Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs

Sustaining Viable Rural Communities: Discussion (Resumed)

2:10 pm

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in. As for our main remit as a committee, we are obviously interested in every facet of life and I would love to discuss the Traveller issue with the witnesses but we are not here to do that. In regard to rurality and services, I note the times for the fire engine call outs. As one would expect, the further one goes from the centre, the longer it takes to get the fire engine. Presumably, when a house goes on fire, the further away it is from the fire service, the more likely it is that there will be significant property damage, not to mention personal risk. We countered that on the islands previously by giving a grant for mains powered smoke alarms for all the houses on all the islands. There is only one island with a local authority fire engine, that is, Inis Mór which has a call out service. Once we put mains powered smoke alarms in the houses, the incidence of fire on the remainder of the islands dropped dramatically. In terms of taking a take a benchmark of 30 minutes, and that beyond a 30-minute journey from the fire service there were 40,000 people, was any thought given to rolling out a programme of grant assistance to those people who are a journey of 30 minutes or more away from the fire engine so that they could put in mains powered smoke alarms of a high standard and, therefore, benefit from the public expenditure on fire services because in those cases by the time the fire engine arrives the damage will be done?

As a former Minister, I dealt with the mná tí and when there was a fire in a house which kept students, we decided to adopt an even higher standard than we had on the islands. I do not think there was a fire in any of those houses. If one was absent from the house and it went on fire, one would not only know it was on fire but where the fire started.

What would the witnesses' response be to the idea of such a programme being rolled out in the more remote areas where people are never going to be near fire engines? Would they consider co-funding it with the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs as part of the CLÁR programme because these are all CLÁR areas? The second point about fire engines is that it seems that there is no relationship between the distance and location vis-à-visfire engines, and this was traditionally so in Galway. It appears that every county has developed this in its own way. Is there a national policy to ensure an even distribution of fire engines across counties in order to provide an even level of service irrespective of the area? I accept that if one lives in an area with a very dispersed population, there would not be a fire engine at every crossroads.However, it should be a case of like with like. All things being equal, it does not seem that this was the way things were in the past. It seems to have been very uneven and relates very much to the individual local authority involved.

I will now turn to the OPW. I do not expect that the witnesses will be able to supply today the one item of information I really need, which is hugely important in the context of rural development, communities and employment. Could the OPW forward to the committee the details of all the landbanks the Department has from the decentralisation programme that are in the ownership of the OPW and that have not yet been built on? Will the OPW representatives also send details of all the office properties that the Department has throughout the country in places such as Sligo, Bundoran, Buncrana, etc., that are not being fully utilised? Could the OPW provide details of all the properties rented in the greater Dublin area that are leased, the cost of those leases and when those leases will be up? There could be an enormous saving by using the properties and landbanks we own and replacing very expensive leased properties in the city.

Do the witnesses remember all the property transactions relating to the most recent decentralisation programme? I put down a parliamentary question about this and I was told that if one took the sales and disposals versus the acquisitions, there was actually a surplus of money. In other words, that more money came in than went out. Perhaps the witnesses could forward that information to the committee as there seems to be a myth that property relating to decentralisation was expensive. My memory is that it was actually the other way around, particularly when one added in the disposal from the city during the period. Perhaps the witnesses could also obtain that figure for the committee. With regard to the €480 million spend, could this figure be broken down by city, town by size and the rest of the State, including rural areas?

Finally, would it be possible to supply to the committee a map showing which rivers are in the charge of the OPW and which are not? When we discuss flooding, not only of houses, shops and properties in towns but also homes and farms in the countryside - septic tanks are a big challenge in this regard - there seems to be an argument and a misunderstanding as to who is in charge of what river. Perhaps the OPW could give the committee a map of all the rivers that are in its charge. If it does so, then we will know which rivers are in the charge of local government. Does the OPW give money to local authorities to clean the rivers in their charge or is that the responsibility of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment? It seems that there is no river cleaning taking place and that there is a huge amount of consequential flooding. Not all of the latter is affecting houses. Some of the flooding is taking place on farm properties and involves sheds and silage and septic tanks being inundated and the remainder relates to farmland in general. This could possibly be avoided if streams and drains were kept clean.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.