Deputy Allen gave notice that on the motion for the Adjournment he would raise the subject-matter of Question No. 32 on today's Order Paper.
Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate—Rosslare Protective Works.
To-day I asked the Minister whether a grant from the National Development Fund has been allocated towards the provision of protective works at Rosslare village, County Wexford, and whether the work will commence at an early date. Some few months ago I put down a somewhat similar question. On that occasion I addressed it to the Taoiseach but it was answered by the Minister for Local Government. The Minister for Local Government in his answer a couple of months ago said that when it was determined what State Department might take responsibility for doing this, some progress might be made. The Minister's answer to-day was that a grant out of the National Development Fund was not being allocated towards the provision of protective works at Rosslare village.
I do not know whether I ought to weary the House and the Minister and, perhaps, I ought to apologise for raising this matter on the Adjournment after such a long day's work. Nevertheless, I raise the matter because it is an urgent and a serious one for the people who live in Rosslare. It might also be, in time, very serious for the 13,000 or 14,000 people who live in the town of Wexford. All the records in regard to coastal erosion during the past 40 or 50 years have indicated that Rosslare is one of the places where there has been considerable erosion.
The history of this erosion in Rosslare would seem to indicate that from the time Rosslare pier was erected—I think it was in 1901 or 1902—there has been gradual erosion. Authorities on coastal erosion who have examined this matter are all agreed on that. There has been gradual erosion over the past 50 years or so. That was very evident about 1927 or 1928. Representation was made at that time to the Wexford County Council and they, being good citizens, concerned with the welfare of the people living in their neighbourhood, although having no legal responsibility whatever in respect of coastal erosion, selected some eminent authority from across the water to report to them.
This eminent authority, Mr. Mobbs, reported that erosion was there and it was a rather serious matter. He suggested certain protective works that would cost at that time a very considerable amount of money. The county council at that time, being wise men, asked the Government of the day to deal with the matter and put up the protective works as suggested by Mr. Mobbs. Subsequently, other engineers, Mr. Waller and Mr. Delap, while they did not actually disagree with Mr. Mobbs in the matter of the protective works, nevertheless, made other suggestions. That was about the year 1930 or 1931.
The Government of the day did not seem to take any action in the matter then either. Things drifted on over the years. The notice of the Government and of the local authority was brought to this progressive erosion, and it was pointed out that in time the village of Rosslare, Rosslare golf links, Rosslare Hotel, a number of churches, halls and private residences housing about 1,000 people, would be endangered.
We have reached that stage, unfortunately, in the year 1954—50 years after the start of the erosion, and some authority must now take serious note of the situation. That is why I am raising this question. Some months ago, Wexford County Council, as a result of representations made to them, sent urgent messages to the Taoiseach and other Government Ministers and asked them to take some steps to have protective works erected. As an earnest of goodwill, although we have no legal responsibility—we are advised by our legal advisers over the past 30 years to that effect, and I thoroughly agree—we contributed a small sum, about £3,000 a year, over four years, to bring the matter to the urgent attention of the Government. That is a mere bagatelle in so far as the cost of protective works is concerned.
Nevertheless, we were informed that we had actually no legal authority to spend that money or even to raise it from the ratepayers of Wexford. I suppose sanction might be got in some other form later on if the Government decided to make a grant out of the National Development Fund or such other funds at their disposal. The Minister may say: "The Fianna Fáil Government were so many years in office and did nothing about it," but I could say to him that the Government which preceded Fianna Fáil did nothing about it. I believe that the present Government must do something about it. The situation has reached that stage.
I spoke to the Minister for Local Government on a number of occasions. A deputation of Wexford Deputies waited on the Taoiseach last February or March in connection with the matter. The Taoiseach kindly undertook to have it investigated. He did not commit himself to anything. He promised an investigation would take place to see if anything could be done. There is no doubt that it is the responsibility of the Government. While successive Governments and State Departments have shirked the issue of taking responsibility for coastal erosion, nevertheless, grants have been made from State funds on a number of occasions for particular works, ex-gratia grants under some head, and employment grants.
