in a continuing campaign to resolve the litter problem by building on the action plans which formed the basis of their activities during "Clean-up Ireland Week". I have already requested local authorities to engage in an immediate two week programme to eliminate the nuisance and environmental degradation caused by abandoned vehicles.

I have recently reminded farmers of the importance of taking precautions against water pollution. At this time of the year, the risk of pollution is significantly increased when silage-making is in progress. I expect local authorities to make full use of their substantial powers under the Local Government (Water Pollution) Act, 1977, to deal with any pollution problems which may arise.

The Estimates for my Department include a provision of £202,000 for pollution control. Most of this provision is intended to meet costs incurred by Cork County Council on shoreline cleanup operations following the Kowloon Bridge incident, and costs arising from the involvement of the operations group during the period immediately following the grounding of the vessel on the Stags last November.

The final resolution of the pollution problem posed by the Kowloon Bridge required that the oil remaining on the vessel be removed as soon as conditions allowed. Only then could a final cleanup of the affected coastline be undertaken with confidence. The Government, acting through the Minister for the Marine, who has statutory responsibility for marine casualties and associated oil pollution, lost no time on assuming office in arranging for the removal of all remaining oil from the wreck, an operation which I am glad to say has now been successfully completed. I am pleased, too, that Cork County Council have nearly completed their work of removing the oil from the shoreline and I would like to compliment the council and their workforce for their efforts to ensure that the beaches of west Cork will be clear for the tourist season. My Department arranged for the delivery this week to Cork County Council of a new French made machine which is designed to pick up any small globules of oil that may remain on sandy beaches. I am pleased to report that trials of this new machine over the past two days have been very satisfactory and I have decided to purchase the machine for further use in west Cork and in any other area where it may be needed from time to time.

Faced with a half hour limit on my opening statement, I have been unable to deal with all the different and wide ranging activities of my Department in the degree of detail that I would like. I have only touched on some of the major and important activities of the Department. I will be interested in what Deputies have to say and I will consider the matters raised by them. I am confident that the Government's policies will provide the basis for future growth in the important areas covered by this Estimate. In the meantime, I am glad to have been able to make such significant provisions for 1987 for such areas as roads, housing, and the environment to which I have already referred and for other key areas such as fire and sanitary services. These provisions in such difficult times reflect the Government's commitment to the local government system and to the services which it provides.

D'ainneoin na deacrachtaí atá os ár gcomhair, tá mé sásta go bhfuil an Rialtas ag soláthar dóthain airgid i mbliana le haghaidh na séirbhísí éagsúla i mo chúram. Ní raibh mé in ann san óráid seo labhairt faoi a lán séirbhísí atá antábhachtach ach breathnóidh mé ar gach a bhfuil le rá ag Teachtaí faoin Mheastachán go léir.

Mr. Boland

A story which has gained currency in recent times suggested that appointing an accountant to run the affairs of a business was the equivalent of playing 11 goalkeepers on a soccer team; they stopped everything but there was no way they could start or score anything. I am aware that the Minister is not by profession an accountant but in every other respect he fills that role.

During my almost 20 years as a Member of the Oireachtas this is the first time I have heard an Estimate speech for the Department of the Environment delivered in tones and content more appropriate to that of a liquidator appointed to run down a firm than of a Minister appointed to continue initiatives and to develop further one of the great Departments of State. We are seeing from the presentation we heard this morning and from what we have witnessed in reality during the past three months the slow but steady demise of the Minister's Department as one of the great Departments of State. During three months the Minister has allowed his Department to be decimated. All initiatives have been stifled, all change and development has been stopped and staff are demoralised and demotivated. So far as I can recall there has not been any new positive announcement from the Minister during the three months since his appointment. Perhaps I am being unfair to the Minister because, as an addendum to his speech he announced this morning that he is buying a machine to pick up globules of oil. That is his only new initiative and contribution to the work and activities of the Department of the Environment.

The Minister was not a fortnight in his Department when we witnessed the extraordinary debacle of the botched announcement regarding the abandonment of the various housing initiatives and grants. There was the subsequent U-turn, in itself botched, which was necessary in view of the public outcry and the clear inequity of the initial announcement made by the Minister and his colleague, the Minister for Finance. In one fell swoop the house improvements grant scheme was scrapped, and the £5,000 surrender grant scheme to encourage local authority tenants to purchase private houses was abolished amid utter confusion. That confusion still exists in that many applicants who applied to the local authorities are left toing and froing between the local authorities and the Department without a clear indication as to whether their grants will be processed. The new £2,250 grant scheme to encourage the housing industry was abandoned by the Minister within six months of its introduction. That abandonment and the nature of the announcement with its clear inequities suggested that people who had applied and entered into contracts in good faith could find themselves thrown on the financial scrap-heap. Even when the announcement of a U-turn in that respect was made, it was done amid utter confusion.

A contemptible attempt was made to deny there was a U-turn. The statements of both the Minister and his colleague the Minister for Finance can only be regarded as being untrue having regard to the public advertisements placed by the Department in the newspapers setting out the details of what was to be the initial announcement. To such an extent was the U-turn botched that one of those advertisements about the original announcement appeared in The Sunday Tribune to the great embarrassment of the officials in the Department of the Environment. In that newspaper on one page was an advertisement setting out the details of the abandonment of those housing grant schemes and on another page was an advertisement placed by the same Department asking people to please disregard the advertisement on the other page which was a mistake. That was the public's first introduction to the Minister in his new role.

The abandonment of that range of housing initiatives strikes against everything the public hold dear in relation to housing. Until recently we held the proud record of having the highest rate of home ownership in the world. About 86 per cent of the people own or are buying their own homes. That has come about because of a number of factors, one being the inherent desire of people to build and own their own homes and another being the many initiatives taken by Governments to make it possible for people to fulfil that dream. In one fell swoop, within a fortnight of coming to office, three of the most important of those initiatives were set aside in total contradiction of the Government's public posturing when in Opposition right up to the day on which they took office.

Not only was that attack made on home ownership but the Minister for the Environment who has the responsibility for defending the interests of home owners and the construction industry allowed his colleague, the Minister for Finance, to announce in the Budget an attack on the system of mortgage interest relief which has traditionally applied and which was designed to encourage people to buy their own homes. Next week in the Finance Bill there will be an attempt by the Minister for Finance to reduce by 10 per cent the amount of mortgage interest relief allowed to people who entered into contracts in good faith to buy their own homes. The Minister for the Environment was traditionally the Minister who defended the interests of the house owners at the Cabinet table. This Minister has failed abjectly not only in the area in which he has direct responsibility as Minister for the Environment but in the area of his broader responsibility at the Cabinet table to defend the interests of home owners. The consistent attack launched on the concept of home ownership by the Department of Finance has now succeeded due to the failure of this Minister to defend the interests of the vast majority of the people who wish to own their own houses.

There has been a definite and deliberate reversal of the housing policy carefully nurtured by the previous administration over four years and that will have inevitable consequences in an increase in applications for local authority houses. One of the successes of the previous administration was that we removed from the political agenda all talk of a housing crisis. Applicants for public authority housing were able to obtain good quality housing virtually on demand. By the end of 1985 the national housing waiting list for the Twenty-six Counties stood at 22,000 applicants, less than the total number of applicants for one London inner city borough. That was not achieved by accident but through a combination of the policies which I have outlined, the introduction of the Housing Finance Agency, the range of loans made available to people on low incomes, the increase last year in the limit for SDA loans and the consistent attempts of the Government to make it possible for people of modest means to purchase their own houses. In conjunction with that, we maintained a relatively high output of local authority houses and we introduced the £5,000 grant scheme to encourage people to vacate local authority houses. Over the past four years the previous administration built 25,000 new local authority houses and in each of the past two years they managed to succeed, through a combination of houses being returned for reletting and new houses, in achieving lettings of 12,000.

This year we are witnessing a reduction of £11 million in the money made available by the previous Government for spending on local authority housing, together with the abandonment of the grants and an insidious attack on mortgage interest relief. All of this will have a devastating effect on the construction industry, an industry which had held out to it not just an olive branch but a great offer by Fianna Fáil that they would inject funds to the extent of hundreds of millions of pounds in capital money to stimulate the industry. The tune has changed dramatically in three months. Last week the Minister for the Environment announced that in substitution for an increased allocation of funds and in defence of the radical reduction in the capital budget of the construction industry, it is now the Government's intention to rejuvenate the construction industry. If to rejuvenate means putting the construction industry back into short pants the Minister has succeeded in doing that already. I doubt if those who were employed in the construction industry or who are shortly to lose employment there will find succour in the Minister's remarks.

What have we seen in those three months, as evidenced by the paucity of announcements of new initiatives and the careful glossing over of the many operations which are grinding to a halt? The sanitary services programme successfully carried out over the past four years is coming to a halt. The national road building plan, the first plan introduced by any Government which was on target and for which adequate moneys were provided each year, is being brought to a halt. There is now slippage. Certain projects which had been approved by me as Minister have not been approved by the present Minister. I will cite two examples, the commencement this year of the long overdue and vitally necessary Dún Laoghaire by-pass, and of the long overdue, vitally necessary Mullingar by-pass which has been proven on a cost-benefit basis to be of immediate value. Both of those initiatives were abandoned by this Minister.

I introduced a new form of contract for road construction called "design and construct" and picked four initial projects to test that concept. The most important of them, in which the construction industry displayed most interest, was the construction of some 12 km of roadway to form a major by-pass at Dunleer and other villages in County Louth on Euro route No. 1 linking Dublin and Belfast. This Minister has scrapped this scheme which would have improved cross-Border contact and trade and would have improved a seriously deficient stretch of national primary roadway.

Abandoned also has been a range of public works across the local authority spectrum. One has only to pick up any provincial newspaper issued in the last three months to read of projects that had been given the green light, were going ahead and were to provide major infra-structural improvements but all of which have been abandoned by this Minister, brought to a standstill and surrounded by tar barrels.

The remedial work scheme in the public housing area was designed to pick up older local authority estates which were in bad condition and did not have adequate sanitary facilities, kitchens or sleeping accommodation. Many Members of this House will be aware of the benefit of that scheme. It has been abandoned for 1987. Local authorities across the country are closing down a range of services. I have discovered that the intention is to close all public libraries in County Dublin for one month in the next few months. Now if a bank holiday intervenes it is not possible to regear the refuse collection service to collect refuse from people whose bins are normally emptied on Monday. Amenity schemes or community projects grant-aided by the local authority in County Dublin are all being abandoned and next month 20 operatives, the men at the coalface who keep the local authority service going, are to be laid off by Dublin County Council as a result of the advent of this Government.

What was put in place by the previous administration? I introduced important legislation designed to protect and improve the status of the consumer, the customer, in relation to the building societies. In a number of respects the building societies are making every effort to circumvent those regulations and introduce the same or similar charges purporting them to be of a different nature by assigning to them a different name. Despite all of my efforts, the Minister has refused consistently to say whether he is satisfied with that matter and denies to the House that he has any responsibility in that respect. Last week we saw legislation which can be described as nothing more than a crude political attempt to take over control of membership of the Custom House Dock Authority established by the previous Government. We have seen the vindictive abandonment of the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission. They were established by the previous Government to rejuvenate and give new life and hope to Dublin city centre. Now they are deprived of funds and abandoned by this Minister for nothing more than a vindictive party-political purpose.

The Minister referred to European Year of the Environment. This Government abandoned our commitment to that. A sum of £1 million was assigned to major amenity projects in five or six centres throughout the country. That money was withdrawn by this Minister and our commitment to EYE as notified to the European Commission has been abandoned by this Government. "Clean up Ireland Week" which the Minister referred to passed virtually unnoticed this year. That was one of the major initiatives to improve the appearance of the countryside and of our towns and villages. The Minister says he is taking other initiatives to improve the general appearance of the countryside. What are they? What has he done? If he has done something, why does he not tell the House? I introduced major initiatives for and published a policy on the development of public parks and open spaces. The Minister's response has been to abandon the amenity schemes and the £1 million which were intended to improve parks and amenities as a mark of our commitment to EYE. In the abandonment of those schemes the Minister has totally misrepresented their purpose and the manner in which the instruction was given for the fund to be allocated. Now it appears from the main publication in relation to the budget that, despite what the Minister said about amenity grants being reviewed, they are being terminated. The Minister should come clean to the House and to the many organisations who now do not know where they stand, having entered into commitments on foot of undertakings given genuinely by the previous administration. At least let them know where they stand. Where is the legislation, which was ready for publication, to deal with uncontrolled derelict sites and to deal with, improve and speed up the process of planning appeals? What has happened to the Building Control Bill and other major road initiatives which had been announced and for which further detail was to be given by now, for example, in the Dublin area the construction of the Dundrum busway? What has happened to the changes mooted and ready for announcement in relation to speed limits or the initiative which I set up to allow motor taxation to be paid in local post offices? Those matters were on the Minister's desk waiting to be dealt with and some of them would cost no money. What has happened in the Department in the last three months?

