Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Last night in the agriculture committee, we had representation in from the Shannon Callows. We had Michael Smith, Liam Broderick and Pat Ryan and, basically, they set out for us what they are going through annually along the Shannon Callows with the flooding. I welcome the fact that the Minister has brought in a fodder scheme but they want to see the detail of that and they want to know if the Government can increase the number of hectares to 25 ha and allow for grazing that was lost as part of that compensation. Finally, we have an issue that compensation will not resolve, and that is the flooding. The reason we have that is that we have so many directives and rules and regulations and we are putting a new planning regime at the moment through legislation. I ask the Government to put a new definition on what is called an emergency. At the moment flooding is not an emergency because the flooding will go away, which is incredible.

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