asked the Minister for Finance whether, in view of the layoff of turf workers in the Kildare area, he proposes to make a special grant available for the provision of employment in the area.

Grants for employment schemes from the Employment and Emergency Schemes Vote are intended primarily to provide spells of work for unemployment assistance recipients and it is not practicable to make special grants for other classes of workers such as those referred to by the Deputy. I may add, however, that the current winter bog development schemes roads programme — which is not related to the unemployment position — includes grants amounting to £2,820 for bog roads in the Timahoe area, out of a total allocation of £4,000 for County Kildare as a whole.

I take it the Parliamentary Secretary is aware of the fact that it has been customary in recent years to make special grants to provide for the sag in employment among turf workers in these particular areas. Am I to understand from the reply that no special grant of that kind will be made to deal with the unemployment problem arising out of the termination of turf work this year?

There is no fund from which grants are available for disemployed people or for people who are disemployed owing to seasonal slackness. The Special Employment Schemes Office give priority in nearly all cases to those who are on the unemployment assistance register because those who have been disemployed from works such as Bord na Móna and others are eligible for unemployment insurance benefit and if there were funds available I believe the better thing to do would be to extend the time of work for the people on unemployment assistance because it has to be borne in mind that those who have been disemployed had the advantage of having had a period of work at reasonable remuneration which many of the unemployment assistance recipients did not have.

No grant this year; one last year and the year before.

Each year for the past five or six years these special grants were made available and I have no doubt that the money could be found this year as well as it was in previous years if the Government were so minded. Surely, it ought to be possible to have the matter reconsidered and to continue the humane practice of other years of making a special grant to take up the sag in employment which is peculiar to the turf area.

Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that the position as outlined by Deputy Norton is exactly the same in the Mount Dillon area?

The Deputy may not travel over the whole country on this question.

Whatever steps are taken, and I hope practical steps will be taken, to solve the problem in Kildare, I hope similar steps will be taken with regard to the other areas involved.

You have £100,000,000 to spend over there.

I am not aware that any special grants were made within the past few years for such a purpose as Deputy Norton has in mind.

The Parliamentary Secretary should examine his files more closely.

If I look up the files, I will know that we have made more money available for unemployment this year than the inter-Party Government did last year. We have spent more in Kildare this year than they gave.

May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether in making his last reply he has overlooked the fact that this particular year, when no grants can be made available to relieve the sag of employment in the turf areas, we are nevertheless providing an uncovenanted benefit of £250,000 for master bakers?