Mr. Laurence Fallon:

I first thank Senator Joe O'Reilly. He has a special interest in the area. Whether he wants me to say this or not I will; his aunt in-law's house was the first that was demolished. I also thank Deputy Danny Healy-Rae for his contribution.

Deputy Carthy raised a most important question, namely, are we confident the authorities can do the job. It is the greatest challenge we have. I speak now maybe as much as a county councillor as a farmer in the area. The council was very confident it could do the job 12 months ago. That is why it started the work. It was an emergency and a crisis. We have the Article 49 legislation, we had the chief executive's emergency powers and we were confident we could do it. I am not as confident now as I was then because our legislation can be called into question so easily. There were a couple of things that caused that to happen. The first was there has not been enough assessment of the Irish legislation with respect to how it has been impacted by European legislation. The second and probably more alarming point is we have a court system that allows people from any part of Ireland to take an action against a local authority for the work it is doing and because of the way costs are set, it will cost them very little. Every time the council loses its case it pays its own costs and those of the parties taking the action. Every time it wins its case it does not get its compensation because it is deemed the smaller party does not have the capacity to pay. It is allowing people to create an industry out of going to court and that is why things are not happening here.

I thank the committee for having us. Deputy Carthy mentioned the assessment being done. Very little work has started on that assessment. On 24 May the council wrote to the authorities seeking immediate action. We only got a cover letter back then saying they are looking into this. We as a group are concerned the pace is too slow and that the weather will catch up with us and we will lose more houses. I appeal to all present to ensure we have a team effort using all the Departments involved, the local authority, the OPW and the NPWS to do the full environmental assessment as quickly as possible and proceed with replacing the pipe. This is not a significant engineering feat. It is the simplest job we could do. It is a matter of digging a hole and putting in a pipe with a sluice gate on it that will not affect the natural high level of the turlough. For that reason it should not be impossible but because of legal challenge and maybe the lack of a co-ordinated approach we have not made the progress we deserve and time is not on our side.

I am not sure if any other members of the group want to say anything else.