Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for permitting me to raise this matter on the Adjournment, and I thank the Minister of State for coming into the House to reply.
Just over two weeks ago, Iarnród Éireann assembled a battalion of heavy machinery, JCBs and trucks on Killiney beach to carry out what it has called emergency works to protect the railway line. Since then it has shipped in heavy rock by sea, dug and dredged Killiney beach and turned one of this city's greatest natural amenities into a building site.
I have visited the beach on a number of occasions in the past two weeks, most recently on Sunday morning last, and I am appalled at the damage being caused to the beach and the foreshore. The people of Killiney and the surrounding areas in my constituency are bewildered and horrified that a State company with the apparent compliance of the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources should inflict such violence on this most beautiful amenity.
This work is being carried out without a foreshore licence from the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources, without consultation or advance information to the public and their elected representatives and without even a courtesy phone call to the Killiney Beach Awareness Group through whose voluntary efforts this beach is maintained, cleaned and protected, and through whose energies Killiney beach achieved its blue flag award.
Those works currently under way by Iarnród Éireann at Killiney beach are illegal. They have no foreshore licence. This is not an emergency. If it were a genuine emergency, Iarnród Éireann would not be running trains on a line which would require remedial works of such urgency that the procedures of the Foreshore Act have to be set aside. This is not an emergency because according to maps in my possession, those works were planned as far back as October and, according to reports which I have heard, the planning of this work goes back at least six months. I would like to compliment my colleague, Councillor Jane Dillon Byrne, who was the first to raise this matter publicly.
Iarnród Éireann had ample time to submit an application for a foreshore licence or to submit in the normal way an application for a coastal protection scheme. In both scenarios, public consultation would and should have occurred and coastal protection expertise from the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources and from the Marine Institute could have been assembled to ensure that any necessary works would be carried out sensitively so as not to destroy a great natural amenity.
I ask the Minister of State at the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources a number of questions in relation to this development. Did his Department give approval to Iarnród Éireann to carry out this work? If it did, under what statute was such permission given because in my opinion there is no way around the Foreshore Act in a case like this? If permission was not given – I believe permission was not given – the most serious view must be taken of Iarnród Éireann's breach of the Foreshore Act. The Department should order an immediate halt of the work until a proper scheme is prepared and Iarnród Éireann should be prosecuted for carrying out beach works without a foreshore licence.
It is not acceptable that anybody, least of all a State owned company, can effectively take over and rearrange a public amenity such as Killiney beach. It is not acceptable that Iarnród Éireann can take a short cut through the well established procedures of the Foreshore and Coastal Protection Acts and it is not acceptable that the Department of the Marine and Natural Resources should stand aside and allow this to happen.
My constituents, many of whom are meeting tonight in the Killiney Court Hotel, want answers and they want action. Above all, we want our beach back and we look to the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, who is the custodian of our coastline, to protect Killiney beach which has been entrusted to his care and which is now in danger. I would like to hear from the Minister of State the action he intends to take to restore the damage that has been done and get back to the situation whereby Iarnród Éireann is complying with the normal procedures and the Foreshore Act in the normal way, and that whatever work is necessary to protect the railway line is carried out in a way that respects the amenity of Killiney beach, the interests and wishes of the local community and the public.