I am grateful for the Chair's ruling which enabled me to raise this issue, which is the confusion that has arisen concerning the change in policy in relation to arterial drainage. With the Chair's permission I propose to give some of the time available to me to Senator Killilea who has, in fairness, expressed an interest in this matter before and did not have an opportunity on a previous occasion to discuss it in the House. I will allow for this in my allotted time.
Adjournment Matter. - Arterial Drainage.
There is a lot of cooperation among Galway members.
The issue has arisen, as I understand it, for a number of reasons. While some of these have been addressed by way of answer to a Parliamentary Question as late as yesterday in the other House, there are still some matters that cause me some concern. It would appear that there has been a decision by Cabinet in response to the review of arterial drainage in 1983 to 1985 to take a number of steps, including the transfer of responsibility for drainage, that section which was within the care of the Office of Public Works, to the Department of Agriculture. There is disquiet — and I will come straight to the point — in the minds of smallholders who are affected by drainage itself, as to what the future criteria will be on the occasion of the transfer of function. For example, what criteria will be implemented in relation to drainage that will go ahead and secondly, what criteria will apply in relation to the maintenance of schemes? There has been disquiet which I can understand about, for example on the one hand, while giving representation to those who are likely to be affected by schemes, one may require them to make a prior cash commitment so that such a scheme would commence.
Should this be so, it would be too crude in its operation. The fact of the matter is that when one looks at the structure of land, one finds an enormous difference in the circumstances of the farmers who are affected by drainage. They fall into the categories of direct beneficiaries and those who are indirect beneficiaries. The direct beneficiaries vary enormously in relation to their capacity to benefit. In the area in which I live, in the case of the people who contacted me, 75 per cent of the holdings are under 50 acres, 50 per cent of them are under 15 acres and some of those holdings are fragmented, held in different places and there are difficulties of access. There is no way that these small farmers have access to the economies of scale that have benefited farmers in larger holdings that are better located and to which there is better access. There are other social difficulties. Many people are relatively elderly; they have not had the opportunity of some of the benefits which many of us enjoy in relation to other things. Also, there are simple soil difficulties that arise; some of the soils involved can be used more beneficially than others.
What all this means is that a crude requirement of a prior deposit before a committee could present its viewpoint would fall against such smallholders. This is one concern. The other concern which has been expressed to all public representatives who wanted to listen in the area, was in relation to employment. The transfer of functions from one office — the Office of Public Works — was accompanied by a statement that the transfer would be in the context of overall Cabinet thinking in relation to the viability of schemes. If you talk about the viability of schemes and true cost-benefit analysis, what all of us who know the situation must bear in mind about true cost benefit analysis is that there is a general and a specific point to be borne in mind. The general point is now that with every person who is employed and who is put on short time or who is unemployed, or who was permanent and made casual, there is an immense social cost that arises in relation to social welfare, both in terms of unemployment benefit and assistance.
There is a second point: those who have worked on the drainage schemes, both in their basic structure and in their maintenance, by and large, are people many of whom are beyond the middle years of their lives. Their employment represented some of the most dispersed and regionalised kind of employment available in this heavily centralised State. They are people who cannot reasonably, apart from the general features of the present labour market which has contracted so many opportunities, look to comparable employment at their stage of life and where they live.
Putting these two points together in regard to the commencement of new schemes and their maintenance, and the employment effect, I can well understand the anxiety of those who might be interested in drainage, in its continuance and in its start-up, and also the number employed. There is another factor which is not borne in mind sufficiently in relation to thinking about agriculture in this country, that is, that many people are both small farmers and workers, part time and full time. They eke out an existence by combining their different opportunities for putting their income together. They are affected.
I was particularly worried about the suggestion that it was time to look at non-labour intensive forms of drainage activity both in terms of initiation and maintenance. I am well aware, having seen the machines in different parts of the country, that there are many things that one could do with machines which would save cost. Perhaps this is so. There are two points to be made here: the case is not being made for the inevitable cheaper outturn of contracted work as opposed to some of the direct labour forms of employment which exist at present. To say that one would either freeze the employment level and implement contract work on a trial basis is the thin end of the wedge. It is perceived as such by the people who are involved; they feel that if they are using machines it is the end of the road for them. One is destroying a certain kind of rural employment which is valuable.