I can only regret that in this respect there has been a virtual abandonment of the Department of the Environment at the Cabinet table as a Department who can stimulate the construction industry, who have the vital task of improving and developing our infrastructure, who are charged with encouraging the concept of home ownership and providing adequately for those who cannot house themselves, who have the vital task of looking after our physical environment. In all of those respects we have heard virtually nothing. Anything we have heard has been about winding down, shutting down and closing up. The one positive thing I recall the Minister doing, again on foot of an initiative which I took, was to sign the order to confirm the introduction of a standard roof sign for taxis. That is the one positive order I have seen the Minister make in his three months and it is as well he did that because I suspect he will need one of those vehicles before long.

Mr. Sherlock

Local authorities in Ireland reflect all the worst features of a society suffering from stagnation and political bankruptcy. Class distinction and privilege are rampant in virtually all spheres, as is abuse of the democratic system in the interests of patronage, profiteering and jobbery. The entire system has been undermined by the major political parties who see the system as a simple means of promoting their own interests at the expense of the public good. Every conceivable device has been used by local authority representatives to assist private profiteering rather than promoting public initiative. These activities must be challenged seriously, coherently and constructively at every opportunity.

Local authorities are being manipulated by central Government to raise new taxes in the form of water and refuse collection charges. Local authorities are being forced to carry the burden of Government cutbacks and consequent public anger. Local authorities are not only major employers, they have a direct influence on many other industrial sectors within their operational area. They are the single most important client and paymaster for the construction industry and make a major contribution to virtually every element of economic and social activity. In spite of their limited powers they have a major impact on the lives and living conditions of every citizen.

Local authorities cannot function effectively unless they have a sound financial base. That has not been the case in recent years, which has tended to undermine public confidence in the whole system of local government. Their financial problems have become so acute many are now unable to fulfil even their basic statutory functions. Successive Governments have contributed to this problem. Through their actions they have killed virtually all public sector initiative by way of economic and social development, once an important feature of the local government system. Over the past 25 years local authority financing has been characterised by a decline in the importance of local revenue, a growth in the importance of State grants and a consequent disastrous increase in costs occasioned by high inflation and interest charges along with the determination of farmers and other property owners to resist taxation.

We hear much about devolved housing. There is no evidence of a policy of developed housing. Where local authority housing programmes are drawn up by them — even the very small schemes — and submitted to the Department for investigation, in some cases it takes six to eight months before approval is given. That is clear evidence that there is no such thing as devolved housing, supposed to be the system obtaining within local authorities.

Basic local authority funding must be determined statutorily by block grant from central Government based on a fixed percentage of central Government tax revenue and on relevant needs independent of ministerial interference. The imposition of local charges for services such as water and refuse collection as a method of funding local authorities must be abolished. It has been proved to be unjust, unworkable and unacceptable.

Greater attention should be given to productivity bargaining and incentive schemes for local authority workers in order to increase efficiency and generate greater job opportunities in a more competitive economic climate. At present there is an enormous amount of public works that could be undertaken in every area if only the Minister for the Environment took the initiative to devise an arrangement with the Department of Finance and Social Welfare to ensure that people who are registered as unemployed, who constantly apply to local authorities for employment, are gainfully employed. This would mean that such people would be engaged in public works of all types which would be of benefit to the community. It would restore their dignity and that of their families which is preferable to perpetuating a system under which able-bodied men hang around without any prospect of employment.

The decision to abolish grants for water supply was a disastrous one. In the area I represent — in particular in the Mallow and Kanturk areas — there are 700 households without piped water. There is no policy or financial arrangement to enable such people to have the basic necessity of piped water in their homes. That is an appalling situation in this day and age. The abolition of grants has also resulted in increased unemployment. It was encouraging to see small contractors taking the initiative, undertaking work and being properly remunerated under the provisions of the grants schemes. The termination of those schemes was deplorable while there were so many applications with the Department, some for seven and eight months. I know of one applicant whose application had been with the Department for seven months but no inspection of the works had been carried out. Yet other more fortunate applicants had inspections carried out though their applications may have been with the Department for two or three months only. I would appeal to the Minister to allow local authorities to employ such people even if he has to make the necessary arrangements with the Departments of Finance and Social Welfare.

It can have been no comfort to anybody committed to the democratic process that, in the last general election, almost 30 per cent of the electorate did not vote. In the local and European elections and constitutional referenda the number of people who did not vote was even higher. While some of that extraordinarily high level of abstention can be attributed to a general level of disillusionment with Irish politics it is my belief that a large number of those who failed to vote did so because of the practical difficulties involved. The basic thinking on elections on the part of successive administrations seems to be that their responsibilities end when they have made it possible for people to vote. The aim should be to make it as simple and convenient as possible for people to vote. Indeed serious consideration should be given to holding elections on Sundays, a common practice in many other European countries.

The original 100 per cent commitment with regard to the rates support grant is being gradually whittled away from local authorities and has been reduced to somewhere between 60 and 65 per cent. The revenue accruing to local authorities from the sale of houses and so on, which could be used for capital purposes, is now being used for current revenue purposes leaving them with no capital for the purchase of land or to engage in other development programmes. I believe also that the £5,000 house grant should be reinstated allowing people to purchase newly-built houses, creating employment in the construction industry, making such houses available to people who could not afford to build their own homes. Lack of finance and the failure of successive Governments to provide an alternative system of financing of local authorities has led to their overdraft position being so serious that one might well contend that it is the banks who control them. If the banks foreclose because of high overdrafts there will be an end to the local authority system in Ireland.

There is, therefore an obligation on the Minister and the Government to honour the commitment to reform local authority, to provide an adequate alternative system of financing and to abolish the unjust system of local service charges. I will not let this opportunity pass without referring to a case where a member of a local authority visited a mother of five small children to collect water charges but because that woman could not afford to pay, the water supply was cut off without any consideration whatever for her. In the same county of Cork, property and land owners owe millions of pounds to the same local authority without any action being taken against them. To this day they do not pay one penny on that property. That is an abominable situation. I call on the Minister to give a commitment that an alternative system of financing local authorities will be introduced.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Martin J. Gibbons. I would have called the Deputy earlier had I known of his interest in the debate but I did not think he was offering at that stage. The Deputy has 20 minutes.

Mr. Gibbons

The Estimate for the Department of the Environment seems to suggest that there are no plans for development in this area. The Progressive Democrats' general objectives are to develop, improve and manage our environment so as to encourage and attract wealth-creating activities, especially those requiring clean environmental conditions, and also to encourage tourism and recreation. The environment is an area which is in need of much development. Successive Governments have attempted to underplay the importance of this area. It has been treated as an area that can look after itself. What is needed is an indication from the Government that they are aware of the importance of the situation.

Tourism should be seen as a very lucrative industry that relies on a clean environment. That industry employs 85,000 people directly or indirectly annually and they earn in the region of £850 million each year. They contribute approximately £400 million in taxes to the Government. Environment and tourism are closely connected. There appears to be a general lack of awareness of how this industry can be further improved and developed. In recent weeks we have seen concerted and welcome efforts by this Government to promote Ireland as a tourist venue. It is not enough, however, to reduce access costs. It is vitally important that people get value for money. Unless we maintain and improve our environment this will not be the case.

In line with the policy of the Progressive Democrats, as outlined in July 1986, regarding nuclear plants close to our lands, we urge the Minister through his colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, to relate to the British Government the extreme distaste that nuclear and chemical processing plants close to our shores hold for our people. It is obviously unclear to the British that Sellafield is a matter of great concern to the Irish people despite the reassurances that are constantly being offered to us. Sellafield is a poor neighbourly relation. It is offensive to the Irish people and they object strongly to it. In the light of the recent statement that a further pipeline has been added to Sellafield is it not now time to take positive action in the European Court to have this dangerous facility wound down immediately? The accident at Chernobyl was the warning that the western world needed to disprove the theory that no deaths have taken place as a result of nuclear involvement by a state. Let us take that as a warning.

I am amazed at the reduction of the amount allocated to An Bord Pleanála. I wonder whether this is a reflection of the view that development work will be reduced during the next year and hence the necessity for the board to function at their 1986 level. Is it the intention of the Government to tackle through legislation the problems of planning and development, compensation and enforcement of the Planning Acts?

The Progressive Democrats are committed to considerable changes as outlined in our environmental policy document, "A Nation Worth Living In". This includes proposals we intend to put before the House for fundamental changes in the compensation regulations, section 4 abuses, the ridiculous position concerning incomplete housing estates and other developments which have remained an eyesore as a result of the inability to prosecute, given the restraints on the Planning Acts and the Constitution as they stand. Each of these areas has a detrimental effect on our environment and consequently on our tourism and other areas.

The increase in the Estimate for An Foras Forbartha is, to say the least, very interesting. Perhaps the Minister will inform the House what specific plans he has for An Foras Forbartha in this regard or whether the increase is wholly intended for the Construction Industry Board. The Progressive Democrats appreciate the Government's desire to tackle the very serious economic problems this country faces. There should be the political will to ensure the environment is given the priority it deserves and nothing less than high standards should be tolerated when it comes to law enforcement regarding pollution. An improved environment has many real economic benefits. The environment plays a vital role in agriculture, aquaculture, tourism and fisheries and in helping to portray this country as a better place to invest, particularly for what we describe as clean industries. This is an area that demands more serious consideration.

Mr. Carey

The Department of the Environment have a considerable part to play in the economy in regard to local authority and local democracy. People in general have great local initiative. That is recognised by county councils. This democracy is slowly but surely being ground to a halt particularly because of the current financial situation in local authorities. My colleague, Deputy Boland, strongly criticised the Minister for what he sees as inaction in the Department and for the running down of the Department since he took office. There has been also a run down of local county councils, in particular in the employment area. The Department of the Environment, in the application of financial control, do not recognise the problems that exist in various county councils.

In the southern part of the country a county council could be in dire financial straits while its neighbour, because of prudent management, would be in a better state. When these cuts take place, as happened with the rates support grant, they will have very serious effects on the services being provided by the local authorities.

In the circulars issued by the Department new restrictions are imposed. For instance, in the case of road strengthening there is a lower limit of £40,000. In my opinion this does not recognise the local problems which might exist for the county councils on the western seaboard. Road strengthening costs vary from county to county and I do not know if the Minister or his Department took into account what these restrictions will mean for different councils.

I understand various county councils have also requested to see the Minister but he has steadfastly refused to see them. Clare County Council have 429 manual employees who will be put on short time from August next. The council have been in touch with the Minister's secretary but the Minister has refused to see them. I do not see that as serving democracy well. Perhaps the Minister has a case to make about the financial situation in his Department, but when the regulations emanating from his Department create difficulties surely there is an onus on him to ensure that some assistance is given in the rescheduling of finances in a county council or in placing fewer restrictions on schemes. When he was on this side of the House the Minister expected generosity from the Department and he expected that at least deputations would be met. In view of the dire situation in some county councils because of the severe reduction in the rate support grant, I appeal to him to meet those councils which are in serious financial difficulties.

There is also a valid criticism to be made about delays in legislation. I am not saying this Minister is the culprit, but successive Ministers for the Environment have been very lax in bringing in the building controls Bill. This area has not been treated with sufficient respect by successive Ministers. We have witnessed many difficulties which arose in this area, even in Raglan House where the suspect state of the building might have been monitored if the proper legislation had been in place. If the legislative controls had been in existence, savings might have been made in the house improvement grant area in the case of houses left in a bad state by the builders. The Minister has promised to do something about this Bill and I appeal to him to have the regulations and the legislation introduced as quickly as possible. As I said, I am disappointed at the delay.

In my area we have a little place called Shannon Airport which has an industrial estate. The outgoing Government in their wisdom said that financial services and offshore banking legislation should apply to the Shannon industrial estate. Side-by-side with that, the outgoing Government produced a scheme where the Custom House Docks site would have grant aid to assist with the reconstruction and development of the area. I do not know if the Minister is aware that in the latest proposals about the grant aid for the Custom House Docks site he is discriminating against Shannon. Appeals have been made by Clare County Council and the county development team — which is not dominated by my party — to the Minister to have a further look at the position which will obtain when the Finance Bill and the Urban Renewal Bill are passed. When the advantage is given to the city of Dublin, will the companies already in existence in Shannon be tempted to move lock, stock and barrel to Dublin? Surely it would be wrong for companies at present negotiating with the Shannon Development Company to ignore the distinct financial advantages which will be available as a result of this legislation? I believe the Minister is not aware that he is discriminating against Shannon.

I would like him to have another look at this area because Clare County Council and the people living around Shannon are very disturbed at what is happening. When the Minister was on this side of the House he always championed rural Ireland. He was conscious of the contribution made by people living in these areas. Yet he is now promoting legislation which is drawing the financial elements of society to central Dublin and is abandoning any proposals for developing the west, and particularly Shannon Airport. I hope the fact that he is ignoring that area does not have any bearing on his promotion and championing of Knock Airport as an international airport. I hope he does not want to downgrade Shannon to such an extent that we might abandon it eventually.

Mr. Flynn

Stop that.

Mr. Carey

I have made representations to the Minister for Finance and to the Taoiseach. I am disappointed that the promotion of a new idea which emanated at Shannon but which was rejected by the Department of Finance for years has been latched onto and adopted for Dublin. I am disappointed the Minister is not taking a greater stand for the west.

