Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 18 Jun 2002

Vol. 553 No. 2

Adjournment Debate. - Inland Waterways.

Mr. Naughten

I thank the Chair for selecting this matter. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport made a recommendation prior to the general election that maintenance should be carried out on the River Shannon. If that took place it would be the first major maintenance carried out on the river since the early 1900s when the country was still under British rule. Since that time Bord na Móna has put silt into the Shannon from its peat extraction, while Coillte has put silt into the river from forestry developments and drainage on land it has planted. Local authorities have silted the Shannon because untreated sewage was and still is going into the river and its tributaries. The Office of Public Works, for which the Minister for Finance has direct responsibility, has put further debris into the Shannon through its arterial drain age programme. Over the last 100 years we have seen continual silting of the Shannon to such an extent that land now exists between Shannonbridge and Meelick which did not exist 40 or 50 years ago. This poses a huge threat to agriculture and tourism.

As everyone is aware, the Shannon is one of the major tourist assets in the country but continual silting threatens the viability of cruisers on the river. There are also thousands of acres in the Shannon basin which are under three to four feet of water due to the lack of release of water and the heavy rainfall of recent weeks.

I seek an allocation of funding to be set aside to carry out annual maintenance of the River Shannon. The Minister will say it is not his Department's responsibility but at the end of the day he is the one with the money and he can call the shots. Funding must be set aside for this and a commitment must be made to allocate that funding on an annual basis; then we can decide who will carry out the work. It is vital that someone takes responsibility for the maintenance and control of the Shannon. At this point 20 different agencies have responsibility for the Shannon in one form or another. The buck must stop with one individual and one Department, but that is not happening at present. The only way it will happen is if the Minister takes the bull by the horns and puts the funding in place. Then we will get this sorted out.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should address his remarks through the Chair.

Mr. Naughten

I am sorry, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

The other issue is compensation. A number of farmers in the Shannon basin are in severe difficulties at present because much of the land where they get fodder for wintering cattle has been destroyed and there is no way they will get a crop later this summer. They will be in severe financial difficulty come the end of the year and I ask the Minister for Finance, through the Minister for Agriculture and Food, to put a package in place specifically for that small number of farmers in the Shannon basin. I urge the Minister to set aside funding to deal with this problem.

I hope the Minister can find a mechanism to ensure that at last there will be some kind of maintenance. We are not talking about draining the Shannon but carrying out regular maintenance on the river. As that is not happening, the viability of both family farms and tourism assets in the region are threatened.

Minister for Finance (Mr. McCreevy)

I wish the Leas-Cheann Comhairle well in his new position. I did not congratulate him earlier.

While some tributaries of the Shannon have been drained, a drainage scheme has not been undertaken on the River Shannon itself. I regret, therefore, that the Commissioners of Public Works have no powers to undertake maintenance of the river.

Flooding of the Shannon basin is a long-standing problem and is due primarily to natural causes. The gradient of the river is very flat and it has inadequate depth and width in critical areas. This results in a slow-flowing river which is not capable of discharging all the water flowing through it at times of particularly heavy rainfall with the result that flooding occurs. There is some evidence that rainfall has been increasing in intensity in recent years.

There have been several studies aimed at finding a solution to this flooding problem. It is generally accepted that the report presented by Mr. L.E. Rydell of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the definitive study of the problem. This report advanced a number of possible options for alleviation of Shannon flooding and recommended that further study be given to what it considered the most promising approaches. These were a so-called summer relief scheme and a full scheme. The summer relief scheme would aim to eliminate summer flooding and reduce the extent and duration of winter flooding. It is estimated that the present day cost of such a scheme would be €750 million. The full scheme would have a present day cost of €1 billion. Both schemes would also have significant negative environmental implications. Unfortunately, against this background, the likelihood is that the solution to the flooding problems in the Shannon basin will not be found in arterial drainage works.

The last Dáil requested the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport to consider "issues relating to the management of the River Shannon". The committee in its final report in March recommended that the task of co-ordinating the management of the Shannon river catchment be assigned to the Western Development Commission and that the necessary legislative and other changes to give effect to this be implemented. As I indicated in response to a parliamentary question from the Deputy earlier today, I am arranging to bring the report to the attention of the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. I assure the House that the Office of Public Works will co-operate fully with the Western Development Commission or any other agency in any effort to alleviate the Shannon river flooding problem.