AN "equalisation" fund for local authorities was announced by the Minister for the Environment. Mr Howlin said it would make good income lost through the abolition of domestic water and sewerage charges and the rate support grant.
He said that as the amounts collected by different motor tax authorities would vary, in some cases significantly, from the income levels generated by the existing system, a transfer of resources was necessary so that each local authority could benefit equally from the changes.
To facilitate this 20 pea cent of the proceeds of the motor tax, and the full proceeds of all other motor tax revenues, including driver-licence duties, would be paid into the fund. The balance would be allocated, as equitably as possible, among the authorities, having regard to their needs and resources. All authorities would benefit.
Mr Howlin was speaking during the debate on a Fianna Fail private members motion condemning the Government for its "total disregard" for the welfare of rural communities in its handling of the water charges issue.
The Minister said he was giving careful consideration to the broad range of views presented to him on the issue. Rushing out with offers of blank cheques or with offers such as the £23 million tabled by the PDs would not advance the cause of those served by group schemes, he said.
"Neither will those on group schemes, or the electorate generally, be taken in by the suggestion in this FF motion that the Government has shown total disregard for the welfare of rural communities. What a blinkered, approach the deputies opposite can adopt when it suits them.
The Fianna Fail spokesman on the environment, Mr Noel Dempsey, said that direct subventions to householders and to appropriate group water schemes seemed to him to be the options that could be used in the short-term to remove the inequity created by the Minister.
Long-term options could be local authorities, or the Department, taking charge of schemes, and the provision of a formal scheme between the Department, local authorities and group water schemes.
He laid that the Minister's announcement of the abolition of water charges last December was a knee-jerk reaction to the increasingly acute electoral pressures on the Labour Party in Dublin. "The result has been the creation of a very serious inequity on householders in rural Ireland. By throwing out the principle of equity, Minister Howl in has brought the political process into disrepute. He has deepened an existing sense of disillusionment. His unseemly squirming in the interim has been as unedifying as it has been ineffective."
Faced with a political crisis of his own making, the Minister tried to square the circle last month, Mr Dempsey said.
Debate on the motion continues tonight."