Mr. Flynn

The Deputy need have no worry where I stand as far as the west is concerned.

Mr. Carey

The Minister is an able Deputy and I have great admiration for his fighting spirit, but I do not want to be swamped by the moguls from Merrion Street. Since his Department have been already decimated, as was outlined by Deputy Boland, I would like to encourage him to be a little stronger in defending areas he holds near and dear to his heart.

Mr. Cooney

I will not speak at any great length, but there are certain matters to which I want to draw the Minister's attention. The first arises out of a reply he gave to a parliamentary question by Deputy Barry on 3 June. It appears from that reply that work on the Mullingar by-pass, among others, will not be started in the current year. That is a matter of great disappointment to me. My disappointment is hardly relevant but it is a matter of great disappointment to the citizens of Mullingar. Equally worrying is that there has not been any indication of when the work might be started on the by-pass.

That work is urgently needed for a number of reasons. The development of Mullingar and the relief of traffic congestion which is inhibiting that development requires that the by-pass be proceeded with as a matter of urgency. I am sure the Minister is aware that in the constituency of Longford-Westmeath I have the encouragement and support of the Ministers for Education and Industry and Commerce, of Deputy Henry Abbot and Senators Michael Doherty, Seán Fallon and Cassidy. With that solid phalanx of Fianna Fáil supporters in that constituency my few humble words of entreaty to the Minister have the support of a united front of all the Oireachtas Members in the constituency. I will be asking them — I already have asked them publicly — next week to come in behind me to ask the Minister to reverse this appalling decision.

As I have said, the town of Mullingar needs the by-pass urgently because it is choking with traffic congestion on a daily basis. The Minister has said work on the by-pass will not be started in the current year. Would he confirm to me today that it will be started next year? I understand the financial constraints and that the Minister has to order his priorities as he sees fit, but it is a matter of disappointment that a constituency so heavily represented by his party should not have been given some greater priority in regard to this work, particularly when the work has total merit in its own right.

Another good reason it might have some attraction to the Minister is that it will be an essential part of the national road network, heading to the west, so that people who want to get to the west, and important people like the Minister who want from time to time to get out of the west, will be able to do so expeditiously and safely.

Mr. Flynn

More often the other way.

Mr. Cooney

Any time he comes from the west he is welcome — people who come to the midlands on their passage are always welcome. It is a very important part of the economic infrastructure of the country that the national primary road system would be brought up to modern standards as quickly as possible, and bottlenecks such as that in Mullingar are a serious impediment to that improvement. I appeal to the Minister, for that good sound economic reason, to reconsider his decision here, or at least to assure us that this work will be commenced in 1988.

A third reason I would put to the Minister is that this work will be an important fillip to the construction industry, and the Minister's party always have had a high regard for the construction industry — it has been their great object of affection, up to recently, that is, and I suggest the Minister should use this work for mending his fences and restoring harmony between his party and that sector. The road work involved would provide considerable employment, considerable activity for public works contractors and — this is something that is often overlooked when we are talking about the value of roadworks — the materials used are all indigenous, adding to the economic benefit of the operation.

For those reasons I appeal to the Minister to reassure me and his party colleagues in my constituency that the Mullingar by-pass will be commenced in 1988. I will be making personal approaches to my constituency colleagues so that those of them who are in Government will be able to emphasise for the Minister's benefit at Cabinet level the importance of this work for Mullingar. I have no doubt that Deputies Reynolds and O'Rourke, who are both interested in Mullingar, will use their personal good offices with the Minister to ensure that when the priorities for 1988 come to be ordered the Mullingar by-pass will be head of the list.

I will also be asking them to take up another problem: Mullingar has been prejudiced in the allocation of road funds this year. The Minister made considerable play in his speech about the amount of extra money being allocated for road strengthening. Undoubtedly, extra funds are being made available, but unfortunately, for some reason which I cannot explain, we find that the allocation for road strengthening in Westmeath is down this year. It may be that because of the strong Fianna Fáil representation in the constituency the Minister is now becoming careless about the needs of the constituency. On the other hand, it does not betoken any great respect for his party colleagues in that constituency to find, probably uniquely, that the strengthening allocation for Westmeath has been reduced positively. I ask the Minister to redress that injustice. The roads in Westmeath are as much in need of road strengthening and repair as roads in any other part of the country. I am sure the Minister will appreciate the justice of what I am saying.

Another matter I want to advert to is the reference in the Minister's speech to water pollution. He said:

I expect local authorities to make full use of their substantial powers under the Local Government (Water Pollution) Act, 1977 to deal with any Pollution problems which may arise.

In Athlone we have a continuing pollution problem. We have had it for decades, indeed since the town was founded: raw sewage from Athlone is being discharged into the Shannon without any treatment whatsoever. That, unfortunately, is happening throughout the entire length of the Shannon. So far as I know there are very few treatment plants available for the sewerage works of towns on the Shannon. Some years ago, I recall that Leitrim County Council were refused sanction to put in a treatment plant. The bland and surprising answer was given that the Shannon contains such a volume of water that it is able to deal with the sewage problem. Undoubtedly, the Shannon is a mighty river and the flow of water is immense and can deal with much of the effluence that goes into it, but even the Shannon at some stage will succumb to the avalanche of pollution being discharged into it daily for its entire length. It is hypocritical of the Minister in his speech to call on local authorities to use their substantial powers for the prevention of water pollution when he has refused to sanction the provision of a sewage treatment plant for Athlone.

During the term of the last administration, funds for the extension and updating of the drainage facilities in Athlone were made available and a very large scheme was put in place, but to complete that scheme it is urgently necessary that a treatment plant be provided so that the standard of raw sewage, in immense quantities, being discharged into the Shannon can be ended. That is why I say that the Minister's reference to the need to control water pollution is entirely hypocritical if he will not make provision for sewage treatment facilities for local authorities.

Athlone is one of the biggest towns on the Shannon, and though the Shannon is a mighty river, capable of absorbing a considerable amount of untreated sewage, a start must be made to end that appalling state of affairs. Athlone is the source of great potential pollution. It is incredible that in the ordering of the spending of funds, money would not be made available for something that the Minister in his speech said is a matter of urgency. He directed the specific attention of local authorites to this. I should like to ask the Minister to indicate when the funds will be made available for a sewage treatment plant in Athlone so that the massive expenditure on the new drainage works that were recently completed can be brought to a proper conclusion. I cannot over emphasise the disgrace and the puzzlement to foreign tourists boating on the Shannon when they see raw sewage flowing into a scenic national waterway. They cannot understand it and, for the sake of our own reputation, we should bring that unhappy state of affairs to an end.

The Minister in the course of his contribution referred to the importance of the European Year of the Environment and stressed the need for us to join in that and take steps to improve our environment. I have just indicated a very practical step we can take at a strategic point on the River Shannon. I should like to get an assurance from the Minister, and from his party colleagues in my constituency, that the Mullingar by-pass road if it cannot go ahead in 1987 — it appears that that decision is final — will proceed in 1988. Secondly, I want an assurance that the reduced allocation for road strengthening as far as Westmeath County Council are concerned will be addressed and that the level of funds will be increased. The amount involved is not substantial in the national context but it is very important as far as the county council are concerned. I should like to ask the Minister to ensure provision is made for a sewage treatment plant in Athlone and to give an assurance that work on the Athlone relief road will proceed according to schedule. The local authority are apprehensive — indeed, they are certain — that the amount of money allocated for this work will not be adequate to keep the programme up to schedule in 1987. I should like to ask the Minister to ensure that this extremely important relief road will be continued on schedule during 1987 and 1988 so that the target date for completion, 1989-90, will be met.

Mr. Durkan

As this is the first occasion that the Minister has introduced an Estimate for the Department of the Environment I should like to wish him well in his office. I agree with the statement he made in regard to the importance of the Estimate. The Minister, in stressing the importance of local government reform, outlined the measures he proposes to adopt. I accept his sincerity in regard to that topic but I must warn him that it will not be easy to deal with that area. We must remember that it is essential to update our legislation to meet modern requirements in local government. The legislation under which local authorities have been operating for the last 90 years or so is out of date. It was adequate when it was introduced but the changes made in the intervening period have not helped local administration. Essentially, local authorities have been left powerless. It is generally recognised that local authorities are no more than messengers and act as rubber stamps for Departments and the House. They do not have adequate funding to carry out obligations imposed on them by the House.

I should now like to deal with the question of financing of local authorities. Those of us who travel through the country are aware of the condition of our roads, of the litter problem and the problem caused by pollution. We must recognise that those problems have arisen as a result of legislation passed here and of the decision to impose additional obligations on local authorities without giving them extra funds. It is farcical to continue to try to operate such a system. Members of local authorities, like the Minister of State, will be aware of the urgent need to review local authority financing. It should be taken by the scruff of the neck and made meaningful to cope with modern demands. There has been a lot of talk about the need for change and we have all trotted out the improvements we would like to see introduced but we have done little about them. The Minister in undertaking reform at local government level, should insist on it being thorough and absolute. There should be a complete reappraisal of the responsibilities now being placed on local authorities and we should make adequate funds available to enable local authorities carry out the programmes imposed on them by the Department.

In the course of his speech the Minister mentioned the construction industry and that reference must have been made with tongue in cheek. I do not think it can be said that the construction industry fell on its feet since Fianna Fáil returned to power. I recognise that there was a need for savings in all Departments but it is worth comparing the performance of the Government with that of the last administration. I do not think the comparison favours the Government. I am not trying to make a political point about that but it is obvious that a collossal blow has been dealt to the construction industry by the Government who have curtailed house improvement and house surrender grants. On paper that action may reduce Government spending but there is no doubt that it will lead to further unemployment in that industry, a luxury we could do without. I appeal to the Government to consider the disastrous consequences their policies have had on the construction industry. They should try to improve matters between now and the end of the year. If they do not the problems in regard to local authority housing — they were resolved by the last Government — will return and we will have difficulties in regard to facilities in local authority houses. All plans to deal with those problems have been cast aside.

I must point out to the Minister that there are still many houses that do not have sanitary facilities. In many cases those houses are occupied by elderly people who are not in a position to carry out the necessary improvement work. Those in receipt of social welfare benefits who occupy such houses cannot be expected to carry out improvement works. It is a terrible indictment of our society that people are expected to live in such dreadful conditions. It was wrong of the Government to remove the home improvement grants. I sincerely hope the Government will see the error of their ways and reconsider the matter.

They should also reconsider the large number of applicants for home improvement grants, some going back to last October where prior inspections had not been carried out, and who have since been informed that they do not qualify for a grant on foot of a decision taken on 31 March. It is morally wrong that those who had prepared plans for home improvements and who had waited for many years to be in a position to afford them to have had the grants removed at the stroke of a pen without warning. To do so retrospectively was hardly a recognition of the construction industry which the Government profess. I do not want to go into specific cases but I know of quite a number of people in my constituency who had hoped to supplement a disabled person's grant with other home improvement grants. They are now unable to proceed by virtue of the Government's decision. I am not a legal expert but I have serious reservations about the legality of the withdrawal of these grants which were applied for in good faith and legally acceptable apart from the fact that the inspection had not been carried out.

I should also like to refer to the removal of the £5,000 local authority house surrender grants. There were grounds for review of the grant in the sense that in some areas, particularly in the larger towns and cities, quite a number of surrender grants had been paid out and new tenancies taken up. As a result, perhaps in a few years' time, most of the newer tenants might not be in a position to avail of purchase schemes which would have created a problem from a social point of view. However, a large number of houses were surrendered to local authorities at a cost of £5,000 per house and if the Department had to fund the building of new houses it would have cost something in the region of £25,000 per house. The grant of £5,000 represented extremely good value for money as it housed people at such a low cost.

I wish to refer to road strengthening grants and local improvements schemes. Anybody travelling in the midlands or in my constituency cannot but be aware of the dreadful condition of main and country roads. Inquiries as to what can be done will elicit the response that a road strengthening grant and block grants are available and that the local authorities have the power to carry out improvement works on such roads. Everybody knows that local authorities do not have the money to carry out necessary improvements. I particularly disagree with the Minister in regard to the road strengthening grant which is allocated on the basis of miles of roads. There is no relationship whatever between the volume and weight of vehicular traffic on those roads compared to others and it is a very unfair system. A local authority could be administering an area which has a large road mileage but very light traffic and, on the other hand, a county like Kildare, for instance, on the periphery of Dublin which has to cope with so much traffic coming to and from Dublin.

I ask the Minister to ensure that some other system, similar to that operated by the previous Minister, Deputy Boland, could be operated whereby grants could be allocated on the basis of local funding collected by local authorities. That had beneficial effects in that it gave the local authority a little power and responsibility so that if they had the courage to raise some local funding they then got a grant commensurate with their efforts from central Government. That meant they had autonomy and responsibility and that they could meet the requirements of the area. As I said, the system is unfair, particularly since the local authority in County Kildare have had to impose local charges. We are next door to the capital city and we have to pay for water services to Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council who are in a position to abolish local charges. It is grossly unfair, having paid those charges, that we should then have to accept the volume of traffic coming to and from Dublin with no recognition of the problems that causes. The Minister of State, Deputy Connolly, who is present, represents a constituency which is somewhat similar to that which I represent although it does not have the same heavy volume of traffic.

