Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)

I will put Labour Party environment spokesperson hat on and raise a specific issue with the Whitechurch flood relief scheme in Rathfarnham in my constituency of Dublin South-West. I do not think any of us would deny that some flood relief interventions were required for the Whitechurch stream. There was a serious incident of flooding on Whitechurch Road a number of years ago now. While it may have been partially due to unauthorised developments and culverting along that road, that is another matter. I understand that certain residents along the Whitechurch Road have had some difficulty getting flood insurance in recent years, so some intervention in respect of flooding is certainly welcome.

However, the manner in which the scheme has been constructed and the type of flood defences could easily be described, and have been by many, as an act of environmental vandalism. The OPW, in many people's view, has taken an overengineered, concrete-pouring approach and the result is that the habitats and ecosystems along the Whitechurch Road have been decimated. There must have been hundreds of trees destroyed in the process, as well as otter habitats, and the severe engineering interventions have changed the character of what previously felt like a lovely old country road in the middle of our city as well as causing massive traffic and noise disruption for the past year for local residents on Whitechurch Road with unfortunately no immediate end in sight.

We have seen concerning developments in terms of the effect of the flood relief works on water quality in rivers in the catchment area. In the Whitechurch stream element of the scheme, works were shut down by Inland Fisheries Ireland earlier this year because materials being used by the OPW, known as "puddling clay", were deemed to be polluting this important spawning river. This material is clearly inappropriate for such works. I understand that interventions could have been made further up the river in the mountains that could have had the same effect on flood alleviation and would not have been quite so environmentally destructive downstream on the Whitechurch Road. Regardless, I ask that the OPW seriously consider taking a different approach to these kinds of flood relief scheme, one that does not necessarily put concrete first wherever possible and does not require the level of habitat and biodiversity destruction that we have seen with the Whitechurch scheme.

As the Minister of State will know, 466 of our water bodies - rivers, lakes and estuaries - are to be classified as heavily modified, meaning the State is signing off on the lowering of environmental protections for our rivers and lakes. This potentially allows for the degrading of our natural water habitats by damaging works such as river dredging and clearance in circumstances where it would not otherwise be allowed. We call on the Government to pause this reclassification. With all of this in mind, we need to be ever more conscious of the effect of the OPW's approach when it comes to flood relief and what that is doing to water quality. I ask that we beef up Inland Fisheries Ireland in that regard. It does not have enough inspectors. It is all well and good having plans in place but if Inland Fisheries Ireland does not have the power and resources to carry out its monitoring and enforcement mandate, the optics are that we just do not value our rivers and waterways.

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