Mr. Pat O'Brien:

I thank the Chairman. Going back to what Deputy Carthy said, there has perhaps been a degree of negligence by the Ministers involved. That money did not come with terms and conditions. We should not have to be meeting Bord na Móna and looking for this written agreement now. There should have been terms and conditions that it would not impact the adjoining lands. When this land is re-wetted now, after a heavy rainfall, all the rain off that 33,000 ha is going to be heading to a few rivers. At the moment those rivers are not able to take the water that is coming. The bogs at the moment are soaking up that and releasing it slowly but when it is flooded, it is flooded. It will all be heading the same way and the farmland is in the first line. Unless those drains are maintained and it is given in writing farmers will not have confidence. There is fear that we simply will be forgotten.

When the bogs were initially taken over by Bord na Móna, promises were made. There are very few left today who remember those promises. There still are a few but nobody from Bord na Móna who gave those promises is still around and in ten or 20 years' time it will be the same case again. It is not just the people who are going to be affected by this in ten years' time, people will be affected for generations. Generations of work has gone into turning those bogs into working farmland, which produces food. That can all be swept aside in a couple of years. It is therefore vital that written assurances are given and that those drains are maintained, going forward. Mr. Michael Newman, a former employee of the Department, had a very interesting letter published in the Westmeath Examiner a couple of weeks back. In it, he referred to the same thing and noted that the majority of the silt in the Shannon has come from those bogs. He said that if the Shannon were cleaned, a lot of the flooding that is going on in the country at present would not be taking place. The cart has been put before the horse here in a rush to get the bogs re-wetted apparently within the term of this Government. The drainage works on the Shannon, the Brosna and all the other rivers should have been done before the rewetting takes place so the water has somewhere to go when it is released from these bogs.