Seanad debates

Tuesday, 19 October 2021

Flood Risk Management: Motion

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Róisín GarveyRóisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

This was a very good debate, which does not always happen. Sometimes debates are very polarised but this was a good one. It was great to have all parties on both sides of the House, and Independents, all supporting the motion without any amendments. I thank the Minister of State for his time. We have been here for a couple of hours now and he has listened with great patience.

Rivers have routes and so must our plans for dealing with flooding. The Minister of State has done well to state in a nutshell what needs to be done. I do not know about court cases and I do not want to get involved in any of that stuff. I did not come here today to take sides on anything like that. I know we need catchment-based solutions and that they can save us money. Research is being done and the EPA's, Slow the Flow, sounds very good. I do not hear a lot about engaging with communities to get reforestation, build natural dam systems and use hard engineering upstream to capture the water and slow down its speed and volume. It may be happening in phases, or it may be a new thing, but these are the kind of stories we need to be able to tell people and to cite as solutions so it does not turn into this big polarised thing, where all hard engineering is bad and all nature-based solutions will sort out all the problems. It is much more nuanced than that, which I said in my speech, despite some people asserting that I said we should stop draining and hard engineering. I made it very clear that we need all of it, but we need it all to be done well and in the right places.

There are some great NGOs that work on water issues, such as the social work access network, SWAN, and the environmental pillar has great expertise. We are legislators, not experts, and we, and our civil servants, sometimes need to step back and say we do not always know everything, which is okay. We are not supposed to know everything and we are allowed to bring experts in. As the Minister of State mentioned, hydrologists are coming in. We need to listen to people. We have some people in NGOs who have been at this craic for 30 years and they are major experts. I often ring Professor John Sweeney because he knows what he is talking about. Before I wrote this motion, I spoke with several scientists and some of the Minister of State's staff and his special adviser, who were also very helpful.

We have to work together. It is divisive and unhelpful to talk about being against hard engineering or drainage. Time is running out and we have to come together. I do not care who gets the kudos for it, but we have to do this. As the Minister of State said, people are worrying in their beds. Hard engineering is being looked at in Cork and Senator Cummins mentioned Waterford, but these places are at the mouths of rivers. One has to wonder, if we started catchment-based solutions ten years ago, would all the problems have accumulated at the mouths of rivers, which is where rivers end? It begs the question that if we had had catchment-based solutions in the past, would all the problems have landed in Cork and Waterford, for example? It puts it out there that we have not done enough.

Nature has many solutions and we have to admit we have made a mess of the past. We have made huge drains that may not have been in the right places. The best experts are saying that the cessation of drainage of wetlands and peatlands, and the rewetting of peatlands, are the measures that have the biggest effect in reducing flooding, increasing biodiversity and in climate mitigation and adaption. If we work together, we can come up with a plan for this country. It is now a flooding emergency and we should take into account hard engineering and nature-based solutions. If we do so, we can do it at a fraction of the cost. The land use review, which has never been done before, is vitally important, as is the river management plan and looking at the solutions they bring about. The latter is open for public consultation at the moment and both will lead us to move forward in a better way.

I do not envy the Minister of State his task. It would not be fair for everybody to blame him for all the flooding issues or for hard engineering or something like that. We have to admit sometimes that we do now know everything and we have to find the best way forward. I firmly believe the route solutions will work if we follow the routes of the rivers from beginning to end. I have seen hard engineering being used alone and, as Senator Kyne said, it can move from one part of a town to another. As I said, I saw it in Ennis. We kayaked down one street, the wall was raised and we kayaked down the street next door. That was 15 years ago now and I hope we have evolved since then.

We have much more work to do. Much more time and investment in nature-based and catchment-based solutions is needed that will incorporate hard and soft engineering and will engage communities, which are crying out for help. The Maharees community, which is an amazing group created by Martha Farrell, did not want hard engineering to ruin their dune system. They came together as a community, replanted the grasses there and completely resolved the issue. That was community-led. The group looked for supports for that, which I think they got from Clean Coasts and others. As legislators, people will look to us more and more to see what the solutions are for them, be it for their farms, towns or villages. We will have to be there for those people as we face the consequences of climate change. I thank the Minister of State for his time and I thank everybody for their support.

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