Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)
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Question 446: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, further to the €18 million unspent on the disabled persons grant scheme nationally in 2004, if he has put in place a monitoring system throughout the local authorities which will enable him to reallocate funds from authorities who will not use up their allocation in 2005 to authorities who at present have spent their budgets; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39854/05]

Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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The combined capital allocation to local authorities for the disabled persons and essential repairs grant schemes represents not a grant, but the maximum total amount which authorities are authorised to spend on the schemes in the year in which the allocation is made. Expenditure on the grant schemes is funded by the two-thirds recoupment available from my Department together with the one-third contribution from the revenue resources of the local authority.

Local authorities were notified in June last of their combined capital allocation for 2005 and were requested to notify the Department if it became evident that the allocation notified was likely to be inadequate or surplus to requirements. The Department wrote to local authorities in August stressing the need to ensure that, in the light of the high level of demand for these grants, the available allocation is expended in full and to ensure that the level of their approvals was such that would facilitate expenditure of the full allocation. Authorities were again requested to examine the level of payments and approvals on both schemes at that stage with a view to establishing the adequacy or otherwise of their 2005 allocations.

A number of requests for increased allocations were received by my Department from local authorities and all such requests were approved in November.