Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party)

I may not have welcomed the Minister of State to his position yet; we certainly have not spoken one to one yet. I wish him the best of luck. It is a serious area in which he was previously actively involved. A lot of issues were improved but many are left to improve. Unfortunately, I have a public meeting for Independent Ireland to attend so I will have to leave straight away. I will listen to his response on the way down. The problem is rivers are not being cleaned out. I do not think anybody said that. Perhaps they did and I was not listening properly but nobody has concentrated on it. That is where the problem lies. If the Minister of State does not have the powers to strike the stick on the ground and say a river has to be cleared out, we will be in the same situation in every town and village as we were previously. The Government cannot expect concrete works around rivers. One example is Ballylickey. I took the Minister of State down to see it seven or eight years ago. I am not being disrespectful to him but it was a mistake because nothing ever happened and the pressure was put back on me. The Minister of State brought the Minister there but he did not deliver. The previous Minister was down there about 12 months ago; he has not delivered. The bottom line is the river needs to be cleaned and the pearl mussel is the problem. I have nothing against the protection of the pearl mussel but what has happened recently is that the river has flooded. That blew the pearl mussel into the field. The pearl mussel is gone now. In terms of protecting the pearl mussel, the Government is the cause of finishing of the pearl mussel because it was blown into the fields and houses were within one inch of being washed out again. The Minister of State was there at the time. I showed him the house and the depth of the water that came into Dan Dineen's house and others. It is outrageous that so many years on, I still have not seen one bucket there. There was a situation where the local farmer cleaned out his river tidily and carefully once every ten years probably. It would not have to be done often. The powers that be need to clear the river either, but neither is happening now. Ballylickey is gone with silt. Silt is a posh name - it is muck. It has backed up and is flooding Kealkill because the river has built up. There will be no river soon. The river comes back out into the fields and into people's houses. The Government needs to wake up and deal with this matter with a sense of urgency. That is Ballylickey; I will move on to the flooding in Bantry.

I looked at what the Minister read out earlier, he said "... scheme development and preliminary design, an average of 48 months ...". That is four years. That is codology; nonsense. It could be done in one or two years. We have to move with the times. That is 1960 stuff. He also said the planning process or public exhibition and confirmation takes two years, detailed design takes one year, construction takes three years and handover of works takes one year. That is about 11 years. People in Bantry have been waiting for 50, 60, or 70 years. People told me they were flooded 50, 60 or 70 years ago and they are still flooded today. Every time it floods, probably once a year, I go down there but I am ashamed of my life to go down there, walking into the same destroyed businesses. There is no compensation package. It is kind of a con system - it is handing out forms and saying you cannot qualify, you qualified before, you have insurance or you do not have insurance. It is a pittance in comparison to the damage. Bantry is washed out every so often, culverts need to be done, Ministers come down and promise to make sure there is funding for culverts. If they promised every time they came down, every culvert in west Cork would have been sorted by now but nothing was sorted in Bantry. It is the same situation. I will be down there and the Minister will probably be down in the next 12 months visiting shops, promising businesses the Government will do something. These 11 years can be brought down to three or four. Legislation needs to be brought before the Dáil to change that and it will have full support. Common sense is needed. We cannot listen to objectors when a person's livelihood or their home is gone because someone in Donegal is worried about what is going in Bantry. It is time to move ahead. It has gone on for 11 years. It is not acceptable to the people of this country. The system needs to be sped up. There are areas that cannot wait four years for scheme development and preliminary design. I could be here forever. That was my brother Danny Collins's argument to me this morning. That is what he is faced with in Ballylickey and Bantry. Councillor John Collins, my other brother, tabled a motion recently in relation to Ring in Clonakilty. It might be outside of the Minister of State's area; I respect that if it is. It concerns cleaning out the river and bay. Clonakilty Bay is full of muck, silt and sewage.

People saw it and took pictures. There are those who have to walk across this silt as they try to access small boats. It is like quicksand. Basically, it was stated that it cannot be cleaned up because of the environment. Someone will lose their life, or perhaps it will be two or three people, and then something will probably be done. That is not the way to do business, but, unfortunately, that is the way it is being done. It is being done the wrong way around. People are being completely forgotten and neglected in this area.

With regard to Ballinascarty and Councillor Daniel Sexton of Independent Ireland, the Minister of State has been notified of matters in that regard. I visited the village. Houses and businesses there were flooded. The first thing I did when I arrived was ask what was wrong. That is what the Minister of State will also have to ask. The river is blocked. I said at the time that we were back to square one . The rivers are the problem. While they may not be the problem everywhere, they are the cause of the problems in Fermoy and Midleton. There are all these places where rivers need to be cleaned out. The Minister of State was meant to visit Ballinascarty. I am not sure whether he is still going to do so. That is up to him. His visiting the village will not resolve the issue, however. Resolving issues means him working on this site to make sure rivers are cleaned, works are carried out and that matters relating funding are dealt with immediately. I do not want to be in a situation, nor does the Minister of State, where I have to come back down to Ballinascarty or stand outside the community centre in Ballyhennessy. There are so many good people there who work hard and who re willing. They are looking at water literally coming into their beautiful community centre, which they basically killed themselves to build, all the while knowing they are going to be facing this over and over again.

It is the same with roads. The problem with rivers is why roads are being washed away. I saw the Kilbrittain Road to Bandon when I visited Ballinascarty during the flood there. Beautiful roads are being washed away because rivers were not cleaned out and then burst their banks. If you run the bath at home and it is half full of sand, you know where the water is going to go. It is going to eventually flow over the side of the bath. This is the situation. I really want it addressed.

I am not having a go at the Minister of State by any manner of means. He is a hard-working man who I respect. If we cannot have delivery on that end and if the blockages up along the line are preventing rivers from being cleaned, we are finished and will go nowhere. We will be back in here talking about the next flood, the other flood or the flood the time before. I would appreciate it if the Minister of State could look into this matter. The situation is serious. While pearls of mussels are important, they are certainly being lost when rivers are overflowing and water is flowing down people's gardens. Birds are picking at them. I call for the rivers to be cleaned. That is the mighty starting point. It could be done by farmers, by means of a grant scheme, or voluntarily, as they did previously. Alternatively, it could be done by the OPW or some other body.

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