Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important matter. It is one on which the Minister of State, Deputy English, has been pressed locally and voiced his support. I thank my colleague, Deputy Shane Cassells, who has raised the matter regularly at the Committee of Public Accounts. The fact that Deputy Cassells has raised the matter at the PAC has put the whole subject into the minds of the people of County Meath. Certainly, many constituents have contacted me about it.

Many people have moved into County Meath. We still call people who moved there 20 years ago "new people". One of the first things they ask me having moved to places like Stamullin or Ashbourne is why the county has no parks department. They notice that there is a lower level of services in Meath than in Dublin. I suspect the Ceann Comhairle hears similar complaints from people in Kildare who have also made the move from Dublin.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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We have a parks department.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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The Ceann Comhairle is making my point for me from the position of independent Chair. I note to the Minister of State that there is a parks department in Kildare. It makes my point even stronger. Meath is bottom of the table when it comes to Government funding. The average per capitaamount is €522 and that has been the case for years. It is not just a recent phenomenon and things are getting worse. I compare the €522 we get per head to the €1,388 Dublin city gets. Leitrim enjoys a spend of €1,115. In the counties surrounding Meath, the figures are as follows. The amount in Louth is €517 per person with a much smaller road network and the population is concentrated to a great extent in two urban areas. Westmeath has a population which is similarly concentrated in two large urban areas and the funding there is €750 per person. It is a bit less in Kildare, albeit still higher than Meath, at €639. The commuter belt is getting less money from the Department. That needs to change.

The population in these areas continues to expand and the problem is going to get worse. The Minister of State can see the building all around our county and the way in which the council struggles to provide the services the public expects from a local authority. The county council is struggling to provide a park in Ashbourne due to lack of resources. In Stamullin, the county council is struggling to provide a playground and it has taken a long time to provide a link road from Bettystown to Laytown. The facilities provided and the level of maintenance which takes place are not the same as one sees in other counties. Winter gritting is another classic example. For many years, someone travelling from Louth through Meath to Cavan would find the Meath stretch had not been gritted. All of the main roads in rural north Dublin near Ashbourne and Garristown are gritted, but the continued stretches of those roads into Meath are not because the council simply cannot afford it.

There must be a shift in mindset. The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport has changed the way it allocates sports grants to counties which means those with larger populations get more money. I welcome that. It is essential that we get facilities. That practice will have to be matched by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Luckily, the Minister of State, Deputy English, is at the coalface in the Department. I welcome that. He is working hard. However, this is something that must be addressed.

Meath County Council has long had the additional challenge of not having a massive rates base. I must acknowledge that there has been a complete shift in that local authority as to where its priorities should lie. While it performs the traditional functions of a local authority, it also focuses heavily on attracting industry to the area. I was in Dunboyne today where it was wonderful to see construction well under way at Shire and the Facebook data centre. Indeed, the Avoca restaurant construction is also under way. That is the type of industry Meath County Council is trying to attract to provide jobs and crucial rates income. However, that activity must be matched by the Government if our citizens in Meath, who pay very high property taxes, are to get the services they deserve.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Byrne for raising this issue, which is close to my heart also. This situation has obtained for a long number of years and I am glad to have the chance to discuss solutions in the House. The Deputy is absolutely right about the base level of funding per head of population and that Meath is not getting its fair share. As I said when I was in opposition over many years, this is an issue which must be resolved. In my time as a Minister of State in my current Department and in the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and the Department of Education and Skills my focus has been on trying to close this funding gap. The Deputy is right that we have to do it because we need a greater share of money in the county to provide parks and other services. Thankfully, a review is on the way which will give us the opportunity to do that.

When one analyses the population data, the difficulty one sees is the massive population increase in Meath between 1996 to 2006. In Meath's own submission to our Department, this was flagged. On my first day in the Department, I told officials that the funding Meath County Council was getting was not enough and had to be changed. Everyone in the Department agrees that is a fair assessment on the basis of the population. The huge increase in the population took place between 1996 and 2006. During that period, Meath's population grew by 30% above the national average. I remember trying to convince Governments at the time that Meath was not getting its fair share. Those Governments were not led by my party. When I took office, the budgets were not there due to massive funding decreases and the money was not there to correct that situation. In the last couple of years, however, we have been changing that. With increasing resources, we are in a position to allocate funds to local authorities which experienced cuts.

Counties like Meath, which deserve more, are beginning to get more. Deputy Byrne said himself that he has seen it in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. We have changed that to ensure Meath is in the top couple of counties per year in terms of funding for sports. That is rightly so per head of population. In the Department of Education and Skills, we have changed the methodology to ensure decisions reflect population trends. We are doing well in that Department. In the Department of Health and in relation to local authority funding, it is still a question of catching up with the population. Deputy Byrne and Deputy Cassells are right about that. I have said it for years myself and I am determined as a Minister of State to ensure my Department closes that gap.

I thank the Deputy for giving me the chance to outline today the importance the Government attaches to funding for local authorities, such as Meath County Council, and our desire to ensure such funding keeps up with population trends. The funding system applying to local authorises is complex as authorities derive their incomes from a variety of sources including commercial rates, charges for goods and services and funding from central Government. Central government funding for local authorities is for a variety of purposes and involves current and capital transfers from a wide range of Departments and offices. It does not come solely from my Department. Most of the funding sourced from central government and provided to local authorities must be used for specified services. These can be grouped into a number of broad programme categories. The main such categories are housing, transport, environmental and recreational services.

