Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I thank the Office of the Ceann Comhairle for accepting this issue and the Minister, Deputy Denis Naughten, for attending. It will soon be a year since parts of areas both he and I represent, including Ballinaheglish, Brackloon, Ballyglass, Smaghraan and all areas around Roscommon and Galway, got a ferocious pounding. Family life was disrupted by the massive amount of flooding in those areas. A new Government has been formed in the past year and funding has had to be made available to address the flooding. The Minister and all politicians, including me, have lobbied constantly to try to get relief to address the nightmare endured by many families over the past year. The Minister's Department carried out GSI surveys in the area. Some works could not be carried out. We were all lobbying for machines to open channels that were not opened in many years, where there were bushes growing and where water was being blocked. The good news is that Roscommon County Council, in fairness to it, has brought in machines in recent weeks to try to do work. Ironically, last Saturday - it was not Friday, although the machine had been working at the location for a few weeks - work was stopped by the fisheries. I refer not only to Brackloon but to all the areas that have suffered the torture of flooding in the past year, especially across the west. We have to make sure that when some remedial flood prevention work commences, we use a bit of common sense. We are all trying to get this work done.

I have worked throughout Ireland on several jobs, including on the River Liffey, a canal and most of the big rivers laying pipes and doing various other jobs. I am not going to say everything was perfect and that all our paperwork was 100%. I will never say that because the man who does so is foolish, but the one thing I ask is that, in light of the urgency, especially along the Shannon and in counties Roscommon, Galway, Mayo, Westmeath and Longford, which have been very hard hit and where families have had to endure torture, the Minister give a direction to his Department, which is responsible for fisheries, to ensure someone will say we need to do X, Y and Z if things are not 100% right. If there is paperwork to be done, we should sit down and do it. I am not saying we should not dot the i's and cross the t's. What has happened is that a machine has been idle for nearly a week. The driver has gone home and the machine has been left there. The Minister knows the area as well as I do. They were actually working on a dry drain. It was going up to near Ballinaheglish, where there is basically a reedbed. Will the Minister give a direction to his Department to ensure that when it finds something or believes something is not right, it will work straight away with the relevant authority or farmer - there may be different scenarios in different circumstances - and rectify it while keeping the work going. The latter is the important part. Neither the Minister nor I, or any other Deputy, wants the rain to come hammering down in a month's time only to have people again go through the torture they went through last year.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I thank Deputy Fitzmaurice for raising this issue. I am surprised that he has done so because he stated on local radio last week that he would raise the issue of rural broadband with me. He did not do that last week or this week in the House. Last week, while I was being attacked locally, I was trying to put mechanisms in place to support our local beef farmers in the context of the ongoing climate change negotiations.

I was also surprised because this issue was raised in the Roscommon Heraldon 8 November when Mr. James Fogarty wrote an article. I contacted him afterwards, as did my officials, to explain the situation. We also explained it to the flood action group in Castleplunkett. My officials have been in contact with the group a number of times since.

Roscommon County Council submitted two applications for a derogation on works, one for south Roscommon and the other for mid-Roscommon. My departmental officials and Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI, were out on the ground and spoke to the council engineers in October. We have been expecting an application to be submitted to IFI since then, but it has not been received. In fact, IFI stated in the 8 November article that it had not halted works in the area and would contribute to the method statement regarding the environmental mitigation measures that needed to be put in place.

Deputy Fitzmaurice was present for the visit of the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, to the community in Castleplunkett when I made it crystal clear that my Department and I as Minister would facilitate in every way possible any work that could be undertaken. I took the bull by the horns as Minister. Instead of considering what was happening in terms of our turloughs, I directed my officials to start carrying out works without waiting for Government sanction. A body of work and potential solutions are now in place to solve some of the turlough problems.

I have instructed my officials in the inland fisheries division and IFI to bend over backwards in facilitating local authorities where possible. Last month, they offered to assist Roscommon County Council with the requisite application.

IFI is an agency of my Department tasked under section 7(1) of the Inland Fisheries Act 2010 with responsibility for the conservation, protection and development of the inland fisheries resource and recreational sea angling. My Department and IFI work positively with Departments, State agencies, local authorities, groups and individuals on the broad issue of surface water maintenance and channel conveyance throughout Ireland. IFI is precluded under fisheries legislation from approving in-stream works, those being, works in water, during certain sensitive periods annually, which primarily relate to fish spawning activity. To minimise adverse impacts on the fisheries resource, works in rivers, streams, water courses, lakes, reservoirs and ponds should, except in exceptional circumstances that I will outline, be carried out during the period 1 July to 30 September.

On 2 September and with a view to flooding issues in recent years, IFI acted proactively and sent a circular to each local authority's chief executive advising that the window of opportunity for undertaking any necessary in-stream work was drawing to a close. IFI reminded the local authorities that all programmed works in-stream needed to be completed by 30 September.

It is important to state that the advice was in the context of IFI's legislative responsibilities and that local authorities were also advised that there may be other agencies under which sanction or approval for this type of work was required, for example, the Office of Public Works and the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister's time is up.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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IFI emphasised that any necessary work had to be completed in advance of 30 September.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I thank the Minister, but if he wants to go beyond what we are discussing and mention broadband, an independent assessment has shown what Roscommon has in that regard. The facts are there for anyone to see; this is not me saying it. The assessment was conducted across Ireland. Our area is deplorable.

Councils have been awaiting money for a while. It is good that they have the money to do the works. Maybe someone overlooked something, but I am speaking as someone who has worked in various parts of Ireland. When the Minister was in opposition, he spoke at several meetings that I attended at which he referred to various counties where people were more prone to receiving penalties from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

Will the Minister use as much of his discretion as possible or work constructively with the councils? I welcome his statement that he has told them to go as far as they can. I am making my request not for the benefit of the councils, me or the Minister, but for the local communities and people who underwent torture during the year. When a machine is on site, surely there are ways for common sense to prevail and the work to continue over a day or two. The Minister and I have seen how round bales of straw can be packed together in a drain or on a river. This method was even used in Connemara. It is acceptable in places. Solutions can be found if people work together, but that will not be the case if a machine is just stopped flat on the ground.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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If the Deputy spoke to Mr. Fogarty, Mr. Evan Curran, who is the chairman of the local committee, or Roscommon County Council, he would learn that no application had been made to IFI. IFI met the council, told it the procedure to be followed and said that it was willing to assist the council in doing that. The Deputy is asking me to use discretion, but my officials and I can only use flexibility and discretion if the legal process of asking for same is followed. The Deputy knows that did not happen in this case. The local community also knows because my officials have kept it up to date on this matter.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The farmers were not-----

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister is responding.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The community is fully aware of the facts. On foot of the article of 8 November in the Roscommon Herald, the situation was made crystal clear. If the article's facts were corrected and IFI had denied approval, which was not the case, how could the work have been carried out? The application was never submitted.

Roscommon County Council submitted an application today. It has acknowledged on local radio that the application should have been submitted previously. We will engage with Roscommon County Council, as we have already offered to do, but I will not accept in this Chamber stories that are being twisted around in the local media to the effect that people started the work believing that everything was in order. The council was well aware of the situation. The local community was also aware, as my officials have been speaking with it.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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No. The-----

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The local newspaper has been well aware of the issues because we have informed it of the facts. My officials are available at any stage to brief the Deputy on these issues and explain exactly what is happening.