The difficulties facing long-term residents, the need for affordable housing and tax reform were high on the agenda for some of the more than 50 people who gathered for a town hall meeting last night at St. Mary's Church Hall.

And Premier David Saul promised that legislation will be brought forward in the next session of the House of Assembly to address long term residents' needs.

Dr. Saul, responding to a question, said it was important to protect persons who had been in Bermuda for decades and now had Bermudian children.

He pledged that the entire issue would be debated in Parliament, at town hall meetings and other forums.

Other issues discussed at the Warwick meeting -- attended by Dr. Saul, Deputy Premier Jerome Dill and Finance Minister Grant Gibbons -- included asbestos, voter registration and educational restructuring.

During the wide-ranging 90-minute question and answer session, one man asked what Government intended to do with the vacant houses on the former Base lands.

He suggested they could be used to house those persons most in need of affordable housing instead of being left vacant.

Dr. Gibbons said that all the houses which were built with wooden frames would be torn down because it would be difficult and expensive to bring them up to Bermuda's housing standards.

Moreover, Dr. Gibbons added that much of what will actually happen at the Base lands is now in the hands of the Bermuda Land Development Company. It will be their job of to make the best use of all the land in the Country's interest, he said.

One woman, who said her son would be entering middle school in September, wanted reassurances that the curriculum, equipment and instruction would be the same in each school.

Mr. Dill, whose Cabinet portfolio includes Education, said all five middle schools would be in every way "as nearly as possible'' the same so that Government's goal of genuine equality for all children in the public system was realised.

Meanwhile, many residents in attendance, some chanting "dump it, dump it'', supported Government's controversial plans to dump 165 containers of asbestos in the ocean off St. David's.

It was suggested that the containers could be properly sealed and dumped in a deep hole at the present National Stadium site.

But Dr. Saul said: "The idea in our little tiny island of digging a hole in the ground and dumping the current asbestos that we have sounds a bit simplistic.''