Mr. James McCarthy:

I represented Kerry IFA in the drawing up of the document, The Rural Challenge. I thank Deputies Healy-Rae and Fleming for facilitating our attendance today. We also have met Pat Spillane's commission for the economic development of rural areas, CEDRA, and were very impressed with the technical backup it is getting from Teagasc. Very eminent people from the latter organisation are involved in the commission, which focuses more on job creation, which obviously is the central part of economic development. The idea of the Irish Rural Dwellers Association, included in our document, was that the forum might be expanded at some point beyond job creation towards other social aspects as there probably is some need for a rural forum.

On the specific issue of flooding, I agree with Deputy Healy-Rae on the need for draining. I understand that €30 million is being spent on the catchment flood risk assessment and management, CFRAM, studies. This constitutes a large sum of money at present and is more than is being spent on the most recent agri-environment scheme. While this money is merely being spent on a study of flooding, I believe a lot of the flooding problems could be solved were it used to clean up some of the rivers. Moreover, much of the flooding could be cleared by landowners themselves with a shovel, a digger or whatever. However, there are restrictions in place and even during those times of the year when such restrictions do not apply, many landowners are afraid to conduct such work because there are penalties for so doing at the wrong time of the year.

On the aspects that relate to this joint committee, one point we mentioned at the CEDRA forum last week concerned the wood energy project under way in County Kerry. I believe this very exciting project would be of interest to this committee and one of the key points is it actually was driven by the public sector. It has been driven by the county manager and his staff, Teagasc and the forest service. This represents entrepreneurship coming from the public rather than the private sector. Both we and they have a few issues with it. Some of our issues concern the restrictions on developing forestry within the county, some of which are environmental restrictions, while others simply are restrictions that emanate from within the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. In addition, there are issues for the local authority in rolling out the schemes in respect of regulation of the heat distribution network. There are many ideas extant and I believe Pat Spillane's forum is gathering them up. We do not envisage it to be a commission that will last forever. It will present its ideas before September and will conclude. Following on from that, if it is successful, one certainly could think about expanding it into the rural forum about which the Irish Rural Dwellers Association is talking.