Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for his contribution. I endorse everything Senator Colm Burke has said. There was a period when the lines "where we sported and played in the green leafy glade on the banks of my own lovely Lee" referred to sub-aqua sport rather than to any other kind. I look forward to the Minister of State or his successor singing the song when the scheme is completed. It is badly needed.

The matter requires some management. The Department must consider that there are certain times when the ESB must empty the dam, as Senator Burke has said, rather than to have it full and then to flood the city of Cork. To the outsider, it appears there is a game of pass the parcel between Cork City Council and the ESB as to who is responsible for what happened on that dreadful occasion. Cork is the country's second city and I commend the Minister of State as I commended his predecessor, Brian Hayes, for starting the programme.

Economists have a huge interest in this area. I remember reading an impressive book on water resource economics by Professor Otto Ekcstein of Harvard. The first adaptation of that thinking was when Colonel Rydell was asked by the Government in the 1950s to report on the Shannon where there had been severe flooding. His views were most interesting. He said the flooding occurred in winter when there was not much growing there. He suggested that a relatively small scheme of moving dwelling houses to higher points in the Shannon valley would provide most of the benefits without incurring vast costs. He thought that all the alternatives would cost too much. The Cork situation requires the Department, the ESB and Cork City Council to act in a co-ordinated way. The Minister of State's Department might be the one to do it as the other bodies did not co-ordinate on the dreaded night Senator Burke has described.

On page 6 of the document, the Minister of State lists schemes which have worked out well. I compliment him and his staff on the Dublin one. On the following page, it states that the damage was less than €100,000 from the flood in 2014 whereas €65 million worth of damage was done overall. The works that have been carried out around the city have provided a very good return. I hear similar reports from Clonmel and Kilkenny. Deputy John McGuinness's job as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts is to dispute costs. He was annoyed about some of the costs and fish passes and so on, but they have kept Kilkenny in a state with which we are much happier. I note also Mallow and Fermoy but have not seen the Ennis one. The Cork one is definitely urgent.

There may be a case for co-ordination with planners on the likelihood of floods. There are 3,500 miles of sea to the west of us. During the floods over the new year, I saw interviews with people whose houses seemed to be on ground a couple of feet high beside the Atlantic. We must acknowledge those risks. There has been a great deal of coastal erosion between Greystones and Wicklow in the Minister of State's own county. People do not build there and the railway forms the boundary. We must have some common sense as well.

I hope that when we carry out an improvement, the insurance industry will pass on the benefit to people who have premises in the adjacent area. Insurers are inclined not to do so in the case of the work of the Road Safety Authority where we have reduced accident numbers dramatically and want to see premia come down. Where the OPW goes to a great deal of expense, we want to see reductions in the costs of insurance in places like Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork. We want to see the results for Kilkenny, Clonmel and the other towns also.

One of the concerns about some of the rural schemes proposed to the Minister of State were summarised. We could spend a great deal of money turning wet rocks into dry rocks. Where there is a land-price appreciation from a drainage scheme, some level of cost sharing should be considered. If it is successful, it enriches landlords and that is a measure of the benefits. There were some small schemes where cost sharing was considered in the past, but it should also be considered in respect of major schemes. Part of the problem we have all encountered since coming to the House in 2011 is that everybody is in favour of something for free. However, if a scheme benefits landowners in a certain valley who will obtain higher agricultural outputs afterwards, why load the entire cost on the taxpayer?

It is an important area and one the Minister of State has entered into with the enthusiasm he has shown in other aspects of his brief. The results can be measured and the benefit-cost ratios can be calculated. We can do a great deal of the work in advance. The immediate issue is that we know the rainfall level in the area west of the dams on the River Lee. Let us ensure that the area behind each dam has the capacity to avoid having to open sluice gates and flooding our second city.

One thing that was very controversial in relation to Dublin was the expensive proposal to deal with Clontarf. It annoyed many residents there that they would not be able to see the sea. A low-cost solution - and let us hope for the best - has worked so far. The damage caused by flooding on either side of Dublin Bay was much reduced in the beginning of 2014 and the flood control people deserve credit for that.

I note prospective schemes that were probably not worth carrying out as in the turlough areas in south Galway where streams go underground and come back up again. The solution lies with the planning regime in respect of houses in those areas. It would be extremely expensive to drain the turloughs and the gains are not there. It is a matter for discussion between the Minister of State's Department and planners. If there are areas where it is just not possible to protect people against flooding, why build there? That applies to certain coastal areas also.