That is my point. I think they will be undertaken. The extent of their uneconomic quality will vary; apart altogether from the considerable material damage, there is the bad effect on the public mind, as well as considerations of public health, which I am told by doctors do come in in some of those districts, and which, of course, are not taken into account when the "economic" value of the schemes is being reckoned. If you take the schemes from the mere alleged improvement of the land, and add to that the maintenance charge, I can quite understand that the Parliamentary Secretary could make out a case — I do not say whether it is a valid case or not; I want to be quite fair — that the schemes which I mention are uneconomic. Yet I am sure that ultimately they will be started, and that the longer you postpone them the less economical they will become. I mention the three names, because I think they will be undertaken some time or other. I had better give the names. There is the Brick and Cashin, the Akeragh Lough, and the Lower Maine. They present certain problems of their own that raise another question. The Board of Works and their engineers are faced with a difficulty, however able the engineers may be, and I should be the very last to question their ability, in this matter particularly, because I think the only authorities that we have in this country, or perhaps in the next country, on drainage, you have them in the Board of Works. Therefore, I am not questioning their competency.
I do not think, in the case of some of these schemes, that it is possible, beforehand, to frame anything like a steady estimate. You may estimate that the scheme will cost £50,000. It may cost £40,000 or it may cost £70,000. In any circumstance, I think the amount that has to be paid by the people whose lands are benefited by the scheme should not exceed the amount of the benefit. The amount that has to be paid by way of repayment of loan and maintenance charge by the beneficiaries should not exceed the amount of the estimated benefit that they will get. Unfortunately, as the law stands at present, it may happen that they may have to pay more. I have a case in point in which that is so. Take the Akeragh Lough district. It was drained a few years ago. A certain estimate was made. I am not questioning the competence of the people who made the estimate, but it is apparent from what occurred, from the very history of the scheme, that it was not the success that was hoped for. Otherwise, there would not have been, a year or two after the scheme coming into operation or being handed over to the county council, the necessity for a considerable expenditure.
The people of the district complain that the scheme has gone bad altogether. Probably what happened is that the higher land may have benefited somewhat, but the low-lying lands have almost reverted to their previous condition, with the result that, a year or two after the scheme had been handed over to the county council, the actual amount of money spent in keeping the scheme in condition, plus the wages paid to a caretaker to look after the sluices, plus the yearly charge on the beneficiaries to repay their portion of the loan that was necessary to finance the scheme, amounted to considerably more than the estimated benefit for that year. I think the estimated benefit was something like £332. The annuity for the tenants' portion was, roughly, £100 less. There was £50 or £70 — I cannot remember the exact amount — for the caretaker, and there was an expenditure of something like £250, a special expenditure for that year. That the scheme should have required any great expenditure in the first couple of years is quite abnormal. I should have expected a scheme of that kind —apart from the wages of the caretaker — if it had been successful, not to require much in the way of maintenance in the first couple of years. Here you had a very considerable sum about two years after it was handed over.
That did create an intolerable situation for the people. What is the result? In the last couple of years there was no expenditure at all on the scheme. The county council are spending nothing, because the people have not paid the rate. Why are they not paying the rate? Because they were told their benefit was £332 and they held they were getting no benefit. In one year they were called upon to pay a couple of hundred in excess of the alleged benefit. As a result, no work has been done on that scheme for a couple of years. A scheme that was completed about five or six years ago has now reverted, in some portions at least, to the condition in which things were before the scheme was conditioned. I think it was an old scheme that was reconditioned.
Take one of the other schemes that has been put, perhaps not very fully as yet in all details, but certainly strongly before the Board of Works. It is one of the urgent schemes of the year and it illustrates the danger of delay. I am speaking now of the Lower Maine. Some years ago the Upper Maine was drained, but the Lower Maine was not drained. I am not going now into the engineering value of that particular procedure. I am merely stating the facts. The result, as the Parliamentary Secretary and the House know, was that the waters came down much more quickly by reason of the better drainage in the upper reaches of the Maine. Flooding, therefore, occurred more extensively than previously. This was a scheme that was quite new. The upper portion of the Maine was an entirely new scheme. The lower portion that I am discussing has never yet been taken up. The lower portion is tidal and a large portion of the land has to be protected by banks. What is the result? I have heard it argued — I do not accept the argument — that on the occasion of a flood, even a quick one coming down, it does not do any permanent harm. I am not accepting that explanation, though I have heard it. What is the serious thing is this, that as a result of the quicker flowing off of the waters from the upper reaches — and that was particularly evident in the exceptional year that we have had, and that is what I always warned against, that a year of that kind is bound to come— you have had the breaking of the banks and, therefore, considerable damage.
