First of all I should like to say that there is nothing personal in anything I have to say tonight on the question of the drainage of the Lung River but I must straight away bring home to the Parliamentary Secretary the fact that his reply represents a shattering blow to the people in the area affected. He said in his reply:
The Lung is one of the principal channels in the Boyle catchment. A scheme under the Arterial Drainage Act, 1945, for that catchment is being considered but it would not be possible at this stage to say if or when works might commence.
This puts the situation back more than 20 years and puts the future prospects of the affected farmers virtually at nil. I claimed today, I repeat now and I think I can prove that the Lung has been and should continue to be treated as a separate entity and that the Parliamentary Secretary inherited inescapable commitments in regard to three drainage areas—the Maigue, the Robe and the Lung. Today I rightly gave credit to Deputy Kenny for the decision announced last week that the third phase of the Corrib-Mask-Robe Scheme is to go ahead. Both of us, representing the area together for many years, made enough representations to successive Parliamentary Secretaries on the subject of the Robe and it would make interesting reading for the House to go back over the history of the full catchment. However, it would not be relevant to what I have to say tonight.
May I go back a little in time in proof of the statement that the Lung has been treated not as a single channel but as a separate entity. In the first Coalition Government, when Mr. James Dillon was Minister for Agriculture, he was responsible for the blasting of the Tinnecarra rock and the partial drainage of the Lung catchment. This was greatly to the benefit of farmers in the immediate vicinity of Lough Gara. However an undesirable side-effect was that the level of Lough Gara was drastically lowered. I dealt with this matter at some length on the Estimate some months ago.
The farmers in the upper reaches whose appetites had been whetted by the success of the work at Lough Gara urged successive Governments and parliamentary Secretaries to continue the drainage up to the source in County Mayo. A proposal emerged some 15 years ago at a Fianna Fáil meeting that the remainder of the lough could be drained by using the chain of lakes for storage purposes and simultaneously partially restoring the level of Lough Gara. Gara was a tourist amenity and it had suffered but it would benefit by the increased two feet of water that was tolerable and would not involve adding any water to the Shannon basin. If the Parliamentary Secretary is to take the Boyne catchment area as a whole, there is no hope for the farmers in any of the catchment because drainage of the Boyne would result in very substantial additional water being poured into the Shannon basin. This is something a Parliamentary Secretary could not contemplate. The Shannon has been a vexed question for too long.
The effect of the Parliamentary Secretary's reply today is to say to the Lung farmers that their propositions are forgotten, that they are part of the Boyne catchment area and that they can wait until the Shannon problem has been solved. That is why I said their future hopes are virtually nil. I put to the House and the Parliamentary Secretary the proposition that emerged from a meeting at Ballaghaderreen some months ago to the effect that the farmers concerned would at this stage settle for drainage of the river itself and would leave it to the initiative of the individual farmers whether they would drain their own lands. This procedure is quite acceptable within the provisions of the Arterial Drainage Act. Further if it was acceptable in 1950 that partial drainage of the Lung could have been done, it is equally acceptable now. If I interpret the Act correctly, the commissioners may allow a partial scheme to go ahead which would be consistent with a complete scheme and which would form part of the work that would be done in a full scheme in due course. This was the justification of the partial drainage in 1950 and it is the justification I put forward in support of the proposals that emerged from the Ballaghaderreen meeting.
This was the first time in my experience that a group of farmers, grievously affected by flooding, were prepared to accept anything less than the total implementation of a scheme as on the lines of the Moy scheme or major schemes such as the Corrib. Credit is due to them because by making that decision they were leaving it to the energy and initiative of each individual owner. In effect they were saying this will show what farmer is interested in improving his land and who is lazy and does not care. The Parliamentary Secretary's reply today has shattered their hopes.
With regard to the question of commitment, I made it clear that the Parliamentary Secretary did not make these commitments himself. In a way he justified my argument when he said in reply to a supplementary question today:
No. The Deputy must understand when the Corrib was first initiated in 1948 it was initiated as a full catchment area divided into three phases. The Corrib was finished. The Corrib-Headford was finished and now they are on the third phase. It would be ridiculous to have all North Mayo drained, all North Galway and South Mayo drained and the best fertile land of Mayo, around Ballinrobe, Thomastown, Hollymount, inundated with water.
I heartily agree with everything the Parliamentary Secretary has said there. I put it to him that when a Parliamentary Secretary inherits a scheme, initially devised into three phases of which two have been completed, there is a political commitment on him to do the third phase even though in the meantime somebody has decided—perhaps the Minister for Finance or the Commissioners of the Office of Public Works—that a cost-benefit analysis should take place on arterial drainage experience as a whole. I claim this was the situation in regard to the Maigue and this is the situation in regard to the Lung.
Certainly it is open to the Parliamentary Secretary to tell me that this could and should have been done by Fianna Fáil. I am prepared to accept criticism on these lines but that is not what is relevant now. What is relevant is that the Lung river, as part of the Boyne catchment, has been accepted as an entity in itself by the Parliamentary Secretary's distinguished predecessors. I do not wish to appear parochial but, if there is any other part of the Boyne catchment other than the lough, which could be drained into Lough Gara, into another lake which could store the water, into any other sections of the catchment which would not cause additional water to flow into the Shannon basin, then I would urge those sections should also be included.
Deputy Wilson mentioned social considerations. I do not think it necessary to say much about these to a man who has represented part of this area with me for 15 years, who is thoroughly familiar with the social problems and who has, I have no doubt, great sympathy with the people concerned. It is, of course, galling to those in between my neighbours, on one side, who have the benefit of the completion of the Moy and neighbours on the other side who have the benefit of the partial drainage of the Lung, galling for those in the 15 or so miles in between to know it is feasible and practicable and within the ambit of the Arterial Drainage Act to effect at the minimum the drainage of the main channel and this has not been done. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary not to put back these people into a pre-1950 situation. I ask him to study again the history of the Lung as such and I ask him—I do not really have to ask him—to understand the social problems of the area concerned.
Cost-benefit analysis is one thing. Statistics are another; they are very dangerous. The overall improvement in the milk supply in 1973 was something over 6 per cent. In the Golden Vale it was 11 per cent. In the area about which I am talking it was 2½ per cent. Is it the proposition that the 2½ per cent in that area is due to laziness or to lack of initiative or pure lack of land? These people have been promised a chance. I think they are entitled to a chance and, since it is feasible in law and in practice to achieve what the farmers concerned desire, and they have proved their capacity to work, their initiative and their desire to work, the Parliamentary Secretary, who is the first person from that area to fill the post he does, should use every means at his disposal to give whatever better chance this particular drainage would give to the farmers and to their families in this area.
