Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator and I am delighted she asked me about Crossmolina. It is truly one particular project on which I got some traction going when I got into office. On the issue of individual property protection, engineers have been appointed, surveys have commenced and are ongoing and it is scheduled to run for eight weeks. The funding is being provided by the OPW. Mayo County Council is to procure a contractor - and is in the process of so doing - to start to install some floodgates on the recommendations of consultants. This was announced last year but only started a short time ago.

We can talk about the past forever but we are where we are now. The Senator may not have been present when I spoke about the interdepartmental group. One issue I am looking at is channel maintenance and channel clearing. As I have said earlier, in some cases the OPW is responsible, in some cases the local authority is responsible and in some cases the riparian owners are responsible. We need to look at that, to review it to see how and if it is working and how it can be made to work better. I accept all the Senator has said and I understand the frustration over Crossmolina. However, I repeat that since I came into office, €200,000 has been allocated for minor works which have started, clearing is happening and in the future we will try to address these issues. It is important to note that channel clearing is a huge agenda item for me and members can rest assured that hopefully we will improve the way we are doing it. There are other agencies involved but they are willing to co-operate and are co-operating. We need to bed that down firmly.