There is naturally a good deal of anxiety in areas that have suffered considerably from flooding as to the rate of progress that has been made with the arterial drainage schemes and in that connection the City of Kilkenny, which suffered a great deal is, I think, entitled to consideration. We are apt to forget in times like these what can happen in periods of heavy rainfall or particularly bad weather and the tribulations through which the people of Kilkenny passed a few years ago are not likely to be forgotten by them for a long time. The same is true of Carlow, and in that case the people had a belief that the troubles they suffered during heavy flooding were to some extent accentuated by the bog works in the Midlands. I cannot say whether that is true or not, but that is their belief. Unfortunately, in the case of Carlow Town the sewerage was affected because the Barrow is a rather sluggish river unlike the Nore, and does not take refuse rapidly. A characteristic of the Nore is that it is pretty fast-running and, while floods may be severe in the neighbourhood of Kilkenny, they do not last more than a few days, whereas in the Nore, the tendency is for the waters of the Barrow not to subside for a considerable time, the country being more flat. I think the Parliamentary Secretary had a discussion with the local representatives regarding the drainage of those rivers. I would like to know what progress has been made in connection with the survey of the arterial drainage regions which the Commissioners of Public Works have in mind that the country ought to be divided into, before this arterial drainage work can be completed. I think it is necessary to deal with the areas which suffer particularly, and where the fertility of the land which is affected is such that there is considerable loss to the country that it should be out of production, and that makes it incumbent upon me to press the Parliamentary Secretary for a statement as to when he thinks it likely that the preliminary step of the survey of the basins of the Nore and Barrow systems—the lower Barrow—will be made.
I think the understanding we had, when the Arterial Act of 1945 was passed, was that the arterial drainage system was the essential foundation of minor and subordinate drainage schemes throughout the country. Unless we hear to the contrary from the Parliamentary Secretary, I take it that the position still remains that the arterial drainage scheme then contemplated is to proceed on the lines that were then envisaged. How exactly these minor schemes are to work in with the larger national drainage work, and how minor drainage is to proceed in areas which have not yet been even surveyed and where there is no prospect of the larger arterial drainage work being completed for a period of years, are questions which I certainly cannot answer and I doubt if anyone who is conversant with drainage problems could answer them. Either the experts on the drainage commission were entirely at fault in this matter or an explanation is required of what is likely to happen at the present time if minor drainage work is carried on and if it does not fit in with the general scheme for the drainage of a particular river basin which will be carried out, presumably, in due course.
The question of the conservation of water has been raised. It may be that when the drainage commission reported, seeing that their task was to deal with arterial drainage, they had special regard to the historical facts connected with it and the development of the system. In other countries, however, attention has been given to the problem of conserving the waters. There seems to be a feeling in the country among engineers that we ought to consider carefully what the position is as regards our ultimate water supply. It may be that the amount of precipitation in this country renders it unnecessary to pay a great deal of attention to that aspect of the matter, but there has been a feeling expressed that the area in the centre of the country acts rather as a sponge which holds a great deal of this precipitation and that it is to the advantage of an agricultural country like ours that that water should be held there and that it should be drained off ultimately into the surrounding areas.
In any case, the point has been made that we should not regard water as entirely an enemy; we should regard it as a thing that, though perhaps not always necessary in the places where it occurs in too great abundance, is needed in other places. The problem of the conservation of water, and the possibility of utilising this water which will be drained off under the arterial drainage for power development, is one to which I think it is right to call the Parliamentary Secretary's attention. In fact, if the present Commissioners of the Board of Works were to go into this whole problem of arterial drainage and devote their whole energies to the arterial drainage schemes only, I am sure they would have more than would fully occupy their time. They have a great many other duties to perform. If drainage is to be gone ahead with in the way that members on all sides of the House demand, then nothing else would suffice, in my opinion, than that there should be a special drainage commission which would be empowered to go ahead and do all the requisite work. Such a commission should not be burdened, of course, with all the other multifarious duties that the Commissioners have at the present time.
