asked the Minister for the Environment (a) if additional sums have been allocated by the Government to build local authority houses since 5th July 1977; and (b) the amounts allocated.

The overall public capital programme allocation of £74.1 million for local authority housing and low-rise mortgages in 1977 has not been increased. However, following a detailed mid-year review of expenditure on the programme, additional area allocations were made to a number of local authorities from the balance then remaining unallocated and from savings anticipated in some areas as a result of wet weather in the first three months of 1977. These additional allocations are set out in a tabular statement which I propose, with the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, to have circulated with the Official Report.

Following is the statement:

Additional allocations notified to housing authorities since 5th July, 1977.

Would the Minister be confident that the house-building programme of previous years and particularly the number of houses built, would be sustained or increased in view of the fact that there does not seem to be any substantial or significant increase in the amount of money being allocated? Is he happy that the number of new houses will be maintained?

On the matter of the total housing programme I have no doubt that the stimulus which we have injected into private house building by the £1,000 grant and the improvement in SDA loan facilities on both the income basis and the total amount basis, will result in an increase overall in housing in the coming year. All the indications are to that effect.

Would the Minister be satisfied with regard to local authority housing?

Yes.

Would the Minister send round regulations to people who are applying stating when and where he is also supplying a four leaf shamrock? This £1,000 does not appear to be payable to anybody. Would the Minister say if any have been paid or are they all as they are in County Meath where 285 people applied, one has qualified and no one has been paid? If that is the situation after six months what is going to happen to the £1,000?

We were having a very harmonious discussion on housing problems until the Deputy injected this very disharmonious note.

He knows what he is talking about.

That is open to question.

May I ask a very serious question? Do I understand the Minister to say that no additional funds have been made available to the local authorities' housing fund in capital terms; that as a result of the change of Government last July the new administration saw fit not to make one extra penny available for the provision of local authority dwellings, and that all the efforts of the Fianna Fáil administration have gone into the provision of additional private houses? If I may take the sense of the Minister's answer, as a result of the efforts that his Government have taken they expect to reach the 25,000 figure purely on the basis of increased private house building output and there will not be a single extra local authority house to those planned prior to 5th July.

The Deputy does not understand the mechanics of Government and that is the problem. The public capital programme is an annual matter done each year. The question put down by Deputy Tully related to the capital programme in regard to public housing prepared in 1977. At the moment we are preparing the public capital programme for 1978. That will emerge in the various prebudget publications of the Department of Finance next month and is another issue. We are talking here about the 1977 programme.

Would the Minister say that a first allocation for housing was given to local authorities this year and when local authorities found that their programme ran over and they were out of money a further allocation was given, apart from whatever money has been withdrawn from places like Dublin county and Dublin city who did not spend their allocation? Would the Minister say if any further money has been made available, as in previous years, from any source by the Government to enable local authorities to complete their local authority housing programme?

That is a sensible question. The Deputy is aware of the mid-year review of the public capital programme with regard to housing. After this mid-year review, which was initiated by the Deputy when Minister and is being continued by the present Minister, the review of allocation was carried out and in October extra moneys were allocated to many local authorities throughout the country who required such help. As they required help extra allocations were made to them. That is normal practice in October.

Only from moneys already taken back from other local authorities. No extra moneys were made available by the State. None of the £30 million that was talked about was made available for local authority housing this year.

We will have it in the debate on the Government public capital programme for 1978.

Next question.

The Minister has rather paternalistically accused me of not knowing how to ask questions. In my innocence I asked the simple question, have this Government, through what-ever available experience mechanisms are open to them, thought fit to increase the capital fund available to them to provide for the projected increase in local authority housing? I have as yet got no straightforward, simple, uncomplicated answer to that rather simple question.

I will try to make it simplistic for the Deputy. That will be incorporated in the public capital programe for 1978 of which this House and this Deputy will have a view during January.