Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes, and this is about the Bill. It is about burning gorse on the land. It has forced farmers in some cases to try controlled burning, but they cannot do controlled burning if the season is not there to do it. Calendar farming does not work. Anyone who tells farmers they can do this or that at certain times is no farmer and simply does not understand. Calendar farming does not work. We would like to think that it could, but we have a wet climate. Unfortunately, now there is illegal burning and out-of-control burning. As I said at the meeting last week, I met representatives of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, ICMSA and others last week. I remember leaving the office and the last words I said were that they would be the cause of an inferno in this country and that rural Ireland would be put on fire. That is what happened last year. There was extraordinary loss to wildlife and so much more. No one was listening. We got little support at the time. We are bringing a case which is to be heard in the courts. We were fighting for the protection of wildlife at the time and we needed help.

There are two types of hedge cutting or verge cutting or whatever one wishes to call it. There is roadside verge cutting and there is farm verge cutting. The two should be separated because we are talking about the need to verge-cut on health and safety grounds. That is ridiculous.

Verge-cutting should take place in June or July. This Bill does not go nearly far enough. The people of rural Ireland want their verges cut once per year. It is done on the roadside for safety. We should forget about saying that people can cut around a bad bend. It is continuous. It is a matter of roads meeting each other and people trying to sieve their way through. It is damaging cars. Rented cars are being taken back scratched and torn. People are losing deposits because of these things. Holiday makers who come here say it is crazy and that the roads are closed. I took a call in Goleen, where I live, from a man in Limerick. He said he could barely get to his home place in July when he came back on holidays. He asked our community to cut the verges. We could not do that because we were not allowed. I had little or no answer for him because it was a continuous road. We got a grant aid from the local authority, Cork County Council, recently. There are many good environmentalists in my community council, but when the forms were put on the table those people grabbed them. The verges were cut because we were nearly meeting each other on the road.

There may be an argument for such a proposal inside the farm, but no one should be talking about health and safety on the road side, because all narrow roads in rural Ireland need to have their verges cut. The local authority cut them 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Council workers cut them with scythes. They kept them nice and clean. Once a year at least every roadway got cut back.

The funny thing is that I never hear anything from the representative groups about motorways. The verges are being cut there all the time. I travel to and from Dublin. The silence is deafening from the action groups. That should be stopped. There is no bother cutting the verges on the motorway from Cork to Dublin on a weekly basis throughout the summer. We can see three or four tractors in different sections cutting away. We often hear that there is one law for the rich and one for the poor. That is certainly the way it works in this country. They can cut them where it suits, but they will not cut them where it is needed.

The Inland Waterway Association of Ireland put a strong case. The issue of clearing rivers is brought up often. The issue is linked with the remarks of the representatives of the Inland Waterway Association of Ireland. There are serious issues. People need to clean their rivers to stop their homes from being flooded. That is being prevented for various reasons. I have a place in Ballylickey in west Cork, where six houses get flooded on a regular basis. Home owners are terrified if there is a flood on the way. The river was cleaned in 1966 but it has not been cleaned since. Until about five years ago it was not a problem, but it has become a major problem now. We cannot put a machine in there because there is a pearl mussel in the water. The pearl mussel is taking precedence over the family homes where young people and elderly people are terrified. The local authority was throwing sandbags during the last storm. People rang me on the Sunday evening to say there would be flooding on the Monday and they were terrified in their homes. The two words missing from all this are "common sense". Ms Duggan said everyone should be sitting around the table and I think she is right. That is something to be done down the road. We stand very much on our own in rural Ireland. I proved that with the case of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine issuing fines to farmers and pushing us to the limit.