Rosslare is probably the most important place to be affected. It is a very important tourist centre and it provides a livelihood from tourism, in the main, for, I suppose, 1,000 people. There is a very valuable golf links there and in addition there is a railway that links Rosslare Harbour with Wexford and with Cork and it is in great danger of being cut off. I think C.I.E. has the main ownership of the railway portion of it and C.I.E. must therefore be seriously concerned with this erosion. I think I indicated to the Dáil before that the sea was within a few yards of the principal hotel, with nothing between it and the hotel except a loose sandbank. There are other points at which the sea took away portion of the golf links and three or four storms in the late winter or early spring did more damage than had been done for the last ten years. That is why it became recently urgent that protective works should be erected this summer before the storms of next winter.
Under the State Property Act, the Foreshores Act, and, I suppose, under Article 49 of the Constitution, there is not any doubt that the State owns the foreshores along the whole coast. No one questions that and the State, therefore, has responsibility to the citizens of the nation. There is not any doubt about that nor is there any doubt that it is the duty of the State to preserve the land from encroachment of the sea by suitable defences. Every citizen has the right to have that protection where his interests are affected by erosion. I think they have the right actually to demand from the Government of the day that protective works be provided where their interests are affected.
I raise this question to-night so as to emphasise the urgency of the problem and to ask the Minister to take immediate steps to deal with this situation. The Government are not unaware of this problem because it has been brought to their notice and to the notice of individual Ministers on many occasions. I want to emphasise that the local authority, that is the County Council of Wexford, are not legally bound in any way and it is quite clear that their resources, financially speaking, do not allow them to deal with this matter. I think it would be most unfair for the Government to try to put responsibility on the local authority who have only one source of revenue and that is the ratepayers, already overburdened with rates. The council must give first consideration to their commitments for water schemes and new bridges and so on and these represent substantial commitments inside the next couple of years.
There is no law which compels local authorities to take responsibility for erosion and I want to say this in all fairness: it has been my experience over the years that every Department of Finance consistently maintained it is the duty of the local authorities to put up protective works where there is erosion. Why that is so, I do not know, nor do I know why legislation is not passed through this House, by some Minister for Finance, perhaps, putting the responsibility on some particular Department of State. Each of them will engineer you from one to the other and will tell you that they have no responsibility whatever for it. It is about time that some Government Department were made responsible for the provision of protective works.
Local authorities are most unsuitable for this purpose. Even if they had money or if the State provided money for them I think they would be wrong to undertake the provision of engineering works. Our engineering staff has no experience of marine works and there are on record many instances of where small efforts were made by inexperienced persons to provide protective works against the sea. These were washed away almost as soon as they were erected. It requires experienced engineers to design and plan and know the reactions of any particular works to be erected.
I do not raise this matter for any publicity purposes, but because of the serious nature of the existing situation and to impress on him that the best engineering advice available to us locally is that if something is not done before the coming winter we may have something happening like what happened on the Shannon last year and the Government, the nation and the Dáil would then be confronted with the serious problem of many of its citizens suffering unduly because, I suppose, of someone's neglect. I want to ask the Minister to get going on this.
I believe the National Development Fund is available for such purposes as this, if the Government want to allocate certain moneys. I do not know why the Minister to-day brought in the county council and the circular sent to them three years ago pointing out that there was money available for certain works that they were responsible for. The county council has no responsibility for such work as erosion and Wexford County Council, in fact, successive county councils, have decided that they are not prepared to finance or undertake the work at Rosslare.
Deputy Allen, having started off with an apology, turned aside some of the wrath I was about to vent on him because I really think it is a little bit unfair that it should have been dealt with in the way it was dealt with by Deputy Allen at Question Time. My reply to him then was that this is a very thorny problem which has been considered over a long number of years and is still being considered at the moment. It is a very thorny problem. It is a problem not merely very thorny in regard to finance, but it is also a problem of such a nature that the technical people are not satisfied about what is the right way of dealing with the matter.
Let us deal with finances first of all. The Deputy and the House can realise the extent of the financial problem when I say that the Mobbs Report showed that the cost would be somewhere in the region of £340,000 at the then prices, which would be equivalent, approximately, to £1,000,000 now. In other words, the solution of this problem on the lines of the Mobbs Report would be in or around a total cost of £1,000,000. That is the roughest estimate, taking a comparative figure for the £340,000 that was the then estimated cost. That figure of £340,000 was, I think, a fairly firm one at that time. It was doubtful even whether the scheme that they suggested at that cost was going to be successful technically. I understand that in certain places it has been found that the sowing of bent grass on sandbanks has been far more successful than more solid obstructions to the sea.