In 2016, total transfers of funding from central government sources totalled €2.2 billion while my own Department provided a total of €1.26 billion to local authorities across a range of schemes. The sum provided by my Department in 2017 was €1.8 billion. Funding from my Department to Meath County Council has increased significantly over the last three or four years and is up from €29 million in 2015 to €45.5 million in 2017. This is rightly so as the funding must be reflective of the services needed in Meath County Council's functional area. I am glad that I have been able to work with the Department during my tenure to ensure that we increase the money. A recent example was that when we announced over €66 million in adaptation grants, Meath County Council got a greater share than other local authorities based on its population. We can close this funding gap over a couple of years. I have made it very clear to Deputy Byrne that we must close this gap given the population in counties like Meath. However, it can only be done over a period of a few years and as money comes back into the system which was not there before. Thankfully, we are in a position to do that.

As the Deputy knows, housing issues are a key priority of Government and significant additional funding is being provided to address them. This year, €1.9 billion is being provided for housing across the board. Meath County Council has been set an ambitious target to deliver almost 1,200 additional homes over the next couple of years through build, acquisition and leasing. I have started to meet with officials of Meath County Council and with officials from my Department and made it very clear that this is a minimum target. They have been told to go out and do what they can to build or otherwise acquire more houses and supply housing. They are not being told there is a limit on the funding. Housing was an area which did not get the proper resources in the past but that has changed. We are making the right progress to close the gap, but it is a fair assessment to say we need to close it further. That is something I am determined to do in my time in the Department.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate the answer of the Minister of State that this is being looked at. It needs to be addressed urgently. Hopefully, the review on baseline funding will report by August. I hope this contribution takes into account and represents my constituency which is at a greater disadvantage even than that of Deputy Cassells. Obviously, our concern is for the entire county. In my part of the county, there are a lot of towns which are growing faster now than ever before. Ashbourne is one and services are struggling to catch up. Meath pays out a lot more than it gets back. This is a state and there will, of course, be an element of balancing funding across the country. I am not going to complain about that.

For every €100 of income tax that a Meath resident pays, Meath County Council estimates that only 5% is returned to Meath in local government funding. That must increase.

There is solidarity on all sides of this country and I accept that Meath will never be a net recipient of funding but it does need to increase. We need to have the types of services that I see in rural towns in the west of Ireland that we do not see in places such as Ashbourne, Ratoath or Dunshaughlin. In the case of Kells, where unfortunately the town council was abolished, the services provided in that town have reduced dramatically because there is no council. That needs to change.

I look forward to the report being issued. I appreciate and accept that the Minister is working on it and we look forward to change. The residents deserve this. They are working hard, in most cases outside the county, and it would be nice for them to come home to parks and the facilities to be able to relax when they are not working and to ensure that they have the same standards of public services as everyone else in the country, to which they are entitled.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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As Deputy Thomas Byrne said, the solution is the review that is under way. It is holding its first meeting today, and I will return to that in a moment.

We are all concerned with the whole of County Meath. Deputy Byrne has mentioned some towns and I will go through the rest - places like Navan, Trim, Enfield, Oldcastle or Athboy - and match them all up so that they all get the proper resources they need to provide the services for the people there. My job is to ensure we do that and I believe we are on the right track to do so again.

The problem was that our baseline figures were completely out of order because they were not sufficiently focused on population. In 1996, the funding as a national percentage that we used to get was 79%. Over the next ten or 15 years, that fell to 61% by 2005 or 2006. That is also the current position as it has not got any worse over the past seven or eight years, and in the past two or three years, we have begun to increase it. The funding has been wrong for many years. It is historical but it relates to the population increase, which could not be reflected in the funding because of the recession. The review of the baseline now under way will catch those population trends and the massive population increase in County Meath and put us in the position to close that gap over a period and get the funding to which we are entitled, in order to provide all the services that our county needs.

The setting up of the group to review the local government funding baselines is an acknowledgment of the challenges facing local authorities in funding, particularly in the context of the general economic circumstances facing the country over the past decade with reductions in central funding and constraints on income raising capacity. Thankfully this trend has now reversed with overall funding to local authorities starting to increase again. The most recent census in 2016 showed that Meath and several other counties have experienced a notable population increase in recent years. Meath's population grew by 6% in recent years alone but by 78% since 1996. Though a welcome development, I know at first hand, as does Deputy Thomas Byrne, that such changes can place additional demands on local authorities for services. Notwithstanding this, population is only one factor to be considered in local government funding but it is central to the review group.

The review group met today, with the first item on its agenda being the population and how that factors into funding. Under the current funding system for local government, each local authority has a minimum level of funding available known as the baseline. Given the separate review of local property tax currently being undertaken by the Minister for Finance, it is timely to conduct the parallel review of the local government funding methodology for such general purposes that I have referred to. That review of both the baseline and of the local property tax will give us a solution to provide the funding our county needs.