Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 25 Nov 1936

Vol. 64 No. 6

Liffey Reservoir Bill, 1936—Report Stage.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Lemass)

I move the amendment on the Order Paper:—

In page 4, lines 22 to 24, Section 3 (2) to delete the brackets and words "(otherwise than by reducing the height of such low water level below the height thereof stated in the said paragraph 6)", and in lines 27 and 28, to delete the brackets and words "(subject to the restriction hereinbefore mentioned)".

Both the Electricity Supply Board and the Dublin Corporation have requested that this amendment should be made. Sub-section (2) of Section 3 of the Bill, as introduced, provides for the giving of power to the Minister for Industry and Commerce to vary, if both the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board agree, the low water level in the proposed reservoir, the low water level being set out in Section 6 of the scheduled agreement.

That sub-section, however, provides that the Minister may not make an Order fixing levels below those stated in the agreement. In other words, the water level can be varied only above the minimum stated in the agreement. Both the Electricity Supply Board and the corporation think it is desirable that the Minister should have power, if they both agree, to fix low levels, lower than those stated, in the scheduled agreement. The idea, I think, is to fix a scale of monthly levels, some of which may be below the minimum levels stated in the agreement. The lower levels, it appears, would be fixed in seasons in which rain might reasonably be expected to occur so that there would be little danger of any deficiency in the supply of water. In the months when the rainfall is relatively lower, the levels in the reservoir would, on the other hand, be correspondingly higher so as to conserve the water supply. The amendment is desired to effect the purpose I have stated. There is no reason why the amendment should not be effected if both, parties concerned in the agreement desire it and particularly as the section provides that any variation in the levels requires the consent of both parties.

Mr. Good

Is there any restriction on the low level or the high level?

Mr. Lemass

There is a low level fixed in the agreement between the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board. The section provides that that low level may be varied by the Minister by order, if both the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board agree and the Minister concurs in the agreement. The section as it stands provides that any such Order cannot fix a lower low level than that at present set out in the agreement. The corporation and the Electricity Supply Board desire to have that amended so that any low level may be fixed, the idea being to have a scale of monthly levels, some of which may be lower than that set out in the agreement. So far as the members of the Dáil are concerned, there is no reason why they should be concerned in this matter, because it is the two parties to the agreement who are concerned and if they agree there is no reason why we should not recognise the agreement. If the reservoir were purely for the purposes of the Electricity Supply Board, we would leave the matter of fixing levels to the board; similarly, if the reservoir were being constructed purely for the purposes of the corporation, we would leave the matter of the levels to them. It is really being built for a combined purpose and, therefore, what is provided is that the parties must agree before any variation takes place and the Minister must give his consent. If they do agree amongst themselves there is no reason why the granting of their request should be withheld.

Mr. Dillon

If the Minister's contention is correct, that if the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board agree to amend their agreement in any particular it is no business of the Dáil, why discuss this question in Dáil Eireann at all?

Mr. Lemass

I am talking about a particular matter. What we are doing in this Bill is confirming an agreement which has been made and conferring on the two parties concerned certain powers to carry out the agreement. In respect of this matter there is no particular reason on the grounds of public policy why the combined wishes of the two parties to the agreement should not be given effect to. They could have drawn up any agreement they wished in this respect and it would not have meant any difference to the scheme.

Mr. Dillon

I submit that the level of the water is vital to the success or the failure of the scheme. It is vital from the point of view of the water-power to be derived and it is vital from the point of view of the water consumers in the City of Dublin. Our object is to get a good scheme which will serve the purposes of the Electricity Supply Board and the consumers of water in the City of Dublin. I quite agree that in the absence of the expert's report on this whole matter it is virtually impossible for members of the Dáil to form a reasoned opinion on the issues raised in regard to this or any other point in the Bill. It is to be borne in mind that when the Shannon scheme was going through, all these questions relating to water levels arose.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy is misinformed.

Mr. Dillon

Admittedly at that time the question arose only from the point of view of generating water-power. Here water levels have a dual significance.

Mr. Lemass

It is only in relation to the water supply that they have any significance.