That has been done on many occasions by the residents there.
There were other suggestions made of a moving groin and a fixed groin. A fixed groin was put up there by the golf club in a small way but that was washed away completely, as the Deputy may perhaps be aware. I only mention all these things to show clearly that not merely is it a difficult question as regards responsibility, a difficult question as regards money, but also a difficult question as regards the best technical method of doing it. However, I think we would all agree, no matter what method we adopt technically, that perhaps more important than even the execution of the works would be their proper maintenance thereafter. If works are going to be set up to meet a problem like this and they are not maintained properly afterwards then we will merely have another problem similar to the problem we have in respect of embankments, and, as Deputy Allen, Deputy Esmonde and Deputy O'Leary know, the problem of embankments in Wexford is a very real one.
I do not think Deputy Allen was quite correct in his summary of the interview that took place between the Taoiseach and the five Deputies from Wexford. What the Taoiseach agreed to do at that stage—I have the report of the conference before me—was to make available any technical advice that the Board of Works might have for the purpose of consultation or otherwise with the county engineer and the Wexford County Council. The Deputies were quite satisfied with that and that advice was made available. It was following that that the Wexford County Council suggested that they would be able to put forward a sum of £3,000 a year for a period of four years. Of course, having regard to the figures I have mentioned already, Deputy Allen correctly describes that amount as a "bagatelle". I must confess that I am not quite clear as to the basis on which Deputy Allen dealt with the question of responsibility.
I proposed at the conference with the deputation from the Rosslare people that we should give £5,000 and Deputy Allen reduced it to £3,000. That is what happened.
Good business for the ratepayers.
It might under certain circumstances be bad business. It might be a question of being penny wise and pound foolish. However, all I wanted to make clear when I quoted the National Development Fund earlier this afternoon was that there are in certain areas foreshore protection works for which the local authority is responsible. The National Development Fund in 1953 clearly only visualised that type of work. It did not visualise this type of work as an appropriate commitment for the fund. If this type of work is, therefore, to be considered for the fund, I think I am entitled to say to the Deputy and to the other Wexford Deputies that we do require a little more time to consider the matter than we have been given since the Wexford County Council came back with their reply following the deputation to the Taoiseach. After all, what that deputation asked was that the Wexford county engineer would come up to the Office of Public Works and get any advice or information that was available there.
The Taoiseach asked that.
I beg the Deputy's pardon. What the deputation asked was that the Office of Public Works would send somebody down. That did not prove possible and then the suggestion was made that the county engineer would come up and, having obtained the required information, return and report to the county council.
He had nothing to report.
He has been on the sick list ever since.
I was not making any suggestion good, bad or indifferent against the county engineer.
What can you do about it?
This problem has been there for an extremely long time. I think Deputy Allen was right when he said it started about the beginning of this century. That is my information, too. There was a Royal Commission on Coast Erosion in 1911 and an inter-Departmental Committee in 1931. The inter-Departmental Committee reported to the Government then and the report was considered by the Government over the years.
In 1919 there was another one. A Government Commission reported also.
I must confess that the Deputy has more knowledge in that respect than I have. The reports of 1911 and 1931 are the only ones I have before me. Those reports were there for the Deputy's Party all along the years and again and again the matter was brought up. The Deputy's Party did nothing about it. It was even brought up in 1954 and the Deputy's Minister, Deputy Aiken, after the National Development Fund had been set up, made it quite clear he was not prepared at present to make funds available out of the National Development Fund towards the cost of the work in regard to coast erosion. Not merely before the war, but after that and even since the National Development Fund was instituted, Deputy Allen's Party had the opportunity of dealing with this matter. I intended to deal with it quite calmly until the Deputy interjected rudely: "What are you going to do about it?" I can tell the Deputy that we are going to do a great deal more about this and many other similar problems before we are in office half as long as Deputy Allen's Party was there.
The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 14th July, 1955.