Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour)
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I welcome the allocation of €8.8 million for the repair of the publicly owned harbour network. To clarify, is this allocation part of the €70 million provision the Government announced after the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday or in addition to it?

Dr. Beamish made the distinction that coastal protection works are a matter for the Office of Public Works while piers and so on are the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I wish it were that straightforward and clear-cut. I have correspondence to hand going back to 1989 between Noel Treacy, the then Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Brendan Daly, the then Minister for the Marine, and the then secretary of Clare County Council. That correspondence went back to Mr. Treacy and subsequently to John P. Wilson, as Tánaiste and Minister for the Marine. All three organisations - the OPW, Clare County Council and the then Department of the Marine - seemed intent on disowning responsibility for the particular works that were the subject of this correspondence, which are located in an area called Tromra Castle in Quilty. They were included in a 1992 report compiled by the County and City Managers Association detailing emergency coastal works which required immediate attention. The total projected cost of completing all of those works was some £14 million in 1992, or approximately €17.5 million. Successive governments chose to ignore that report and now the bill for Clare alone is €35 million.

Many of the works to which I am referring - culverts and sluice gates in particular - were built by the Land Commission, the successor to which, as I understand it, is the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. In theory, therefore, these works would be the responsibility, to the extent they are the responsibility of anybody, of that Department. Likewise, there is a series of culverts in low-lying areas across the west coast of Clare which are also the subject of correspondence and which everybody is seeking to disown bar the unfortunate landowners who, in some instances, are afraid to touch them because to do so might constitute interference with a special area of conservation. Some of these landowners have had visits from the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

I have outlined the issues in west Clare. On the Fergus Estuary, meanwhile, there is a large number of embankments, some of which are the responsibility of the OPW and on which work has been carried out by the latter. However, some are also Land Commission works and now vest, as I understand, in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I appreciate that the delegates will not have an answer today, but I would like to know that somebody is working to ensure a unified response to the problem. These embankments and culverts were put there for a reason by either the Land Commission or the OPW, and they need to be maintained. I hope another Deputy is not sitting in this chair in 25 years time going over a ream of correspondence between various Ministers intent on disowning responsibility for the works. We must devise a way of maximising the limited resources available to us to carry out necessary works.