I had not known, until Deputy Little mentioned the matter, that the inspector of ancient monuments had resigned and has not been replaced. He did excellent work during his period there, and while we can all see the things that have not been attended to, marvellous work was done with some of the ancient monuments like Dunbrody Abbey, Cashel and other places. Large sums of money were spent and a great deal of architectural and skilled planning was put into the work and the country has benefited to that extent. If the country is not aware of it, and the people do not take the trouble to find out what has been done, that is their loss. When tourists —particularly Americans — come to other countries, it is noted that it is to the historic landmarks they go, and I think the representatives of E.C.A. in this country have called attention to this matter in their radio talks. I have only to hope that the work carried on so well for so many years will be continued with equal success by whoever is to succeed the outgoing officer. I also suggest that these ancient monuments ought to be signposted better. It should be part of the work of the ancient monuments committee and they should be enabled to erect suitable signposts on the nearest public or trunk roads, to set out the distance and so on, and the nature of the monument in the vicinity.
Deputy Little also called attention to the question of the institutions of science and art. I cannot let the opportunity pass without again expressing my regret that the Government has removed from the Estimates even the token Vote for the proposed new National Library. Nothing has been done to provide additional accommodation since the building was established in 1890. Since that time, the number of readers must have increased enormously, as the population of Dublin has increased by hundreds of thousands during that period. I venture to say—at least, I hope—that it has become far more literate and far more highly educated and more interested in matters that would require access to the National Library. We have large collections of documents accruing there from time to time, like the Ormonde Deeds, that would require special accommodation. At the present time, large numbers of those documents and books have not suitable accommodation and have to be laid on the floor. Moreover, the accommodation for readers is limited and is not at all adequate, having regard to the importance of the City of Dublin from a cultural point of view. We are the chief centre, from the point of view of Celtic scholarship and from the point of view of antiquarian research and folklore, as well as from our own national history point of view and we certainly would regard the National Library as being the foremost place where foreign scholars would come and do research work. In fact one of the objects, one of the values of purchasing the Ormonde Deeds was that, since there was no other collection of that nature in this country—documents coming right down from the time of the Norman Conquest—scholars interested in the medieval period as well as the later period, in feudalism and so on, would come here to study these documents.
I heard some suggestion from the other side that this talk of new large public buildings is out of order, but I see that we are to spend a great many millions on hospitals and other large schemes. I have nothing to say against these—I am sure they are all very worthy purposes—but the point is that, when this building was taken over by the Provisional Government, the rooms at the back belonged to the museum. The museum never got back these rooms and never got any alternative accommodation. A certain number of rooms were taken away in that way. It has been impossible, since the Irish Government was set up, to show one of the most important collections, the geological collection, properly, and, in more recent years, the Irish antiquities section of the National Museum has grown enormously.
Everyone knows that during the period of excavations under the former director and for very many years prior to the war, and even during the war, there were thousands of thousands of new accessions. The staff had to be increased, and, in addition, there is a particular section devoted to recent Irish history from 1916 down, which is very inadequately housed and not at all accommodated in the way we would wish. One of these sections is entirely new and is growing and the other, the Irish antiquities section, has also grown enormously. You have also new departments like the department of coins and the department of stamps. Every country in the world which makes a new issue sends its stamps here and all these stamps have to be catalogued, labelled and put in cases. It is only by treating these buildings as a whole and seeing what can be done to improve the situation that I see any hope for an improvement in the way of the provision of additional accommodation not alone for the library but for the museum.
If a new National Library is provided, it would be possible to transfer some of these collections, which are either not on show at all or very inadequately housed in the National Library at present. One of the functions of the library is the collection of the national archives—for example, all the documents in connection with the history of the Irish national movement and the recent struggle for Irish independence. The intention was that they should ultimately be placed in the custody of the librarian at the National Library. All countries who pride themselves on their history, and particularly on the movements which brought about their national independence, feel that special steps ought to be taken to preserve these records, and anybody who reads about the French Revolution, the enormous interest taken in it and the huge literature that has grown up about it during the past 150 years, will have some realisation of the way posterity will regard the history of this country over the past 30 or 40 years.
I suggest that if we are in earnest about that matter, and if we want to provide proper and suitable accommodation for these national archives, we ought to be interested in seeing that they are properly housed—first, that there is sufficient accommodation for the housing of the documents proper; secondly, that there is accommodation for the staff who look after them; thirdly, that there is accommodation for the readers; and, fourthly, that there is accommodation for the students who come there to study.