Mr. Dillon

We do not know what effect the level in the reservoir is going to have on the capacity of the Electricity Supply Board to use the water for the generating of electricity because we have never been shown the Meyer-Peter report. We do not know what effect the level of the reservoir is going to have on the supplies which the corporation may require from time to time to assist the supplies of water already at their disposal because we have not had the Meyer-Peter report. For some wholly incomprehensible reason the Minister refuses to let anybody in the House see the report. This is a matter in which I have only a theoretical interest as a member of the House, but one would have imagined that the Minister would have set a value on the informed opinion of Deputy McGilligan, who spent years in steering similar legislation through the Oireachtas, and one would have imagined he would have been glad to show that report to Deputy McGilligan and any other Deputy who had expert knowledge in these matters so that he might know their opinions of the proposals in the Bill in the light of the expert's opinion. That he steadfastly refused to do.

Mr. Lemass

I submit that this has nothing to do with the amendment before the House.

Mr. Dillon

Of course it has. Our opinion on whether a discretion should be left with the corporation or the Electricity Supply Board to alter these levels is perfectly worthless in the absence of the Meyer-Peter report. We have no expert advice to guide us as to whether we should agree to this discretion being granted to these bodies or not. If the Minister came in here to-morrow and told us he proposed to give these bodies a discretion to reduce the contents of the reservoir to a teacupful of water and then added, "The experts have said under certain circumstances this would be justifiable," there is nobody in the House competent to get up and deny it categorically, because he and he alone has seen the expert's report. I take it the officials of the Department have given this matter consideration, and that the officials in the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board have also considered it; but it is a bad thing when legislation is going through, founded on an expert's report, that that should be withheld from Dáil Eireann. The Minister has made no attempt to justify the course he has adopted in regard to this matter and he should tell us now, when he asks our consent for an alteration in the statutory water levels, why he declines to afford us the assistance to which we are entitled from a perusal of the report upon which this whole legislation is founded.

Mr. Lemass

Deputy Dillon does not seem to have the remotest idea of what the Bill is and I despair of ever being able to explain it to him. So far as the report is concerned, that is the property of the corporation and the corporation did not think it necessary to present a copy of it to me. So far as the Electricity Supply Board are concerned, they also got a report from experts for experts and understandable only to experts, and it would be completely useless to Deputies of this House as a guidance on the question of whether this Bill should pass or not.

It has nothing whatever to do with this Bill. I think we were entitled to assume that the body set up for the purpose of operating a national electric supply will see that whatever works are carried out will be sound from an engineering point of view. The one thing we have to be satisfied with is that they are going to be sound from the financial point of view and sound from the point of view of national policy. On that matter, I have given the fullest possible information in my possession to the Dáil and the Dáil is in a position to make up its mind without any difficulty.

That is the only question that arises here. If you want to get back to the position of 1925 when the Shannon scheme was designed, to abolish the Electricity Supply Board and to have the works constructed by the Government out of moneys voted by the Oireachtas, then a different situation would undoubtedly arise; but we do not want to get back to that position. The Electricity Supply Board has been set up by statute and given complete control of all those matters relating to the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity and the House can, I think, have every confidence in that board in doing that work properly. If it does not do that work properly, the remedy is a change in the personnel of the board.

Mr. Cosgrave

Yes, with the job botched, perhaps. That is the situation the Minister is inviting us to take up.

Mr. Lemass

I am inviting the Deputy to take up no such situation whatever.

Mr. Cosgrave

Why then should we scrap them?

Mr. Lemass

I am quite certain on this point, that my opinion as to the soundness of the engineering plans designed for the harnessing of the Liffey is as good as Deputy Cosgrave's, and that is no good at all. Neither of us is competent to form an opinion on the engineering aspect of this matter.

Mr. Cosgrave

We ought not to be here. Competent people ought to be here and not we, if that is the case.

Mr. Lemass

Is it the Deputy's contention that the Dáil should consider the technical aspects of this matter?

Mr. Cosgrave

I am taking the Minister's implication.

Mr. Lemass

I say that we are competent to decide, and we are deciding, whether the scheme is one that should be undertaken in the national interest, whether it is financially sound or not, and whether it is important to add to the resources of the Electricity Supply Board and make it better equipped to supply the needs of this country in electricity. Those are questions of public policy that arise here, and not whether the dam should be in one place or another, whether it should be so many feet high or so many feet low, or whether it should be built of concrete or masonry or something else.

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister knows a lot about it when he talks about that.

Mr. Lemass

The Electricity Supply Board is the body entrusted by this Bill with the task of dealing with these matters.

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister does not know the first thing about it. A dam is constructed of a different thing altogether from concrete or masonry.

Mr. Moore

Red herrings!

Mr. Cosgrave

Do not expose the innocence of that Party.

