Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 13 - Office of Public Works (Revised)

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To take that last point first, unfortunately in Ireland we now have our own migrants who have been displaced from their houses thanks to the advent of climate change and flooding. These are people living in County Roscommon in Lough Funshinagh. They have not had the scheme delivered that we all thought would be delivered and in some cases they had to move out of their houses and the houses have been demolished. I often wonder privately if that Lough Funshinagh situation had happened in a highly urbanised constituency like Kildare or Dublin or Meath, whether the people would have had to move out of their houses. Of course the answer is that they would not because this House would move heaven and earth to make sure people were protected. However, they are in part of the country that people can barely pronounce the name of and that no one has ever heard of. They will hear of it in the future because of the precedent that has been set in that very small, beautiful part of County Roscommon where people are essentially being bulldozed out of their houses because of a system that clearly is not delivering for ordinary people in respect of a modern planning process. It is thanks to all the great luminaries we have sent to the European Parliament, the Commission and elsewhere over the last number of years, which has given us a hierarchy of protection that puts weeds and dirt higher than families. It is a sad reflection on those of us who are democratically elected to this institution and who see nothing wrong with it. We see nothing wrong until such time, and it will happen, that a large urban place in this country cannot be protected because of the intransigence of a law that allows every Tom, Dick and Harry to go up to the High Court and stop anything and everything that is happening without any degree of locus standi.. We are the only people who can change that.

I am glad the former Attorney General has done up the heads of a Bill. I will be interested to see where Members of the Opposition stand on this. Will they be with the people of Lough Funshinagh and all the other places around the country, including Donegal town, who are desperately waiting for a flood relief scheme or will they be with the weeds and dirt that could be protected in a lower form of hierarchy? These are fundamental questions that have to be asked because the climate migration situation that we see happening around the world will not be unique to those countries. It will happen here and it will happen at scale, thanks to the coastal communities and all those other areas that cannot be protected.

With regard to the drainage system, most of the channels the Vice Chairman referred to are district drainage under the responsibility of the local authorities. The system, quite evidently, is not working. The Office of Public Works has it within its mind to expand and encourage the local authority system to make sure local authorities avail of minor works to a greater degree than they already have been doing. As the Vice Chairman quite rightly pointed out, a lot of the channels that are in the charge of the local authorities are jungles and water cannot flow through an Amazonian jungle. We maintain 11,500 km of channels and we do so on a yearly basis to make sure the water gets out but there are parts of the channel system or catchment areas that are not maintained because of resource issues within the local authorities. That is what they claim is the problem even though they have never enunciated a resource problem. If they are not maintained then you cannot be surprised when the water backs up and an application comes in for minor works. That is essentially what is happening.

Regarding the River Morell, the Deputy is right that a judicial review delayed it. However, 40% of that is complete. The total cost is €1.3 million. There is a history of flooding there going back into the 1990s, with flooding in 1998, 2000, 2008, 2009 and 2010, which also flooded the N7. Some 60 houses will ultimately be protected. It has been delivered by the men and women of the Office of Public Works themselves as it is a direct labour scheme. We would hope to be finished with it fairly soon.

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