David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Shane McEntee, and thank him for taking this Adjournment matter. There is an urgent need for funding to repair the pier at Helvick in County Waterford. It was brought to my attention at a recent meeting between Oireachtas Members and the executive of Waterford County Council that an application for funding of €1.2 million was made by the council to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 2009. There are two aspects to the proposed redevelopment: first, the extension of a slipway at the pier to accommodate the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, RNLI, lifeboat; and, second, the necessity to repair the substantial damage to the pier.

The main pier has become honeycombed at foundation level and the sea is passing under it. A former engineer with the county council remarked to me that it is amazing the pier is still standing. Weight restrictions are in place but there is an urgent need to address this problem. I asked my party colleague, Deputy Michael Colreavy, to table a parliamentary question on this issue recently, which he did. The issue goes back to 2003 and many Deputies and Senators have raised it in the past. I received the same standard response which began: "The responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the pier lies with the local authority." That may be correct but, in this instance, we are talking about substantial damage, substantial remedial work and substantial costs. Waterford County Council simply does not have the means to repair the damage. All local authorities are strapped for cash and do not have the ability to borrow. As such, the council requires support from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It is unreasonable to expect the local authority to shoulder the cost of the necessary works alone.

The director of services with responsibility for this area indicated to me that if the repair works are not carried out, the potential future cost of rebuilding a collapsed pier would be a multiple of what it would cost to carry out the remedial work now. It makes economic sense for the Department to initiate a joined-up plan with the local authority to provide the necessary funding. It does not matter to the remaining fishermen in Helvick whether the funding comes from the county council or the Department; they simply want to ensure the pier is safe and will not collapse.

As I said, there are two separate aspects to the work that is required and there seems to be some confusion in the response of the Minister to the parliamentary question. He talks about a funding application which was sent to Waterford County Council in respect of the slipway repair. The rib of the slipway had to be expanded in order to allow the lifeboat to launch in a straight line. Essentially, that was the issue involved. Waterford County Council carried out the work and paid for it with its own funds and those it procured from the CLÁR programme and Údarás na Gaeltachta.

The work has been done but the real issue at hand is the substantial damage to the pier. I must stress that there must be proper co-ordination between the Department and Waterford County Council in respect of putting a plan in place to ensure that the necessary funding will be made available. There will be no point returning to this matter in a number of years when more damage has been done and, as stated earlier, when we will be obliged to spend much more money to repair the pier. That would not make financial or economic sense. In addition, it would not make sense to the members of the local community who would suffer if the pier were to collapse. I ask the Minister of State to address that issue and to contact the county council in the interests of ensuring that there will be some form of joined-up plan for the future between it and the Department.