Anybody driving through the country on an even moderately wet day will marvel at the amount of flooding which occurs because so little attention has been given to roadside drainage. A special effort should be made by the Department to bring to the attention of the various local authorities the importance in road construction of ensuring that they are adequately drained in winter when frost and snow occur and road verges are flooded in a short time. As the result of heavy traffic, the roads completely disintegrate. Many of our minor roads are now subjected to traffic volumes which were unheard of when the roads were built. However, the same funding system applies as in the case of other counties with far less traffic volume. We have no means of raising money to meet these traffic requirements and for repairing the damage which traffic does to our roads. No provision has been made and there is no recognition of our plight. I live in a constituency which has probably one of the worst sets of main and county roads in the country. They have been damaged over the years by the weight of traffic on them. The Minister would do a great service to local authorities if he recognised that main and county roads adjacent to large populations should receive special consideration. I reject completely the assertion that an allocation on miles per road is adequate; it is not.

In relation to an amenity area like Robertstown in my constituencies where an application has been before the Department for some time for the sanction of a sewerage scheme, it is a pity that in such a high amenity area we cannot get approval for that scheme. I had a communication from the Department in recent times to the effect that further information is being sought from the local authority. That information will be submitted forthwith and I would ask the Minister to give the scheme prompt approval and an immediate allocation. The same applies in relation to the Leixlip sewerage augmentation works that are needed to serve a densely populated area. We have only just succeeded in alleviating serious pollution of the Rye river and it would be a disaster if the situation were to revert back now, because of any delay in approval of the Leixlip works. The local authority are now refusing all applications on the basis that the services are inadequate. I ask the Minister to seriously consider these matters.

Deputy Cooney referred to various bypasses. Anybody travelling out of Dublin to the west must surely recognise the urgent need for the approval of the plan before the Minister at the present time for the provision of the N4 by-pass from Leixlip to Kilcock. Everybody recognises that is long overdue and since it has been brought now to a certain stage I implore the Minister to use his good offices to ensure that it is approved quickly. This would eliminate the vast traffic jams that occur every Friday evening on those roads. There are many other matters I should have liked to deal with but due to the time constraint I am unable to do so.

Mr. Shatter

It was interesting earlier this morning to listen to the contribution made by the Minister for the Environment, in particular in dealing with the current finances of local authorities and the provision made for them. The Minister acknowldeged the need for greater finances to be made available to local authorities to provide for the various services local communities require. He went on to say:

In present economic circumstances, local authorities could not reasonably expect to be exempt from the constraints which affect the rest of the public sector.

The Minister in this House is whistling a different tune from that whistled by every member of his party, including himself, during the lifetime of the previous Government. During that time the need for constraint in the area of public expenditure, the need to tackle public finances, was emphasised, both in the context of national policy and within the local authority system. Throughout the lifetime of the previous Government the current Minister and his colleagues sought to raise expectations of local groups, organisations and bodies throughout the country to put pressure on central and local government to provide more and more funding and financing for every project that could be thought of. The Fianna Fáil Party in Opposition encouraged those groups to do so and thus raised expectations. Those expectations were that if they were in Government there would be a better way, there would be a pot of gold sitting at the end of some political rainbow into which someone would simply reach and provide all the funding necessary for all the projects required throughout the country.

When some of the local communities now require funding for projects that they see as necessary in the environmental area, in the provision of community facilities and their improvement and funding required for the provision of basic road facilities the Government cannot cry "Foul". It is extraordinary that the Minister in this House at this stage and without any sign of embarrassment could deliver the kind of speech he delivered today. He should have the guts and the political honesty to appologise to every Member of the House and to the Irish nation for misleading people continuously for four years into believing they had expectations of receiving funding from the Department of the Environment. The promises the Minister made if his party were returned to Government to provide funding were all fallacious, all untrue, all a political mirage established for one reason and one reason only, for the attainment of power by a party bereft of any principle or any commitment on any issue of any nature whatsoever.

The game that has been played in the area of the responsibility of the Minister for the Environment and the manner in which local authorities have been dealt with is not a political game which is forgivable or tolerable, even within the area of political licence that normally extends to a party when in Opposition. Fianna Fáil, by virtue of what they have said in Government for the last two months, have confirmed that as an Opposition party over a period of four years they were the most deceitful, dishonest party, misleading the Irish nation for pure petty political gain on their part. What member of the Fianna Fáil Party in this House six months ago would have stated:

In present economic circumstances, local authorities could not reasonably expect to be exempt from the constraints which affect the rest of the public sector.

What member of that party would have suggested that there was a limitation on the amount of funds that central Government could provide for local government services? Again, curiously, despite the Minister's speech, it is still being said, because we have the Fianna Fáil Party and the Minister verbalising and recognising the necessity for financial stringency, but in local authorities throughout the length and breadth of the country there are members of the Fianna Fáil Party, local councillors, crying crocodile political tears because there are not enough funds available to their local authorities to enable the projects to which they have previously committed themselves to go forward.

There is still a duality of approach. There are Members of this House wearing their hats as Teachtaí Dála who will support this Estimate and whilst wearing the hat of a local member of a corporation, county council or urban district council will cry those political crocodile tears for the benefit of their local paper to assure their constituents that they are truly behind them in seeking to provide some badly needed local facility which they know cannot be funded from central Government. It is that type of political hypocrisy which has resulted in politicians generally in this country being held in very low esteem. It is that type of political hypocrisy which is being fuelled and fed on and is the daily approach taken by members of the party opposite.

Let us deal with the position in Dublin and compare that with the rest of the country. I would ask the Minister to explain how it is that a different approach is taken by Fianna Fáil members, who hold the majority on Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council, to the issue of a local authority raising funds locally compared with the approach taken by Fianna Fáil members on local authorities outside the Dublin area. The position currently in Dublin is that Dublin County Council of which I am a member, Dublin Corporation and Dún Laoghaire Corporation have suffered an overall reduction in funding to provide essential local services. There has been a reduction in that funding by central Government. The local councils and corporations were faced with a choice to eliminate expenditure for essential local projects, reduce expenditure regarded as essential to give people the basic necessities and services provided by local authorities or to levy water rates or some other form of local expenditure.

The raising of moneys by local authorities appears to be acceptable to the Fianna Fáil members of local authorities throughout the length and breadth of the country. It is not acceptable in Dublin. Much political bruhaha has been made of the fact that local charges have not been raised this year by Dublin Corporation, Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire Corporation. It is fortunate from the Minister's point of view that this Estimate is being taken during the first six months of 1987. Because Fianna Fáil members on local authorities in Dublin and Dún Laoghaire did not face up to their responsibilities as local councillors and did not take hard decisions when they are necessary I predict that as we head into the second part of this year basic and essential local services provided by those three local authorities will come to an end and basic facilities will be closed down. We have already seen the start of this. What will happen? The Fianna Fáil members will whine and whinge because they will not have enough money to provide these services. They will blame central Government for this lack of money. None of them will stand up in their local authorities and say: "The economic circumstances require a reduction from central Government in the funding provided by local authorities and the reason our services are being reduced is because we did not have the political guts to explain to our constituents that we needed to raise a very small sum of money by way of local funds."

There is a report which I had comfirmed of the type of problems that are going to arise in the Dublin local authorities due to a lack of funding. It is one of the most appalling examples of how a lack of political will and guts, a lack of willingness to confront a problem and a desire to run away from it can create appalling difficulties for the most vulnerable members of the community. For some years Dublin County Council have operated an effective and efficient system of grants called the disabled persons housing grants scheme. It is a separate scheme from any of the schemes operated directly through central Government. It has enabled the local authority to provide grants in circumstances where people require essential extensions to be built on to their house because a member of their family may be suffering from a severe physical or mental handicap. These people may require an extension to be built on to their houses to enable the persons so suffering and their families to lead some sort of normal life. In cases where people have been struck down by severe cardiac arrest and returned home from hospital with permanent physical disabilities, this scheme enabled local authorities to provide moneys to assist these people to alter, where necessary, the structure of their house.

In 1986 £400,000 was made available by Dublin County Council in their estimate for the disabled persons housing grants scheme. Because the Fianna Fáil members of Dublin County Council did not have the guts to publicly acknowledge that there was a need for the council to raise a small amount of funds locally through some form of scheme — be it water rates or in some other way — to maintain essential schemes such as this, they introduced a massive amount of cuts in the council. They said these cuts would be self-financing in some mysterious way and could be effected as a result of moneys the Department of the Environment owed Dublin County Council. Dublin County Council's allocation from the Department of the Environment is some £6 million less this year than it was last year. What will the effect of those cuts be? One effect is that the sum of £400,000 which was available last year under that disabled persons' housing grant scheme has been reduced this year to £230,000. As we enter June 1987 all of the moneys available under that scheme have been allocated.

I know of a case where the family of a young County Dublin girl who suffers from multiple sclerosis sought the assistance of the Dublin County Council grants scheme — a scheme which would have been available to them in the past — to carry out essential modifications to their home to assist them in taking care of their daughter and to make life easier for everybody in that family. They were told that no moneys were available and that there was no point in putting in an application for a grant. That is an example of the impact on the most vulnerable sections of our community because a recognition of the financial position of the State has not yet percolated down to those members of the Minister's party who are on Dublin local authorities. When members of his party in the House who are members of local authorities, including Dublin County Council, take off their TD hat and put on their councillor hat they seem to suffer from a temporary amnesia and forget the nature of the financial problems. This was evidenced in their behaviour at the estimates meeting of Dublin County Council. Not only is there going to be a reduction in grants of this nature but there will be a reduction across the board in local authority services.

The Minister in his speech congratulated local councillors for facing up to economic realities. Did the Minister congratulate his Fianna Fáil colleagues on Dublin County Council for preventing the family of a 17-year old girl who suffers from multiple sclerosis from being entitled to obtain the benefit of a grant that was available to them up to June of this year but for which funds are now exhausted? Is that the type of responsible approach for which the Minister congratulated his colleagues? Does he believe that is the right way to deal with that scheme or does he believe his colleagues might have been more responsible to have recognised the need for the Dublin local authorities to raise some funds locally?

What is going to happen in those local authorities during 1988? We have been told by the Taoiseach that the financial position is such that more tough decisions will have to be made. I predict that the reduction in local authority funding that took place this year will be repeated next year and it may well be that the state of our national finances require it be so. Will any instruction go from the Taoiseach or the Minister for the Environment, as the political leaders in this area, to members of their party as to how they should deal at local authority level with the financial reductions central Government may make? Will there be any uniformity of approach? Will councillors outside the Dublin area take the view that because Dublin County Council did not charge water rates they also should abolish them, or will members of Dublin County Council, Dublin Corporation and Dún Laoghaire Corporation be brought into line? If the reductions are to continue in this way what explanation will be made to the people who will suffer in the way in which suffering is being caused at present? It is very difficult to deal in 20 minutes in as comprehensive a way as one would wish with this Department of the Environment Estimate.

One area the Minister should clarify is his attitude to the problem of travellers. This is strangely omitted from the Minister's speech. Successive Ministers for the Environment have encouraged local authorities to set up organised halting site programmes for travelling families. The problems of travelling families and of local communities with regard to halting sites is well documented. There are a great number of concerns on all sides with regard to this problem. I watched the present Minister for Energy, Deputy Burke, as a member of Dublin County Council playing political games with a comprehensive halting site programme which the council had adopted. The Deputy changed it for political reasons and introduced a new programme in 1986. Virtually none of the new programme has been implemented and there has not been a mention of it in the Minister's speech. I would ask him to clarify whether he will fund halting site programmes? Travelling families and those who work for them are entitled to know. Does the Minister support the halting site programme adopted by his own party members in Dublin County Council? Members of the council are entitled to know that. Is the Minister going to change the programme, because there are many local communities who, while accepting the need to implement such a programme, object to some of the sites that have been identified as appropriate for the provision of halting sites? What does the Minister intend to do about those objections?

Acting Chairman (Mr. Leonard)

The Deputy's time is up.

Mr. Shatter

I will conclude now. Does the Minister intend to approve of the Cherryfield House site on the Templeogue road, the application in respect of which was submitted to him four months ago?

In years gone by Estimate debates were unduly lengthy with Members of the House speaking on occasions unnecessarily for one or two hours. In the context of the level of expenditure in a Department such as the Department of the Environment, I would now protest in the opposite way. The time allowed is not a satisfactory time in which to have a meaningful Estimate debate. I accept that the timespan of 20 minutes has been agreed on all sides but we should review it. I am not criticising the Minister as this has been agreed on all sides. A somewhat longer time, not as unwieldy as was the case previously, should be made available particularly for major spending Departments——

Acting Chairman

Some other Deputy will suffer as a result of the Deputy failing to conclude so I would ask him to conclude.

