Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is not great that they had to be together. In the line of farmers, in Athlone, south Galway and various areas around the country, fodder has been badly affected. A young guy in the Visitors Gallery, Francis Nally, had to dry off every one of his cows. How does the Minister intend to look after situations like that, where farmers have been badly affected?

One thing we need to look at in GLAS and other environmental schemes is whether we should make cleaning a watercourse, rather than blocking it, as we have done over the last number of years, part of the scheme. In the line of movement of cattle, we have to make sure we facilitate farmers and suspend all inspections completely for the next three weeks or a month to get these farmers back on the road again. I want to compliment two other people in the Gallery, John Hanley and Tom Turley, because they have travelled every part of the west to see the situation and help farmers as best they can.

I know raising roads has not worked in some cases, but there are roads that we will have to put a lot of money into. I hope councils will not be left short-changed. Emergency measures, such as raising roads and putting in a turning space, had to be taken. The councils did this, in fairness to them. Please do not leave them short-changed, because their budgets are tight. If possible, the Government should look at helping them on the numbers they have because, my God, they are tight.

The NRA is building roads in different parts of the country. We welcome that and no one is against it, but the size of pipe they are putting in is not right. They need to put in proper culverts to let water go. I ask the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, to make sure that is looked at.

The other thing we need to tackle as a nation is that there are great communities out there in every village that wanted to help. They wanted to help the council guys, to let water go, or to do something that would help their area or their neighbours, but the councils could not give them the go-ahead to work with them. As politicians, we need to sort this out, one way or another.

I was in Brussels today. I have heard so much in the last few years about how we cannot do this, that and the other. It was very clear today that if there is a turlough here that is designated and there is a turlough over there, if the water has to be dropped by 16 inches to save a house back there, the infrastructure of the turlough is not being damaged. All that is happening is that the water is being balanced. They made it clear today that they have no problem with that. The other thing we need to look at is that a document has gone out to every planning authority in the country on the 2011 regulations. It made very clear that we should not look at imperative reasons of overriding public interest, IROPI. Today in Brussels it was made clear to us that only one IROPI project has ever been refused in 20 years. Someone has to look at this guidance document, which has gone to every council in Ireland from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and which is misleading. It needs to be looked at and it needs a bit of joined-up thinking in it. The other thing that was made clear today is that in an emergency, if a house or people are at risk, whatever we do, we must make sure we save them. That was made very clear to us today. The other thing was that in the likes of the rivers where there are designated areas, this IROPI project can be used. There is no problem using it. They are willing to look at that. They said that today. Ireland has only ever put in one IROPI request and that was in the tunnel coming in from the north.

Regarding the management plans in these designated areas, they have made very clear that if the Minister states in a management plan that we need to clean the river every three years or to do X, Y or Z, that there is no problem with it, once it is in the management plan. The one important thing that we, as politicians, need to face up to - we might get grief about it here and there - is that there are old drains blocked in all parts of the country. The old Ordnance Survey maps showed us how to move water one time or where the drains were. We then decided we would close drains here and there. Legislation needs to be brought in so that if a necessary drain is closed, there is legislation to cover the councils to open that up. Everyone in the House needs to join in that.

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