Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is a man of many talents. Many people will not be aware that along the west coast, including a place in Deputy Dillon's constituency called An Ceann Ramhar, there are places where the tides come in, particularly at spring tides, or as they call them in Irish, rabharta. Nuair a bhíonn rabhartaí ann, they come in and the road becomes impassable. This could go on for three days at a time. At every high tide - morning or evening or whatever time the high tide comes - the road becomes impassible. It happens regularly in a place in my constituency called Cuan na Loinge, where 14 houses are virtually on an island when this happens. It does not happen every day of the year because as Members know, the tide varies, but obviously with rising sea levels it is going to happen more and more into the future.

In the case of Cuan na Loinge there are 14 houses, and in the case near Westport there are three houses and a business. The reality is you either do these road projects or you do not. I remember one time funding a pier in Deputy Dillon's constituency for a family of three generations who were living on an island. At the time I think it cost €160,000. There was big headline in a British newspaper about the money that was spent. My counter-argument was that if I had to relocate that family onto the mainland, which would involve taking them off the island, giving them land and all the rest, I would have no change out of the money that was spent and I would have dislocated them. They still live there, many years later. Sometimes things have to be done that economists will advise against, but human common sense will bid us to do.

I see this as forming part of the role of the Department of Rural and Community Development, although it could come out of roads money under the Department of Transport. There are some places along the coast - for example, in Clew Bay - that are recognised as islands because this phenomenon happens every day, but other areas do not have this recognition. In my view, the roads need to be raised in all coastal communities where there is a problem of access and egress during certain high tides. A special fund should be put in place in the Department of Rural and Community Development to provide annual funding until this problem is resolved. It could be done under the CLÁR scheme. It is one of these things that once it is done, it is done forever. In the greater scheme of national money, the cost is very small. I accept that the cost per house or the cost per individual looks big, but we need to do something about these areas. When we made these improvements in the past, once they were done we never heard complaints about them.

Maybe my colleague is aware of Clynish Island, where the new pier was a lifeline to a small community. Nobody ever begrudged what they got. I grew up in the city. How much is spent on a city street over 50 years or 100 years to provide water, to take away the sewage, to provide street lights, to clean and sweep the street and to do all the rest? Nobody ever sees that as a cost or a big cost per house. When it is done in a rural area, however, for some reason the costs always seem to be big.

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