Mr. Dempsey

I congratulate Deputy Connolly on his appointment as Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, a position he held before with distinction. Deputy Shatter talked about hypocrisy. He would have been proud of the activities of some of his own colleagues on my local authority in relation to this year's Estimate.

We are all aware that the local government system we have is no longer local or government. The system has become more centralised and the Department of the Environment control all the major decisions of local authorities. That has arisen because of the system of financing local authorities. When local government is too centralised, when all the decisions are taken at the centre, the local government system is seen to become remote from local people.

The Minister referred to the reform of the local government system. I hope that a serious reform of the system will come quickly. During the past ten or 12 years we have had Government by pressure group in the local areas mainly because people feel that the system is too remote. We have had about 17 reports on the reform of local government but little action. The previous Government produced their proposals for the reform of the local government system and they made a number of commitments which they then proceeded to ignore.

There has been a lot of talk about the home improvement grant scheme which was introduced by the Department two years ago. I cannot understand why that had to be administered centrally when it could have been administered more efficiently and more cheaply by the local authorities. This scheme was introduced shortly after the Government's document on decentralising and on giving more power to the local authorities. The first opportunity they had, they failed to avail of.

The major issue facing local authorities is finance. All local authorities have serious financial difficulties. In the past ten years Meath County Council have lost approximately £8 million. The land valuation decision of the Supreme Court cost £1.5 million. The snow clearance money promised by the Coalition Government was not delivered and we lost nearly £500,000 on that. On domestic rates relief we lost £2.5 million in the past four or five years, during the term of the last Coalition. Since 1983 we have lost over £4 million on the agricultural grant. In addition there is a difficulty in relation to collecting local charges. This has caused a serious cash flow problem.

I urge the Minister to look at the NESC report again. This report in general terms came out in favour of a property tax for financing local government. If the Minister decides to go ahead in financing such a system, the tax should be seen to be fair to all and if the property tax is imposed it should be imposed on houses, on land and on commercial property. The one proviso I would put on this is that it must not be seen to be a form of double taxation. That problem has arisen over local service charges. If the previous Government had allowed service charges, or local charges as they are called, to be offset against a person's income tax, practically all the trouble we had in trying to collect them would not have occurred and people would not have seen them as a form of double taxation.

In relation to the role of councillors, the Minister rightly paid tribute to all members of local authorities who face up to their responsibilities. The role of councillors is vital in the democratic process. For many years they have done what they have seen as best for the people of their counties. Their role has not been recognised by Government. No matter what reform is brought in, some effort must be made to enhance the role of the local public representatives. There have been moves — and some people in this House would seek this — to reduce local representation not just on local authorities but on various other bodies. That would be a disastrous step which would not serve the interests of democracy.

There has been a good deal of talk in this debate about roads. Deputy Durkan made a number of points about roads in County Kildare. Let me say, without being parochial, that the same could be said about the roads in Meath. Being adjacent to Dublin, we also suffer because an amount of traffic comes from the north, by-passing Dublin, through Meath and heading to the west or the south-west. Our roads system has been crumbling gradually. In 1980 we produced a programme. It was estimated at that time that it would cost £50 million to restore the roads in County Meath to acceptable standards. I am not talking about highways; I am referring to the county and regional roads. I agree with Deputy Durkan that there is a need for the Department and the Minister to look at the counties near Dublin in particular but also in other urban centres. The roads are deteriorating rapidly and a great deal of investment and money will be lost if action on them is not taken. I urge the Minister to do that. I welcome the move announced in the budget to put more money into county roads. I appreciate that commitment and I hope it will be continued for a number of years.

Unfortunately, the local improvements scheme applies only to certain counties. Again Meath has a problem, as probably a number of neighbouring counties have also. During the past 40 or 50 years a number of Land Commission dwellings were built in our county and roads were put in place that were adequate at the time. Now they are no longer adequate. I ask the Minister to reintroduce some county or local improvements scheme whereby county councils could undertake work financed locally. Local people could restore these roads and make them useful. I welcome the Estimate.

Mr. T. Fitzpatrick

I am glad to have an opportunity to make a short contribution on this very important Estimate for the Environment. The Department of the Environment come into close contact with the everyday life of a great percentage of the people. I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Connolly, on his reappointment to this Department. He has his feet on the ground and possesses a considerable amount of common sense and has, to my knowledge, a great knowledge of the Department in which he now serves. At the same time, he must feel extremely frustrated because he finds himself in charge of one of the big money spending Departments and he has no money. That, I am sure, makes things very awkward for him.

Most Members of this House have come into public life through service on local councils, either because they served on them themselves or they got the idea from some member of their family who did so. I had the honour — I consider it an honour — that my father was a member of the first county council set up in Monaghan under the present system in 1898. Many years later I was elected to Cavan Urban Council where I served for 25 years, 13 years as chairman. It is significant that a great many people in this House either served on local authorities themselves or come from families a member of whom served on a local authority. The last thing in the world any of us would like to see would be the termination of local councils.

At the same time local councils or local government cannot go on as they are doing at the moment. I am glad to see a heading in the script of the Minister's speech: "Local Government Reform". This is not the first Minister's speech in which there was a paragraph on local government reform and, unfortunately I think it will not be the last. Local government reform is years and years overdue. Having stated that, I would hate to see local government done away with for the reasons I have stated, but the time has come when we must reform local government in a meaningful way by giving councillors teeth and responsibility, by giving them statutory functions which they will be obliged to perform, by giving them obligations to do unpopular things as well as an opportunity to do popular things.

I am afraid local councillors are inclined to make popular decisions only and to shy away from unpopular decisions. If a man was to run his business, his farm or anything else that he was in charge of on the basis that he would make popular decisions only and either put unpopular decisions on the long finger or not make them, he would not be long in business. We had examples of that in local charges. Rates were abolished. The Exchequer undertook to recoup the loss in revenue which ensued from the abolition of rates by adequate Exchequer grants. That never was on, it involved far too much money. Then it was necessary to replace the rates by charges. Some councils agreed to collect charges, other did not. Some councils went through the formality of agreeing charges but then told the people not to pay them. That kind of practice brings local administration and local representatives into disrepute.

The only solution is to reform local government on the basis of making it a mini government for localities in matters entrusted to its jurisdiction. I do not believe that any Minister intends to go about reforming local government as it should be reformed. There is a paragraph of the Minister's speech that makes that fairly clear under the heading "Local Government Reform" in which he said:

It is, of course, essential that the local government system should work efficiently within the expenditure limits set by the Government.

I agree with that. Then the Minister continued to say:

The question of improving the structure of the system in ways which might make it more effective has been under consideration on and off for several years.

There is no doubt about that. The paragraph concludes by saying:

This is a complex subject with wide ramifications.

In my opinion that was simply a paragraph inserted in the Minister's speech to get him in and out of the House today without being accused of ignoring local Government reform. The Minister went on to talk about reviews and so on. It is a shocking dereliction of duty. I agree that it is a difficult job, that it is a hot potato, but local administration is costing endless millions of pounds and we are not getting an adequate return. We are not getting a return because its terms of reference or local constitution, so to speak, are not spelt out in black and white. Local authorities should have statutory powers and obligations.

The construction industry has been mentioned already. I want to make a point in this regard. In doing so I hope I will not be taken as being unduly political or as introducing politics unnecessarily into this debate. In recent years the present Government party, when in Opposition, showed great concern for the building industry. The leader of that party said that the economy would sink or swim, stand or fall, on the performance of the building industry, that if the building industry was primed properly it would take off and would generate sufficient income to get us over most of our economic problems. Nobody could contend that the building industry were not led to believe that all that was needed was a change of Government, when there would be money, and to spare, vast sums — £200 million was mentioned. The building industry strongly supported the present Government. I would not blame them for that. They appeared to be the party who would put them on their feet, who regarded them as the most important industry, inferring that the money would be provided. A change of Government took place. Instead of making available the vast sums of money promised, directly or indirectly in this House, instead of making these endless hundreds of millions available to the building industry to get them going, get the economy moving, the direct opposite happened. The first thing the present Government did on assuming office was to withdraw from the building industry many scores, if not hundreds of millions of pounds. That may have been necessary but one might well ask: what effect has it on the man in the street? Does it do anything to uplift his opinion of or respect for public representatives or political parties? It certainly does not. Democracy is going through a difficult time at present. Politicians here are on trial so than in other countries. We are inclined to be more respectful to politicians in other countries. But it is happenings like that that justify the sort of accusation: you cannot believe a word politicians say and election promises are treated like music hall jokes.

I have reached the stage in my political career at which I do not have to keep an eye on the ballot box when I say things. I intend to avail of an opportunity now and again to say things that I think need to be said. Performances like the preelection attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party to the building industry and the postelection attitude to the same industry have done nothing to improve respect for politicians.

To deal with one section of the housing industry, I believe that the £5,000 grant made available for the surrender of local authority houses was an excellent scheme. I know that in the town of Cavan one grand little housing estate has come into existence as a result of the provision of that grant. That grant constituted good value for money. The State got very good value for its £5,000. It was a pity that scheme was abolished.

Local authority rents are another example of what I meant when I said that local authorities did not want to perform duties which were unpopular. Some years ago local rents were fixed by the county manager after consultation with the local council. Under a Coalition Government that was changed by a Minister for Local Government who fixed rents after consultation with certain national organisations. It was decided then to transfer it back to the local authorities and rightly so because they should have responsibility for fixing rents as they have a better knowledge of local conditions and of the people who live in these houses. That was followed by a rent strike. Disruptions such as rent strikes make it almost impossible to govern a country. When we reach that stage we will feel sorry for ourselves and the law will become the law of the jungle. I deplore strikes such as rent strikes, doctors' strikes and strikes that are calculated to withhold essential services and to close down the country because the result is that the country rapidly becomes ungovernable. We also do things for political reasons only. If one party in Government start a scheme which appears to be sound and popular, another party in Government later may get jealous and undo that scheme.

Nobody can deny that the centre of this city, including the major street, O'Connell Street, needed urgent attention. It had become rundown and use was being made of premises which it would have been better not to have used. In order to rectify that position in the ordinary way a scheme would have to be submitted by Dublin Corporation to the Department of the Environment who would probably send it back to the corporation with queries. It might then be lying around for years and nothing done about it in the end.

Deputy Boland, when Minister, saw the necessity for doing something quickly about O'Connell Street and he set up the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission. That was a wise decision. Of course money was needed for the commission but they would have done something about the matter quickly. The commission was an ad hoc operation which would come to an end after so many years. Its setting up was opposed in this House by the present Government. They gave an assurance that if they got into power they would scrap it. However, I do not think they were bound by that assurance. They gave other assurances, too, but did not consider themselves compelled to see these through. They got into Government and now they are scrapping the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission. That is a pity because the idea was good and there was a good commission who would have done a lot to brighten the centre of our capital city and to make it more attractive for the people of Ireland, who regard it as their city, and also for the tourists whom we attract year after year and who like to saunter up and down the main street and admire it, if there is anything in it to be admired. I hope the scrapping of the commission will not mean that nothing will be done in this area. It is unfortunate that they are being scrapped but the work they set out to do should now be done by some other body.

Mr. Roche

There has been a great deal of discussion today on the issues of the future of local government and of the reform of local government. Local goverment reform has been a political football in this country for the best part of a quarter of a century. It is quite extraordinary to listen to the same shibboleths on local government reform and on the financing of local government being trotted out yet again.

The financing of local government is absolutely critical to the whole question of reform. In 1961 the first papers on this matter were published by the IIRS who were commissioned by the Department of Finance to deal with the matter of local government finance, its reform and the relationship between autonomous local government finance and meaningful local authorities. Between 1965 and 1969 four further reports were published by the interdepartmental committee on local government finance. These were good and logical reports and looked in a nonpolitical way at what needed to be done. The committee submitted to the then Government the course of action that should be taken. In 1972 the Government incorporated the major recommendations of these reports into a White Paper which was published shortly after the publication of another White Paper in 1971 on the structural reform of local government. I deal with these historical points because I note the rekindling of concern for local government in the contributions from Deputies opposite and I welcome that.

I refer those Deputies to history. What happened to the 1971 White Paper on local government reform which dealt with the structural organisational issues and what happened to the equally important White Paper of 1972? The answer is that nothing happened because, as the Deputy opposite well knows, the Coalition which came to power in 1973 rejected both White Papers. I can understand a Government coming into office, as that Government did, after 16 years in the wilderness wishing perhaps to change some of the suggestions made by the outgoing regime. The incoming Government produced a one and a half page trite statement on the direction local government would take and they started the process of dismantling the autonomous financial structure on which local government, as a meaningful entity, depends. The first detrimental steps in this area were taken in 1973, as Deputies will know, when it was decided to tinker about with the rates rather than to bite the bullet and to undertake the reforms which had been suggested in four interdepartmental committee reports, in two ESRI reports and in the White Paper of 1972. Let us not have Deputies on benches opposite coming in here and wringing their hands about local government and its destruction.