On the occasion of the transfer of functions from the Office of Public Works, there is an inevitable weakening of its position. I might say that a new grouping in Irish politics that seems singularly bereft of policy suggestions of a positive kind, has already set its eyes on the Office of Public Works and suggested that it be disestablished. That position is based on both a paucity of thinking and ignorance. We all know the contribution of the Office of Public Works to Irish life and we are anxious to defend it. On the occasion of the moving of functions from the Office of Public Works to the Department of Agriculture it is terribly important that the overall employment level be not be caught up in the general thinking in relation to embargoes, staff and so forth. We could have a net loss of jobs.
I want to conclude by saying this because, as I have said, I want to leave time to Senator Killilea to speak also. There are many positive parts of the review of drainage that I am certainly not opposing. I certainly think there is a need for a far greater integration of services as they impact on the lives of small farmers. There is a logic to giving the Department of Agriculture as many grouped activities as possible. For example, I have long believed that in the development of the farm incomes of the people who are involved you should have a mixture of the social aspects of retirement and the health entitlements of people who are ageing on small farms; they should all be within the general concept of rural development.
I have raised this matter this evening because Senator Killilea and I have an interest in it and because there is a great deal of uncertainty. What will be the criteria of the cost-benefit studies? Will they be as wide as I have suggested to take into account the cost of unemployed people? What will be the cost-benefit structure in relation to, for example, people who cannot immediately agree to invest money for work for the benefit of their land. What about those who know it will benefit their land but will not be able to invest immediately and take advantage of land that has now been drained? All of these areas are uncertain. What criteria will be used in discovering the levels of beneficiary and the contribution the different beneficiaries should make?
What is meant by the phrase "modest local contribution"? Modest local contribution means different things to different people. A very small sum of money is a great proportion of the income of the farmers affected; it is very little to other people. Above all else, in relation to the question of maintenance and the implications of shifting to contract work, has this been discussed with the trade unions involved? Have the opinions of the workers been sought? In addition to that, have there been discussions with local authorities in relation to the charges when functions are moved from local authorities to the Department of Agriculture? Did such consultation, if it took place, include the inevitable protection of workers? These are the main reasons I sought permission in the Seanad to raise this issue in view of anxiety among the farmers involved and those affected by the employment situation.
I want to thank Senator Higgins for allowing me these few moments because I too am interested in this matter. While we may be opposite in our political outlook, on this particular issue we are together. There is serious disquiet among farmers on the one hand and the employees on the other. What alarms everybody is that we were not made aware of this fact and there was no discussion locally, through the local councils or the unions in the workforce or through the farmers' associations. Just to read in the newspaper this had happened is not the proper way to do it. I have felt for some time, and I said it here four years ago, that in regard to arterial drainage the Office of Public Works should have been regionalised because there are different regions where there are different applications. In Connacht we had the stop-go policy of years gone by, perhaps not wrong in itself in those days where we were shifting skills from Connacht and Leinster to Munster, the northern parts of the county and the north western parts of the county and back again to the west. If this had been done a little less consistently in each of the regions it would probably have been a better answer.
There is tremendous skill within the Office of Public Work as regards arterial drainage. The tragedy is that skill may be lost. We may express all the pious platitudes we like about it, but eventually that is what will happen and I will give an example. For doing smaller drains that are not listed in main arterials, we have a programme called an LIS scheme operating within the county councils. What is the main problem regarding those schemes? The main problem is, and has been, this "modest" amount of money that the farmers are expected to pay. Approximately 80 per cent of them will pay but the other 20 per cent do not have that "modest" amount. Will there be the same criteria for the maintenance of Office of Public Works drains? Secondly, if it does not work what is going to happen to the workers we have in operation? That is a serious problem because they are most skilled people quite clearly and categorically. To their credit to this day we have the Clare river drainage scheme. It is an example of what can be done. We have the Corrib-Mask-Robe scheme now almost completed in main arterial terms. But it was stopped and abandoned when there were many requests for extensions to it. That scheme was not fully finished in the true sense. What will happen? Absolutely nothing.
