Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

No. The OPW is charged with the overall responsibility for flood risk management. In many cases, it is the contracting authority while in most other cases it is the local authority. With the CFRAM process, the consultation with the other agencies the Deputy spoke about has taken place, be it with Waterways Ireland, the ESB on the Shannon, Inland Fisheries Ireland or whatever. They are consulted. When we have finished CFRAM and we are looking at projects, we need to bring these agencies together in a team effort under the auspices of either the local authority or the OPW to make sure that any issues that arise are dealt with in advance rather than wait for them to show up in an An Bord Pleanála process or some other court. I have very good examples of where that can go wrong. On the Galway outer bypass issue, two arms of the State are in the European court fighting each other over an issue in Galway. We have to prevent that from happening by bringing the agencies together. Since I came into the office I have had a good deal of dialogue with the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the other agencies involved. There is a common willingness to make sure we work together to find a solution to the problem and identify the issues before we start the work. As the Senator said, in that way we will save time and money.