I welcome the commitment, which the Minister indicated in his speech, to local government reform. This is long overdue. The issue of local government reform and more particularly the important related issue of the reform of local finances must be depoliticised. This country would be impoverished, and I agree with Deputy Fitzpatrick when he says this country would be the poorer, if we were to take the steps that would result in any further diminution of local government. We are now bordering, in the local government area, on the brink of having an undemocratic and meaningless system. Far from being a rewarding experience, as many Deputies in this House know — the majority of Deputies are members of local authorities — being a member of a local authority means that we have only the responsibility of bearing the odium of the public for those things which are done by the executive and administrative side of local government.

On the issue of local government finance, I wish to refer to what happened in the period from 1973 to 1977 because that has some relevance to this matter. A massive untruth has been perpetrated by members of the then Government as to what actually happened. As we know the Government who came into power in 1973 failed again to bite the bullet on the issue of the financial restructuring of local government and decided to kick to touch. They asked the ESRI to have yet another look at the financial structure and we had another report.

I am glad Deputy Boland has joined us because he will be familiar with the Copeland Walsh report. He was an excellent Minister but while he was in office that report was not treated with the energy he brought to so many other areas of local government and to so many other areas of administration; rather it was let draw dust. Let us not have tears on the far side on the issue of local government reform; let us have a constructive approach. Let us have a suggestion that there will be full support for the Ministers in their commitment to bring a determination to local government reform of the financial structures of local government, a determination which has not, and which could not have been there in the last Government because of the ever evident divisions.

On the matter of local finances, Deputy Shatter spoke at length about hypocrisy. I felt that most of what he had to say in this Chamber probably belonged in one of the Dublin Corporation chambers because he was dealing with the estimates of that body, which are not relevant here. If local government is to be saved, I submit that it will not be saved by blatant hypocrisy. If the members of a local authority make a decision on their finances, that is a decision which goes to the very essence of local government because the essential ingredient in local government is that it knits together financial accountability, financial decisions and the electoral process and that has been missing. I laud the members of those authorities who have made decisions on these matters.

If Deputy Shatter was interested in a lesson in political hypocrisy he could find it in the reports of Wicklow County Council who recently faced the fact that we are in a difficult financial situation. They adopted estimates, but opposing the charges was no less than a Minister for Local Government in the last regime, Deputy Kavanagh. He voted against the charges; yet he was the Minister who introduced them. If we talk about political hypocrisy let us be aware where this political hypocrisy lies.

The Minister and many other Deputies dealt at length with the construction industry. If employment in the building and construction industry had a golden age during the four and a half miserable years of the last political regime, I could understand their posturing, but when we consider the record, the decimation of building and construction, the reduction by half of those employed in that industry, it is extraordinary that Deputies opposite should speak about hypocrisy.

I am glad Deputy Boland is here because I want to refer to some of the points raised about grants. It strikes me that the grants introduced by the last Government were well meaning but disastrous in their impact. They were disastrous in their impact because they were extraordinarily costly; they were an extraordinarily inefficient system of grants assisting industry. Deputy Fitzpatrick spoke about the £2,250 grant. A sum of £240 million has been spent on grants, without any effect on employment creation in the building and construction industry. If we consider how we should have been handling that industry in the past few years, the House will see what I mean when I say there has been a total lack of value for money. For example, if the Government were to cut the VAT rate from 10 per cent to 5 per cent, it would cost something in the order of £60 million, less than one quarter of what has been committed on these grants which have been terminated, and it would have a far more beneficial effect on the legitimate side of the building and construction industry.

Mr. Boland

How much did the Deputy say the total of the £2,250 grant was?

Mr. Roche

I am talking about the total grants as the Deputy knows. Let us now look at the £5,000 grant. I spoke with members of the CIF in the not too distant past and it was generally accepted that the £5,000 grant had some good intentions but the reality is that it had no good effect. In fact, the opposite is true. It led to a general distortion of housing starts; it did not produce an upsurge in employment; and, more important, it contributed to a potentially deleterious effect in regard to the social balance in council estates. I do not moan the passage of that grant. If the taxpayers were to subsidise the building and construction industry, one can think of many ways of spending £240 million of taxpayers' money which would have been infinitely more cost effective than the grants which were abolished.

The refurbishment of some schemes and the funding of those schemes are being reviewed. I want to impress on the Minister the view that the refurbishment schemes have been cost effective. For example, in my own town there is the Kindlestown Park scheme undertaken by Wicklow County Council and the Old-court scheme undertaken in Bray. I urge that the Minister, within the tight budgetary constraints, should be as flexible as he can in these matters.

The Minister promised that a new housing Bill will be brought forward to deal with the homeless. I wish the Minister well with this very welcome proposal and I wish him and his advisers God speed with their work because this legislation is long overdue. I hope the ongoing discussions in this area will be rapidly concluded.

I welcome the decision to make £15 million available for road strengthening, but I want to bring to the Minister's attention the counties which surround Dublin. County Wicklow is one of them. Next year the Department will have to take the view that special consideration will be due to those counties because of the impact which our proximity to Dublin has on our roads and infrastructure. I welcome the Custom House docks scheme. This is a marvellous initiative. We have one of the most capable, computer literate young generations in the world. This will give them and our graduates from third level institutions a tremendous boost. The Government are to be praised for this. We should do everything to operate as ambassadors for this scheme and not have the whingeing, mean minded, petty recriminations which have come from the far side.

I welcome the Minister's decision to abolish the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission for the following reasons. I am a democrat and I do not believe it is in the interests of democracy that tasks which for generations have been charged to the responsibility of elected democratic councils should be passed to appointed bodies. We have local democratic bodies in the Dublin area which should most appropriately deal with Dublin and its streets.

I think it was Tom Barrington who commented — and I am paraphrasing — that local government is like some ancient monument which we are all willing to talk of at length and about its preservation, but when it comes to the actual fact of preservation, by sheer neglect we are prepared to allow it to crumble away. The Minister has been decisive in his few months in office. I welcome that decisiveness because local government will not be saved by flowery speeches, by hypocrisy, or by any of the attributes in some of the speeches made opposite in the past few days. Local government will be saved by decisiveness. It will be saved also by political consensus. Rather than trying to trip Ministers on points they have made, it is incumbent on Deputies from all sides to praise them for their decisiveness and to urge that that decisiveness should be brought to the issue of reforming and restructuring local government and continuing a marvellous system which we inherited and which we have improved since the foundation of the State.

Mr. G. Mitchell

I regret very much that the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of State with specific responsibility for urban renewal have not seen fit to set down planning procedures to deal with the need for an urban renewal policy for the entire country. I am sorry the Minister has not acceeded to my request for the creation of a Dáil committee to examine the matter and report on it or to come forward with a White Paper. Dublin and many other cities have been devastated because of the absence of any policy on urban renewal. Therefore, I urge the Minister, on a macro basis, to take in this entire area.

In the short time available to me earlier in the week on the Urban Renewal Bill I spoke of the economic benefits, tourism and the social benefits available from a properly conducted environmental policy and urban renewal. At the present rate of population decline, in the 20 years up to 1991 the population of Dublin city will have declined by 23.5 per cent. I am talking about the borough of Dublin administered by Dublin Corporation. In recent years the annual decline in population has been 1.8 per cent.

That is worrying, particularly when we find that in many of the areas to which the population have moved there are no churches, no schools, no shopping centres — no infrastructure. The infrastructure is already there in the city centre, and I urge the Minister to do something to tackle head on this very serious problem. Otherwise our capital city will turn into a crime ridden shell with only wailing police sirens to occupy the city at night. People who used to come into the city at night, particularly in summer, will not come into a city that has at its centre a horrible facade like O'Connell Street, for instance, largely facilitated by An Bord Pleanála.

The Minister has decided to take away from the Dublin Metropolitan Streets Commission any power they had been given. He should do something to replace the commission with some other authority who can tackle the terrible devastation that is taking place in the inner city. Nowadays visitors are not coming into the centre city and will not do so unless there is some attraction there.

We are again heading for very large waiting lists for local authority house accommodation. The situation had changed greatly with the £5,000 surrender grant and other grants which were available but were abolished by this Government. Within 12 months we will be back to the position when families of five will not be able to get housed by local authority simply because those grants, which made economic sense, have been withdrawn. In many of the large local authority areas throughout the country people were getting houses, which would cost them £40,000 to build, through the £5,000 surrender grant. In some areas we found that strong community builders had taken avantage of this and moved out, but by and large the scheme worked.

I was a member of Dublin Corporation in 1979 and we could not get anybody housed anywhere because there was no money available for house building programmes. That changed dramatically under the last Government. It has been reversed by this Government and within a very short time it will be difficult for anybody to be rehoused. This Government have come to a cosy relationship with the building societies so that those who might hope to house themselves are being screwed by the building societies, having to pay the same rate of mortgage interest that applied when inflation was at an annual rate of 20 per cent. Now the rate of inflation is down to 3 per cent or less, but mortgagees are paying interest rates comparable to the rate paid when inflation was 20 per cent.

What is the Minister's answer? He has set up a cosy relationship with the building societies. He comes into the House boasting that he has developed smooth relations with them. It is not the Minister's job in the public interest to have such relations with the building societies. They need to be taken by the scruff of their necks, challenged and confronted for the sort of nonsense they are going on with and the hardship they are imposing on young couples. We have seen increases in mortgage interest rates of 3 per cent all at once — it happened early this year — but when the rate comes down it is only one quarter per cent or a half per cent. Then the societies announce that this is some sort of giveaway so that they can hide the profits they are making. You cannot drive through a crossroads these days without noticing the proliferation of office blocks. The societies are hiding their profits in property and giving substantial loans at favourable interest rates to the monarchs who are running these building societies — a self-perpetuating monarchy. They are not mutual friendly societies as they were meant to be, and the cosy relationship between the Minister and those societies is not in the public interest.

I regret mortgagees are being attacked by this Administration. The reduction in mortgage relief against tax of 10 per cent is the start of its abolition altogether. Next year another 10 per cent will be taken off and in five years we will see it gone altogether. This is something that was argued by the Commission on Income Taxation, among other things. How can we unleash this on people who have committed themselves to provide homes for themselves and their families? They could not otherwise meet those commitments without the meagre income tax relief they are getting. Already they have got their tax allowances for this year, minus the 10 per cent. The relief allowance will not be 90 per cent next year; it will be down to 75 per cent or 50 per cent. This is the start of the total abolition of mortgage interest relief.

We need here a strong mortgage payers association who could fight the building societies and the easy touch attitude of the Government. It is the mortgage payers the Minister should be talking to when he talks about updating legislation in relation to building societies. Why are the mortgage payers not being consulted? Why are they not among the interests the Minister has surrounding him so that the building society vultures cannot themselves decide how much of the carcase they will eat? It is our duty to serve the public interest and that is not done by propping up interest rates which are not justifiable and which are screwing young couples some of whom cannot afford a decent meal once a week. It is wrong that they should have to continue to pay those outrageous interest rates to building societies.

I should now like to deal with the area of local government reform. I regret that in the past decade there has not been a sufficient move in this direction and I hope it will take place in the next few years. Dublin City Council now has 52 members as against 45 on the old body and, consequently, has become unwieldly. I accept that because of the large number of members it is proposed to have three authorities but we must get down to devolving powers to local authorities and having local issues dealt with by smaller and more manageable bodies who do not see themselves as mini parliaments. Unless that takes place local government will not have any effect.

There are many areas where local elected bodies if given teeth could be very effective in improving the environment. In general local authorities do good work but I cannot understand why it is necessary to have such a strong big brother approach by the Department of the Environment. I do not see why they should always hold the reins on local authorities. I suspect it is that local authorities see themselves as mini parliaments because it is a question of Fine Gael versus Fianna Fáil, or whatever the party position is around the country. A lot of time is spent by the parties trying to embarrass each other. It seems to me that the Department do not want to devolve powers to a council that is controlled by Fine Gael and if we are in Government we do not wish to devolve powers to a council controlled by Fianna Fáil. It is a pity that that has come about in local government.

A contribution could be made to solving that problem not just if TDs were excluded from becoming councillors, which is a great cry nowadays. We have as much right to make a call that carpenters or doctors should not be councillors as others have the right to call for the exclusion of TDs. However, if their membership of county councils contributes to the problem it is worthy of consideration. In my view the call to stop TDs being councillors cannot be rationally discussed unless we stop councillors becoming TDs. That is the difficulty. There are two streams, one stream is like the junior league of the next stream with people in one wanting to go on to the other. We should through our party structures do something about this just as we have got to the stage of separating the European Parliament from our national Parliament by doing away with dual membership. If we could get it into our political thinking, and our political system, that those who want to be councillors should go for the county council and those who want to be TDs should go for the Dáil we would be making an advance but it is not practical to ask TDs not to be councillors without somehow putting obstacles in the way of councillors becoming TDs. Otherwise TDs will not be in a position to relinquish that platform because it will be like putting a gun to their own heads. While that type of competition exists it is unrealistic to ask TDs to consider this. The problem has to be tackled on both fronts but it can be tackled within the party system.