Mr. Lemass

I am prepared to enter into a debate at any time with Deputy Cosgrave on these engineering problems. It will at least be a source of amusement to those who know all about them. Nothing that has been said by Deputy Dillon has the slightest relevance to the amendment I have moved. Here is a reservoir being built. If that reservoir were being built for electricity generation purposes only, we need not concern ourselves with the maintenance of any level. We would say to the Electricity Supply Board: "Use that reserve of water to generate electricity as you think fit and if you think fit to empty the reservoir at any particular time, that is your job"; but, on the other hand, if the reservoir were being built for the maintenance of a public supply of water to the City of Dublin, it is obvious that the maintenance of water in the reservoir is of importance to the corporation. This particular reservoir is being built for both purposes, and, consequently, there must obviously be an agreement between the Electricity Supply Board and the Dublin Corporation that will bind the Electricity Supply Board to keep a certain volume of water there in any event, so that they will be in a position to carry out their contract to supply 20,000,000 gallons a day.

Mr. Cosgrave

That is what you are taking out of this.

Mr. Lemass

It is not. Again, the Deputy has misunderstood the matter. The agreement which the Electricity Supply Board and the corporation made provides for the maintenance of certain water levels. It is provided there that the water at various periods must not be allowed to fall below certain levels. What the section as amended will provide is that if the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board agree that at certain periods of the year lower levels can be maintained, and if the Minister, having considered that agreement, is of opinion that it should be ratified, he can make an Order to give effect to the agreement; but before there can be any variation in levels, the corporation, on the one hand, and the Electricity Supply Board on the other, must agree to the alteration. That appears to me to be a reasonable position.

I have explained that the reason it is necessary to have that power is that at certain periods of the year, when the supply of water is adequate, when it is reasonable to assume that there will be plenty of rain, the maintenance of the level in the reservoir is not so important. The water can be utilised as it comes in and, at such periods, it is agreed by the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board that a lower low level might be maintained, whereas at other periods of the year, when rainfall is scarce, it is necessary to maintain higher low levels so that the city's supply of water will be safeguarded. We are merely proposing by this amendment to do what the corporation and the Electricity Supply Board agree should be done to enable the Minister to give effect to any agreement they may make on such matters, and it seems such a reasonable thing to do that I am surprised there was any discussion on it at all.

Mr. Cosgrave

Did the Minister ever hear of puddle clay?

Mr. Lemass

No. Is the Deputy an authority on that, too?

Mr. Cosgrave

That is enough.

Mr. Dillon

I want to ask the Minister——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy may not speak twice.

Mr. Cosgrave

This is Committee Stage.

An Ceann Comhairle

No, Report Stage.

Mr. Dillon

Then may I ask the Minister a question arising out of this?

Mr. Lemass

It comes to the same thing.

Professor O'Sullivan

May I point out that the Minister has spoken three times at least? I am not suggesting that as a precedent, but I think he did.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister has spoken repeatedly——

An Ceann Comhairle

If the House objects to the Minister being allowed to answer points raised by Deputies, the Chair will bear that fact in mind.

Mr. Dillon

The point I want to put to the Minister is——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Minister is not strictly entitled to reply, since objection has been taken to his having already spoken twice. The Deputy may now put his question.

Mr. Dillon

Has the Minister not received a report——

Mr. Lemass

No.

Mr. Dillon

——drafted by a gentleman of the name of Meyer-Peter which dealt with this general question of hydraulic development, or whatever you call it, in the Liffey basin?

Mr. Lemass

No.

Mr. Dillon

No such report exists?

Mr. Lemass

I did not say that no such report exists. I am aware that the gentleman mentioned by the Deputy has made a report to the Electricity Supply Board. I have, in fact, seen that report. Dr. Buchi also made a report to the Dublin Corporation. I have not seen that one.

Mr. Dillon

And the Minister does not think it necessary to convey it to the House?

Mr. Lemass

It was made to the Electricity Supply Board. I want to make this point clear: if it were contemplated that such a report should be submitted to the Dáil, an entirely different document from that presented to the Electricity Supply Board would have to be prepared. The report which went to the Electricity Supply Board, as I am aware from personal inspection, was a report drawn up by experts to be read by experts and capable of being understood by experts only.

Mr. Cosgrave

It was no use to the Minister, then.

Mr. Lemass

Mind you, it would not be to our political disadvantage to publish it.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill received for final consideration.

Final Stage ordered for to-morrow.