Michael D'Arcy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will start where Senator Darragh O'Brien finished, with the insurance companies. They are effectively getting away with it again. Big business and its shareholders come first and, unfortunately, on too many occasions people come second. Aviva Insurance, AXA Insurance and Zurich Insurance are multinational corporations with massive deposits of cash. As they are getting away with it, a mutual fund is required for people who get caught. As bad as a person's personal circumstances are, with his or her house flooded and many of his or her belongings lost, if he or she is not out of pocket, it would at least go some way towards dealing with that awful event.

The softest coastline in the country is in County Wexford. It has the longest and sandiest beaches and there are more sand shifts there than anywhere else in Ireland. Unfortunately, monster winter storms are not required for significant coastal erosion to occur. I have been speaking about this issue for too long, dating back to my time on the local authority in Wexford. The county is and has been in a bad way for almost 50 years. When I was a child, there was a beach at Courtown. It is gone. There is nothing there now, except the rock armouring. The beach moves up and down along the coast. It will cost €1.25 million to bring the pier in Courtown back to a safe standard.

Another very important point should be made. I was speaking to a member of the Irish Coast Guard on the pier in Courtown. The main job he has in these storms is to keep people off the pier. Any person who goes down the pier, particularly with children, should be tested for the existence of a brain. It is insanity. The major message from this debate should be that people must stay away from the coastline at this time. I attended a funeral this morning in Ballygarrett, which is on the coast. Big men were being pushed around by the winds.

I know a little about special areas of conservation. On the land I farm there is a salmonid river which is a tributary of the River Slaney. It is a special area of conservation. The only thing worse than a special area of conservation is a national heritage area, NHA. It is impossible to get anything done in these areas. There is no point in trying to pretend anything will occur there because it will not. It is an amazing scenario. For 50 or 60 years there were grants available to drain bogs to bring them into agricultural production. The bog operated as a large sponge which sucked in water, held it at times of flooding and released it over a period of time. Now, owing to SACs and NHAs, we are not allowed to clean the rivers and take away the debris to let the water run off. The river is now more narrow, has more force and, with the bogs gone, doing more damage.

The same applies to the coastline. When I was a member of the local authority, we were planning a marina in Courtown. The paperwork was enormous owing to the SACs north of where the works were potentially to occur. The project was stopped because of the cost of the environmental impact study and the environmental impact statements. However, there are people whose houses were built along the coastline before these NHAs and SACs were ever envisaged. Kilpatrick is located in north County Wexford. Wexford County Council and a private property owner commissioned a report for the protection of these houses and the cost of the report, not the works to protect the houses, was €250,000. The works would probably have cost less. The report could not have been clearer - the entire SAC would be gone in 20 years. There will be no SAC because it will be washed out to sea and nature will have done its work. Some of the houses and their gardens will also be gone within 20 years. The report concluded that there was no question about this outcome; it was incontrovertible. As the application for planning permission was refused, the entire SAC can go out to sea, as no protection works can occur. This is the Jim Hacker, "Yes, Minister" campaign to save the British sausage from the madness of the European Union.

We cannot continue to ignore the commonsense approaches. I am sure that eventually there will be a case in the European courts in which there will be a competition between somebody's right to protect his or her property, which he or she must be allowed to do, and the protection of an SAC or national heritage area. At some stage we must call a halt to the insanity. The continuance of this situation is insane.