I should like to ask the Minister to consider devising a system which will not affect the independence of An Bord Pleanála. In my view the system involved in setting up An Bord Pleanála was a load of nonsense and I said so when the matter was debated in the House. It was a lot of nonsense for a parliament elected by the people to appoint a committee who in turn selected a board. However, what existed before An Bord Pleanála was worse because we had people being appointed to the board because they were a friend of the corpse and not because they had any expert knowledge in the area. It must be possible to find a system that will leave An Bord Pleanála independent but yet accountable. Local authorities can be criticised and crucified if they approve a planning permission considered to be a poor environmental practice but An Bord Pleanála do not appear to be accountable to anyone. There should be some accountability. For example, they should be made accountable if two-thirds of the council seek an explanation, or they should be made accountable to parliament or some other public body. Accountability without interference should be brought about.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. Connolly)

I am pleased to have an opportunity to make a contribution on the Estimate for my Department. In the short time available to me I should like to respond to some of the points in the debate with regard to grants. Housing grants have arisen from £29 million in 1985 to £58 million last year and a massive £122.5 million this year. The sum comprises £100 million for house improvement grants, £14 million for new house grants and £8.5 million for the £5,000 surrender grant scheme. I am amazed that Deputy Boland had the nerve to challenge the Government's decision relating to housing grants. When I arrived in the Department I discovered that Deputy Boland had left it in a mess. I make that statement with all due respect to the officials who administer housing grant schemes who are doing a wonderful job. I am still trying to straighten out the mess. There was a cumbersome £2,250 builders grant that was introduced without any planning at a time when the Government knew they would not have the money for it in that financial year.

I set about streamlining the grants section and I got great co-operation from the officials involved. I have to deal with an enormous amount of correspondence daily concerning house grants. I should like to point out that applications for house improvement grants received before 27 March that comply with the regulations and have been passed by an inspector will be honoured. In the case of the £2,250 builders grant I should like to point out that where there is a legally binding and irrevocable contract signed on or before 27 March it will be honoured.

The provision of adequate and suitable accommodation for travellers is a matter which local authorities have been asked to deal with as an integral part of their housing programmes. Wherever possible and when it is in line with their preference, travellers are accommodated in local authority houses as part of the regular housing programme. However, for travelling families who wish to live among other travellers, group housing schemes will continue to be provided and they are designed to encourage maximum integration with the settled community. For travellers who do not wish to settle down, local authorities are providing serviced caravan parks. The need to accommodate these families is evident as the conditions under which they live are usually appalling and often the basic cause of tension between the travellers and the settled community. It is, therefore, in the interests of all concerned that local authorities should press ahead with the provision of suitable accommodation for travellers. Last year ten caravan parks were completed providing accommodation for 100 families. A further 18 are either under construction or at the planning stage. Increased activity in this area now and in future will ensure that progress is maintained and that considerable inroads are made towards solving the problem. I understand the complexity and the difficulties involved in many parts of the country but I hope that commonsense will prevail. I look forward to the co-operation of all local authorities and everyone else concerned with the problem.

In regard to housing in general, the Government's aim is to bring down mortgage interest rates as quickly as possible. In case Deputy Boland is under any illusion to the contrary, we are in favour of home ownership. I intend to examine the local authority purchase scheme to see if improvements can be made bearing in mind the constraints on the financial resources available. There are many good schemes throughout the country which the Minister and I would like to approve but, owing to the financial position, we are unable to do so. We have to work strictly within the guidelines laid down in the Estimate. Deputy Boland must have a short memory in his reference to the Government's approval for remedial works and local authority housing. He should know all about that and the reduction in these works when he was Minister——

Mr. Boland

That is not true.

Mr. Connolly

There was only a sum of £1.5 million made available ——

Mr. Boland

The Minister of State is mistaken.

Mr. Connolly

I will give Deputy Boland a few more reminders. In regard to amenity grants, he burned the midnight oil on 9 March, before he left office, to make grants available. I do not say this lightly but he engaged in low standards. When I was in the Department — this is my third time in that office — nobody could point a finger at the Minister or me in regard to standards. During the three weeks of the election campaign Deputy Boland assured people that they would get grants ranging from £20,000 to £30,000. When we came to office, the Minister, Deputy Flynn had no option but to revoke these grants. I hope that every county will now get a share to which it is entitled.

If the necessary funds are available we will improve the county road network which, I agree, is in need of attention. The Minister changed the allocation procedure in regard to roads when he rightly decided to allocate grants on a mileage basis. Some Members complained that traffic in certain parts of the country was not as heavy as in others but I can only speak about the midlands which has very heavy lorry container traffic on most of its roads. I know that many Deputies and local authorities are anxious for a programme to be brought in which will improve the county roads network but, of course, it all depends on the available financial resources.

I should like to deal briefly with group water schemes. In addition to capital loans, the Government are providing grants of £3.2 million this year mainly for water supply schemes and the bulk of this money is for group schemes which have the tangible benefit of providing a piped water supply to homes in rural communities. Most group schemes in western counties qualify for higher grants with assistance from the western package which also recoups 50 per cent of my Department's grants to local authorities. For a number of designated public schemes in rural areas, over £19 million is provided by the EC and I am hopeful that extra funds can be secured in a review of the package which is now taking place. I want to thank all local authorities who provide group water schemes. There was a great deal of work involved and it would be remiss of me not to pay them a special tribute.

Deputy Mitchell referred to urban renewal and asked for a White Paper to be brought forward on that subject. I do not agree with that. We have had enough talk; it is action that we need now. Proposals are going to the National Building Agency in respect of urban renewal and I am hoping these will be approved very shortly. I have no doubt that these proposals will take us to many parts of the country and I am looking forward to the full support of the NBA, local authorities and all other interested groups. I hope to get joint venture involved and other people who can help in this very important matter. I expect at the end of the month to be able to announce comprehensive proposals in this regard. All the proposals will have to be self-financing, where possible. They must be cost effective. This is very essential today as far as the taxpayer is concerned. We will go ahead with this work.

Recently I met many county managers and I am glad to say I got their goodwill. Some people have very short memories with regard to many things. We are working under the limitation of the finances of the Department of the Environment and if any project is to commence or be approved in due course it must be within the framework of the Department's allocation. Many on the other side of the House wanted many things to be done. On the one hand they want cuts but when it comes to their back-yard or front-yard they do not want restraint. They cannot have it both ways. That is the reality of the situation. We are operating as best we can under the financial constraints and that we will continue to do.

The Opposition may have words of criticism to launch at the Minister and me but we must operate within the finances we have. There is no use in people putting down questions asking why approval cannot be given to this, that or the other project. We are working within our financial allocation. There are many good schemes throughout the country and the Minister would be only too glad to approve all of them but the money is not there. Whatever allocation is made to local authorities, it must be seen to be spent well and the taxpayer must get value for money. The local authorities have a responsibility to see to this. We expect that from every local authority and corporation. They have done very good work over the years but there is always room for improvement. Everyone in this House will accept that there is room for improvement in all the Departments. We expect value for the money spent and above all the taxpayers are expecting that. We are giving the direction and I have no doubt everybody will co-operate with us.

Mr. Leonard

First, I should like to congratulate the Minister and Minister of State on this first opportunity during a debate on the Estimate for the Department of the Environment. One point which struck me very forcibly today was that some Members tried to justify the system by which the roads grants introduced in 1986 were allocated. I viewed that as the most serious example of discrimination against some counties and the most serious result of allowing a Minister discretion in allocating a substantial amount of funding. In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan the first allocation in early 1986 was £48,000 for Cavan and £45,000 for Monaghan when, had it been related to the quality of the county roads or the mileage, it would have been three times that much at least. One of the first jobs the Minister did in coming into power was to increase these amounts. The total then stood at £15 million. The most important thing the Minister did was to set it on a fair basis. Whether it be local authority or central Government, the basic ground rule should be fair play and no discrimination. There was no fair play in the original allocation.

When the system was changed and the Minister related it to a mileage basis, our county moved up from £48,000 to £405,000. That will give an indication. Immediately this scheme was introduced 12 months ago, we indicated to the Department the unfairness and I was told the Minister was entitled to use his discretion, but he is not entitled to do so in making an unfair allocation of public funds to any county. The reversion to a mileage ratio was a positive approach. The Minister at the same time almost doubled the allocation under the local improvements scheme. For rural Ireland this is a very important scheme which allows the provision of decent roads and road structure for deliveries and collection to outlying rural areas. The grant is given towards accommodation roads when there are two or more farmers using the roadway. Individuals could not meet the cost of this work and I feared the Coalition's approach to this matter.

When former Deputy Jim Tully was Minister for Local Government in the mid-seventies he made an attempt to withdraw funding for local improvements schemes. Immediately I put down a parliamentary question in relation to this and a few days later I was told this was a technical mistake and it was restored. Funding for the scheme has now been almost doubled. The Minister has done a very useful job in relation to this. Roads are very important in rural Ireland where deliveries are made to farmers and industries in articulated trucks which carry about 20 tonne loads because it does not pay the hauliers to carry small loads.

The scheme of housing aid for the elderly is a very important one. A lot of improvements have been carried out to houses, in particular those belonging to pensioners in rural areas. Much valuable work was carried out by health boards in repairing chimneys and roofs and in draught proofing and refurbishing. I ask the Minister to ensure that funding for this scheme will be continued.

In some areas in rural Ireland houses of elderly people do not have electricity. I put down a parliamentary question in 1986 asking the Minister for the Environment if special consideration could be given to the provision of an electricity supply to persons who qualified under the housing aid for the elderly scheme, having had their right to the service approved by the health board. In my own county an ESB estimate for the supply of electricity to a house was in the region of £700 to £800 and this was beyond the means of the applicant. He was denied a supply of electricity. I ask the Minister to consider the possibility of extending funding for water and sewerage facilities to houses which have been refurbished. There are many houses in rural Ireland where these basic requirements are not available and emphasis should be placed on their provision. Most areas have group water schemes and the committees in charge of these schemes are normally willing to give special terms to old age pensioners and people living on their own to have sewerage facilities installed. Fibreglass septic tanks can now be purchased at a reasonable cost and, therefore, sewerage facilities could be provided at a reasonable cost. In the health area emphasis is placed on community care in an attempt to keep old people in the community rather than having them institutionalised. The Ministers for Energy, Environment and Health could look at the possibility of drawing up a scheme which would improve the lot of old people.

The Minister should encourage local authorities to operate co-operative housing schemes. Sites for these housing schemes are now very dear. Because many sites are far from built-up areas it will cost a lot to develop and service them. Local authorities will have to become involved in these housing schemes which have been operating in the southern part of the country. However very little interest has been shown in them in the north of the country. Every assistance possible should be given to young people who want to build their own houses.

Monaghan County Council are at present repaying a loan for repairs to a courthouse which was burnt in 1981. When the Malicious Injuries Act was introduced in the Dáil in the last session I hoped that recognition would be taken of the plight of Monaghan County Council. This loan has put a considerable drain on the finances of the Council. There was a mechanism available for a refund of the cost from the British Government because the burning of the courthouse was directly related to the troubles in Northern Ireland but because Monaghan County Council are a local authority they could not make a claim. Consequently, they had to carry out the repairs to the courthouse out of the meagre insurance money they received against themselves. As a result the council had to take out a £1 million loan which they will be paying back for many years to come.

While many of us regret that more money is not being provided in this Estimate for schemes, nevertheless we accept that the Minister has made a positive effort to the best use of the moneys available to him.

Minister for the Environment (Mr. Flynn)

I would like to thank the Deputies who contributed to the debate. In my reply it will not be possible to respond to every point raised but I will try to cover as many as I can in the time allowed. I have listened with some interest to the comments of Deputies. A common theme ran through all the contributions and that was that we should spend more and more, but nobody had a thought as to where it might come from. Whether it is on improvement grants, roads, parks, sanitary services, housing or whatever, every Deputy would like to see more spent, particularly in their constituencies. Unfortunately, I as Minister, have to be realistic and make the choices in the national interest. There is no conflict between local and national interest in respect of major expenditure programmes. I have already given a broad statement of the amount that has already been given in this area. The total figure is £1,805 million. That is a sizeable commitment to supporting the local authority system.

Deputy Boland was critical of the Government in relation to home ownership. The present high level of home ownership is an important traditional aspect of life here. It is attributable, to a very large degree, to the policies adopted by Fianna Fáil administrations in encouraging people and in facilating them to buy their own homes. That continues to be our policy. A step I have taken that will ensure progress in that area is that I am providing £173 million for housing loans by the local authorities. Incidentally, that is the same amount of money that Deputy Boland's Government would have spent in that area, so I cannot imagine what the Deputy is bleating about here this afternoon. I have secured a reduction of 1 per cent in the building society interest rates. I am satisfied that with the favourable response of the market to the positive way the Government are approaching the economy that there is every likelihood that there will be further reductions in the mortgage interest rate in the coming months. Nobody can guarantee that, but a positive attitude is being adopted by the agencies at this time.

I am also arranging a worthwhile reform of building society legislation in consultation with the building societies. I am happy that the working party I set up with the societies is working well and that it has ironed out many of the needed interpretations that were required because of the rushed legislation the previous Minister got himself embroiled in. I look forward, before the end of this year, to having a major package to put to the House in relation to building societies. I would like to think that I would have the support of the former Minister in that regard.

Mr. Boland

Before the end of the year?