There again you have the urgency of the problem illustrated. Every year that passes by means more damage, accelerating damage very often as a result of broken banks, because, being tidal, a large portion of the land depends on the steadfastness of the banks for their protection. The result is that you have an accelerating process of deterioration and every year that passes will not merely increase the damage that is done, but will make the ultimate scheme more costly. That is the reason I urged that something be done, even outside the framework of any particular Act, to build up the banks in this particular place. Something of the same kind might have been done in the years that have passed in the other schemes, the Brick and Cashin scheme, and on the Akeragh Lough. All these three schemes present difficulties from the engineering point of view. I admit that. They are tidal. I am aware of the difficulty that a tidal river presents so far as any full and fast estimater is concerned. Therefore, I think that in connection with any scheme in the future the full charge on the beneficiaries should be fixed from the start; that work undertaken should be kept in good condition and that any extra expense will have to be met out of public funds. I see no other way out of it. It is trying human nature too highly to assume that people will pay for schemes of that kind more even than the Government has estimated that they are benefiting.
A very serious case has happened in the instance of the Akeragh Lough. Actually a great deal more than the annual benefit (estimated) was paid in one particular year, and the whole scheme has collapsed. I do not mean collapsed physically — that had happened already. The actual money spent is a proof of that. But the scheme financially has collapsed in the sense that there is no collection and no more expenditure by the county council on that particular scheme. Take the Lower Maine as another instance. There are a number of estates there. The Land Commission has certain obligations. It may not have sufficient money to deal with that situation.
The Parliamentary Secretary has other sums of money to spend in the way of relief works. Would it not be well, while we are awaiting the report of the commission, to consider whether the Land Commission and the Parliamentary Secretary in his capacity as head of the Board of Works, and as being responsible for employment schemes, should see that something at least should be done in the way of repairing of banks; that the two Departments should come together and, not merely because there are two different Departments, be completely innocent of each other's activities. The commission did take a considerable time to come into being. Even when its setting up was first adumbrated by the Parliamentary Secretary, it was a considerable time before the commission was set up, and an amount of valuable time was lost, and urgent works were not dealt with. I think it is bound to be some time before they can report. That is the reason I was glad to hear that they are examining schemes, but rather in order to deal with the different problems facing them. In that way we may expect a report more quickly than if they went in detail into every scheme. After all that is not their work, as they are not engineers. It will be some time before they can deal with them. I take these three schemes as being typical of other schemes in the country. In the meantime there will be accruing damage. The position will get worse year by year, and it has got worse year by year. I may say that I spent two hours in the middle of one of these districts quite by mistake, owing to the fact that the car in which I was travelling got into the middle of one of the roads and we could not get out of it between 10 and 12 o'clock one night. You have the roads flooded, communications interfered with, health damaged, as I am told by the medical officers, and considerable damage done to property. For that reason I urge strongly on the Parliamentary Secretary to consider whether some temporary relief could not be given outside the operation of the Drainage Act at present in operation. I can understand how he is bound up and tied by the present drainage code. It might have been possible to have introduced a certain interim amendment in that code — but by the rules of order we cannot discuss that here. What I am asking him to do now is different, namely, to see whether at least some temporary relief could not be given. Ultimately it would mean a saving in money, because I am convinced that in the cases indicated more damage and more cost will ultimately be involved if the schemes are not quickly dealt with.
There are a couple of other matters which do not make the same appeal to my mind. One is that I would like to know what is the life of the airports, assuming peace conditions. Am I justified in assuming that in war conditions they will be used only for peace purposes? I admit that it is not the Department's duty to answer that. But I should like to know what is the life of these airports? Is it ten, or 20, or 30 years? I hope it is not like a national school — 80 years. There is a considerable amount of money being spent on the Dublin airport and on the Shannon airport. When is it thought they will be finished? I have no idea myself about the life of these ports, whether it is ten, 20 or 30 years, and what modifications will be necessary as the result of improving conditions in connection with air travel, etc. What I presume is, as there is considerable expense, that there is some estimate as to the life of these ports. I see that maintenance is very slight at the moment. I was wondering what there would be in the way of expense when they would have to be reconditioned?