Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the Minister of State and I thank him for being here. I compliment my colleague, Senator Eugene Murphy, on the strenuous and hard work he put into bringing this Bill to this Stage. This is just one issue on which Senator Murphy has been to the fore on behalf of his constituents in Roscommon and further afield. Senator Murphy mentioned the people who live, farm and work along the river basin. I live further upstream. When I was being taught geography in school, I learned about Lough Allen, Lough Ree and Lough Derg and the three tributaries, the rivers Brosna, Inny and Suck. I am from Kilbeggan which is not far from the River Brosna. From an agricultural perspective, 50 flood relief schemes have been implemented since 1995. The putting in place of a flood defence scheme is almost an admission that flooding is going to happen but that an attempt is being made to defend against it. As Senator Murphy stated, we will never stop the flooding of the River Shannon in some form or another but we can improve the situation. The Shannon, through its tributaries, is responsible for the drainage of 750,000 ha, which is 20% of Irish land. Way upstream of even the Brosna, which is only a tributary, there will be a small stream, sheugh or a drain as we call it at home. If the Shannon is flooding, the water is stagnant in that stream and therefore the drainage of the land is affected. There are probably 6,000 ha that are most extremely flooded. They are known as the Shannon callows. It is an area of vital importance for the people who farm there. The forage they take off that land in the months of July and August is their winter feed and if there is flooding at that time, they lose that crop and hence the winter food for their animals.

Even back upstream, if the streams, sheughs and tributaries are not flowing, the land is filling up. Looking at a field you might not see a sheet of water on it and think it is not flooded, but the water table is so high that there is no soakage or drainage. As the Minister of State knows, we are making every effort to eliminate the loss of nitrates and to introduce low-emissions slurry spreading. However, if the water level is high in a field, irrespective of what technology is used to spread slurry during the permitted window, quite legally and when it is necessary to do so, there is a greater chance of some nitrates leaking into the stream and then into the Brosna and eventually into the Shannon.

This is very important, and I applaud Senator Murphy on the approach he is taking. I agree with him that the ultimate silver bullet, as he called it, will be a single River Shannon authority. We all admit that it is further down the line, but this Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Bill 2021 is a first step towards it. The ESB is curtailed in the levels at which it can control the waters in Lough Allen, Lough Ree and Lough Derg by legislation that dates back to 1934. This is a completely different world in every respect from that of 1934, climate change aside, and climate change is the big thing that will affect anything to do with water and flooding. The buildings, roads, concrete yards and all the development that has taken place in the catchment area of the Shannon since 1934 have changed the lie of the land, for want of a better phrase, and it is nigh on impossible to see how it could even be feasible, workable or possible for an agency to have to regulate based on an Act from so long ago.

The Bill is an important first step in getting to a stage where we will need a single River Shannon authority which would include all vested interests. These include the farmers for the reasons I have mentioned, because of the callows and the land they farm, the local authorities in the counties the River Shannon flows through, inland fisheries, Waterways Ireland and the NGOs Senator Murphy mentioned when it comes to protection of flora, fauna, animals, fish, the environment and the landscape. They all must have a say, but the only way they can have a constructive input and an effective outcome is if they are all sitting around one board table and have the same interest, which is the management of the Shannon.

I welcome the fact there is a river basin management plan in the programme for Government. That is vital and I hope to see good progress on it. As I said at the outset, flood defences defend against floods. I believe we can control the floods in far better ways by proper management, be it silt removal or drain cleaning. This is parochial for me, but I stress that the Shannon basin is vital and that 20% of the country is drained, directly or indirectly, by the Shannon through its tributaries and their smaller tributaries.