Mr. Flynn

We would hope so. Because the working party are coming along so well, I could well see that before we come back in the autumn it might be possible to have the heads of this legislation prepared. It will not be because of any inactivity on my part that that legislation will not be available for discussion in the House in 1987 after appropriate consultation with the parties involved.

Mr. Boland

I admire your faith.

Mr. Flynn

I am continuing the policy of the sale of local authority houses to the tenants. That is important. I will be talking in the immediate future about a new tenant purchase scheme. I would like to see the percentage kept up above the international average in so far as home ownership is concerned here.

Deputy Boland this morning talked about demoralised staff and demotivated staff that I had left behind in the Custom House. It ill becomes the Deputy to talk about demoralisation of staff. The Deputy has a fair good record in all the Departments he has been in of a fair amount of frustration and difficulty with staff. The staff in the Custom House are not demoralised at all. A great load has been lifted off them and since I have taken over they are addressing themselves in a much more positive way in the legislative and the administrative sense. I am not denigrating the Deputy but in the past, in rather stormy innings in a few instances during his few years in the Custom House——

Mr. Boland

I was neither a few years in the Custom House nor were there several stormy innings.

Mr. Flynn

The Deputy would have liked to have been a few years there but he had a certain amount of stormy passage while he was there.

Mr. Boland

I accept that the staff do not have to work as hard now.

Mr. Flynn

They are working hard and they are happier, thankfully.

Deputy Shatter referred to the question of accommodation for travellers. I agree that the greatest need for action is in the Dublin county area where there are about 200 families at present. Although the programme adopted by Dublin County Council some time ago for the provision of 17 ten family sites had to be altered, six of these have been provided. The council have now adopted a revised programme which will provide 35 family sites to be spread evenly over the 15 local electoral areas. Proposals for five of these sites were actually submitted to the Department and are being considered.

Deputy Boland referred to the building industry and he was particularly critical of the way in which I dealt with house improvement grants. I would like it to be clearly understood that what I have done in relation to the home improvement grants is that I have tried to deal with a morass which was left behind by the previous administration and by Deputy Boland who turned O'Connell Bridge House into an administrative quagmire. Unfortunately it has not been possible, even yet, to get out of that marshy ground. In one fell swoop the previous Minister condemned the Department of the Environment to great administrative difficulty and left them strapped for cash that I badly needed for many other areas because of his ill conceived and hastily put together schemes which will be a cash burden on this State for the next number of years.

If the Deputy had considered the situation at length and taken time to recognise what he was doing to the financial structure of the Government and the Department of the Environment, he would have realised that it was not in the national interest to spend £27 million on house improvement grants in 1986, condemning me and those who come after me to £10 million in 1987 and perhaps £90 million in 1989 when that money was urgently needed in so many other places. The previous Minister foisted these schemes on the Department and he knew we could not afford them and that many of them were not essential either to the building industry or to the Department in achieving their targets. He allowed the matter to get out of control. The wild abandon with which the former Minister dealt with the question of housing grants leaves me in the position that not only am I strapped for cash this year in having to provide £100 million to satisfy the appetite of the house improvement grants but next year I will be in the same position, and he condemned the Department viciously to a certain immobility and inactivity because of his illconceived schemes in the past.

This has been examined many times, but at least everybody else in the House recognises that the home improvements grant system was out of control. I have tried to create a climate whereby we will get away from that quagmire as soon as possible and back to funding some schemes that urgently need attention. I agree that there is need for money for many schemes that I would like to initiate, but it is not really proper for the former Minister to come in here bleating about the house improvements grant scheme that I have terminated and saying it was a stab in the back to the building industry. It was of no use to the building industry as it was framed and it committed the State and the Department to enormous cost they could not bear. I feel quite justified in taking the step that I have taken in this regard.

Mr. Boland

Where was the money being spent if it was of no use to the building industry?

Mr. Flynn

There will be no lack of activity this year or next year because of any action on my part. I still will have to provide the money for the 134,000 applications that came in, many of them from people who did not need or require it, and many of whom are now smirking. There was no need for it. I regret that Deputy Boland continually brings this matter up here when he should have learned his lesson and gone quietly away and cried his tears somewhere else.

This Minister standing here now is defending the economy in the steps I have taken. I am defending its survival following the disastrous mismanagement that Deputy Boland was part of over the past few years. The Coalition Government had a well orchestrated public relations programme going for them, and what they wanted to achieve was well put before the people on many occasions, but the results were far from what the promotion campaigns suggested they intended to achieve. We do not have to quote the figures for the national debt and the escalation of borrowing in so far as the previous administration are concerned, but they left Fianna Fáil in a minority Government to take on board all the results of the bad habits that developed in the past few years under the previous Administration. It ill behoves the former Minister to come in here castigating me for not being this or that when he knows he left the Department in a terrible mess. However, a revitalised staff with no demoralisation are coming round to accept that the Flynn way is much better than the Boland way.

Mr. Boland

They are being entertained at least.

Mr. Flynn

They are. They are being entertained to proper political strategy, proper funding of schemes and a proper means of administration by way of consultation and hard work. We will not go into that any further.

The total Estimate provision for road improvements and maintenance works, including the local improvements schemes, is £170 million which is exactly the same provision as was left there by Deputy Boland before he left office. I wish he would stop trying to mislead the House and everybody else into thinking that in some way I have corralled the money, or misappropriated it, or in some way reduced the spending that was suggested for roads in the 1987 programme. Changes I have made for sure in regard to the strengthening of country roads, and for the £5 million that was spent last year I will be spending £15 million this year. I put it to the House and to Deputy Boland that the time has come when a little money had to be taken from the road fund available to cater for the 80 per cent of the road network that was disintegrating throughout the country and would have ended up in a few years costing us hundreds of millions of pounds to restore what was crumbling in 1985 and 1986 and would have had to be met by increased departmental expenditure in a few years.

I took some £10 million from the fund and I think it will be well spent. I wish Deputy Boland or any other Deputy who disagrees with that policy would come clean and say once and for all that it was wrong to do so, because they will be flying in the face of the resolutions that have been passed up and down the country in every local authority. This is the first time any Minister for the Environment has recognised that the county roads structure is worth saving and worth a little extra attention.

Mr. Boland

Who introduced that policy?

Mr. Flynn

Deputy Cooney referred to that matter and he was very concerned about the amount of money I allocated for road strengthening for County Westmeath. It is a pity that before they make these rash statements in the House, some Deputies did not at least check the figures. If he had done so Deputy Cooney would have found that in 1987 I have allocated £360,000 for strengthening on Westmeath county roads. That is an increase of £126,000 over what was paid in 1986. Deputy Cooney was never slow at arithmetic so I am surprised that he did not get that right.

He referred to two jobs of work he was interested in. One was the Mullingar bypass. The funding for that scheme is not as strong as I would like it to be but I have allocated £500,000 this year for that scheme and £400,000 for the Dunleer scheme so that the acquisition of land can proceed this year. Deputy Cooney can be assured that I intend to proceed with these two major jobs as soon as the finances are available to me. Deputy Cooney is right in that I have an interest in the Mullingar by pass because it will lead to a huge improvement in movement of traffic out of the city and to the west. He need have no doubt that the Minister, Deputy Flynn, is just as concerned about the west as he has always been.

The renewal of motor tax in post offices was referred to. I was surprised to hear Deputy Boland say that I brought his proposal to an end. A proposal was made during the last days of the previous Administration, for the payment of motor tax in certain cases at post offices. If one were to judge the previous Minister's administrative skill on that one item, it would leave much to be desired. The former Minister's method of handling that caused widespread industrial action in local authorities throughout the country and when I took office I had to deal with it. Arising from my discussions with the unions involved, the action was called off and it was agreed that the whole question of motor tax renewal would be examined in conjunction with the relevant parties but then, of course, the present Minister is a firm believer in consultation, not confrontation or announcement and let the devil take the hindmost afterwards.

I set up a little working group. They were given a time scale within which to work. I do not like setting up working groups unless I tell them when I wish them to report. Their time limit expires on 1 August this year. I understand that they are coming forward with proposals and, I hope, a better system to achieve the aim of the former Minister. The idea of the former Minister was good had it not been pursued in the way it was. If certain other attitudes and aspects of the former Minister's administration had been pursued in a different manner he would have achieved a lot more.

Mr. Boland

In other words, the Minister is not going ahead with it.

Mr. Flynn

The former Minister should not be naughty. Always we must have the touch of reality in these matters——

Mr. Boland

So the Minister is not going ahead with it.

Mr. Flynn

What the former Minister said today about roads was blatantly untrue and, what is more, he knows it. He smiled when he said it. It is a pity that smiles could not find their way onto the the Official Report; what a difference it would make to the reading.

Mr. Boland

There would be a fair few punctuations in the Minister's contribution if that were the case.

Mr. Flynn

I can now confirm that it is £500,000 that is being provided for the Dunleer by-pass and £400,000 for the Mullingar by-pass — I think I got it wrong first time — to enable the local authorities to proceed with the land acquisition and the other preparatory work. We will get to those jobs as soon as possible.

Deputy Sherlock seems to be slightly confused in so far as group schemes and their existence is concerned. I can tell him that the group scheme has been very successful in County Cork. He was concerned that there were 700 people in his constituency who did not have piped water. I am very concerned about that, too. But I would like him to know that there is a scheme in existence to deal with that matter. The maximum grant payable is £600 for a domestic supply and £400 for a farm supply. This means that a farmer in his area — and it was farmers about whom he was speaking in particular — can qualify for both those grants, giving them a total grant of £1,000. If the Deputy wishes to have any further information on that or anything else I shall be happy to let him have it.

Deputy Cooney talked about sewerage schemes and the danger of pollution. I have taken some steps now to ensure that even greater attention will be paid to this aspect of the sanitary services programme. In the new study of needs about to commence, the first ever countrywide study of sanitary service needs, I have ensured that special attention will be given to their environmental aspect. This will mean that, in determining priorities in the future, the environmental implications will be certain to receive the high priority I maintain they merit. It is only by so doing we can ensure that the problem referred to by Deputy Cooney will not continue. I support his point of view and he will be glad to know that I have taken that initiative.

There were many other matters raised by Deputies, many of which were worthy of comment but time denies me the opportunity. However, I should like to refer to one matter raised because it is of some particular importance and Deputy Boland is here to listen to my response. He was quite critical of our approach to local authority housing. The fact is that the previous Minister saw fit to run down the scale of local authority housing programmes. This is proven by the drop in the number of house completions over the past few years — 7,000 in 1984 to 6,500 in 1985 and to 5,500 in 1986, all of that during the tenure of office of the previous Minister. I am not saying that there was not good cause for the Minister to have taken that policy decision. I think the former Minister recognises that there are changing circumstances in so far as population structures or dispersal of population is concerned but he should be sufficiently generous to admit that it was a policy that had to be indulged in. He should not be critical of me now for recognising there was some validity in the policy he himself was practising.

Mr. Boland

The Minister scrapped the surrender scheme, the corollary part.

Mr. Flynn

I have to say to him that he is well known outside the House to have said that the £5,000 surrender grant had limited use only and would have to be terminated because of the difficulties it was creating in many existing housing estates. I grasped the nettle that he knew eventually he would have to grasp. Unfortunately he now castigates me for doing what he himself recognised had to be done. Everybody else has supported that standpoint. He should go out to some local authorities and talk to some councillors, when they would fill him in on the rationale behind the decision I took to terminate the £5,000 grant.

Mr. Boland

I do not object to the Minister grasping the nettle, it is what he did with it after he grasped it that concerns me.

Mr. Flynn

I am on record in this House as saying that there was certainly a use attached to that £5,000 grant for a certain period of time. But, when it was recognised by the Minister that it was achieving a result that would lead to the development of ghettoes — the very thing he was trying to eliminate — he should have stopped it immediately. That was the trouble with the former Minister — he was determinedly anxious to announce things, to announce schemes for grants that he knew full well he would never have to implement, that he knew full well somebody else would have to terminate and he failed to provide the necessary funding when he was getting out of office. But he was very active a few days before he left office — he burned the midnight oil relentlessly in Gandon's Custom House. It was not seeking to achieve desired savings, or to alleviate the demoralisation he had created among the staff. No, it was to make sure that his pets were well looked after in so far as such things as amenity schemes were concerned. We would not like to go down through the full list of those, would we?

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Flynn

The former Minister can rest assured that, when the small amount of money available to me in that regard has been disbursed in the very near future, at least I will not discriminate against certain constituencies, as the former Minister saw fit to do leaving 13 constituencies without a bob at all. I say: shame on him.

Mr. Boland

Would the Minister read out the list of the grants he scrapped? I would be very grateful if he would do so.

Minister for Justice (Mr. Collins)

Was he generous to me?

Mr. Flynn

The present Minister for Justice got particular attention from the former Minister in that his constituency was not entitled to anything, neither was mine. There is now a new regime in the Custom House. It is a fair one and deals evenly with all constituencies and all Members.

Vote put and agreed to.

Mr. Flynn

There is one matter of great importance to which I must attend. I must formally move the motion on the Supplementary Estimate.