Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As a basic principle of common law, one can own the land adjacent to a waterway and the river bed but one cannot own the water. However, one can insist on the maintenance of a waterway and that the water not be diverted away from one’s land. These principles should inform the debate we will have on the proposal to divert water from the River Shannon to supply Dublin. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Dowd, need have no doubt that the people of the mid-west will fight to maintain the waterway that is Lough Derg. They would be right to do so. In recent weeks, I have heard various proposals from Members of both Houses of the Oireachtas, some sensible and some absurd.

I would like to draw the attention of the Minister of State to the most recent report from the Local Government Management Agency to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government providing the results of service indicators in local authorities. The report published earlier this year contains some alarming figures. The level of unaccounted-for water as a percentage of the total volume of water supplied under the water supply schemes of Dublin City Council is 40.3%. A 2008 Forfás report highlighted the need to address unacceptable levels of unaccounted-for water and suggested that proposals to increase capacity should not attract funding in the absence of action plans to reduce leakage. This recommendation was reiterated by the report of the high level group on green enterprise from 2009. One could ask what has changed since then, other than the chickens coming home to roost. The failure of local authorities in Dublin to deal with wastewater resulted in water shortages in Dublin in recent weeks and water being cut off overnight.

The British left a good water system in this city when they lowered their flag over Dublin Castle on 16 January 1922.

Since then, the failure of central and local government to maintain a functional water system has been a tragicomedy. Now it proposed to veer to the farcical to compensate for that failure.

Lough Derg is designated as an SPA to comply with EU law. Much of its shoreline is also designated as an SAC. Under the accompanying regulations, farmers adjacent to the lake cannot take water for their livestock to drink without getting permission to do so. Now it is proposed to divert that water to Dublin so people can wash their pets. Is that really the water plan for Dublin in 2013?

Large environmental projects such as this are typically subject to litigation in Europe. To quote a well-known television programme, we are going to look like very silly “pixie heads" if, instead of fixing the water infrastructure problem in Dublin, we propose to divert water there. I cannot support any proposal to divert water from the Shannon until local authorities here in Dublin get their act together and put their system in order. I ask the Government for a guarantee that what I fear will not happen.

The operating range of Lough Derg is small; it changes by about 40 cm. That is set out in the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Act 1934. The water level is set at 110 to 112 ft. above the level at Poolbeg in Dublin. I want a guarantee that any scheme that might even be countenanced by the Government will guarantee that water level. Every infrastructural development on Lough Derg since 1934, including the piers and the waterway just opened in Killaloe, is predicated on maintaining the water level. No more than anybody else in the mid-west, I do not want to live beside a latter-day Aral Sea but beside a beautiful waterway. I look forward to the Minister of State’s response and hope he will be able to give me the guarantees I require.

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