It was quite unfair of the Government to come up with this idea that they should transfer the functions to the Department of Agriculture. What has happened to all the schemes in the Department of Agriculture since 1979? They have been whittled away one by one — the western package and the western drainage scheme: to all intents and purposes they are practically useless. We have seen them all and we have learned a lesson. There is very little time for me to discuss those matters but I am giving a general synoposis of what I see.
There is another burning question which has to be answered — the legal status of the Department of Agriculture. Do they carry the legal status that the Office of Public Works had to travel over lands, to compel people who may not be interested in drainage because of one reason or another to co-operate? For example, a man is not talking to his neighbour on the left-hand side or not talking to his neighbour on the right-hand side, or maybe he is an old man and he does not want to get tied up in all this expense to maintain the drain at the bottom of his land. What happens to the legal status the Office of Public Works held by which they went through the legal formalities and could do that job? This is fundamental for progress and if that legal status is not transferred in total the whole operation is pointless and it will fail.
There is a major scheme yet to be carried out in our county, the Dunkellin drainage scheme but it is a long long story. It is going back to fine Deputies who served in the other House and many fine Senators in this House. It can be traced back to the days of Paddy Beegan — God rest his soul — and that is going back a long time, and it is still not done. It is still required for an enormous amount of fine agricultural land which is absolutely useless unless something is done about it. Where is the arterial drainage? It is very unclear what is happening. Press statements say one thing. Why could we not come into this House, the other House or both Houses and sit down and discuss the proposals, weed out the problems, seek and search through the programme and try to come up with a balanced change, if change is necessary? Perhaps change is necessary. I am not saying it is not, but to be launched on us in this way is the main source of protest.
In Headfort, in the most northern part of our county, drainage is the source of the people's incomes. There is nothing else in that little village in North Galway to give an income to create stability. What will happen to the maintenance workers? What will happen to the main arterial workers there? What will happen to their skills? I heard in recent days of the fascinating amounts of money being offered to skilled people who have spent their lives in arterial drainage. They are being bought out and told to go home. As Senator Higgins rightly said, it will become a social problem at a later stage in the community. This is not the way we should be doing things. The skills that these men have developed, in some cases from the cradle of arterial drainage to this day, should be nourished and developed. They should be encouraged to supplement and improve what has been done.
There is also the feeling of the workers on privatisation. I am not against privatisation but we have privatisation in the LIS schemes of our counties and they are not working. Why are we trying something we know has not worked, if that is what we are doing? The local improvement schemes have not worked as regards drainage. They do bits and pieces; one farmer is complaining and the other five want it done and there is a perpetual squabble. That is what is happening. That is the history of this country and there is nothing I or Senator Higgins or any other Senator in this House can do about it.
The Minister must put on the record of this House that the skilled workforce in arterial drainage and maintenance drainage of the Office of Public Works will be kept intact. They have a major role to continue to play — particularly those involved in maintenance, taking into account the conditions prevailing in our county today. We suffered a night unparalleled in weather conditions in any other part of this country last Thursday night. Parts of the roads and parts of the drainage scheme in the Cloughbrack, Cornamona area of north Connemara were swept away. Thirty eight yards of one particular road in Cloughbrack were washed away. Why? Because the arterial drainage scheme, as good as it is, was not capable of taking the torrential flood. Now all those drains will be damaged. They all need to be maintained. Who will maintain them? When will they be maintained? In normal circumstances you could send a letter to the Office of Public Works informing them that the matter is urgent. In fact, there are no better people to come out and maintain what they had built. I fear that structures of main arterial drainage, on which we spent a lot of money over the years, will be lost because of this lack of cohesion regarding maintenance. I believe the maintenance will fall behind in any place where there was a successful scheme and we will go back to the original problem in years to come. All the systems we have in full operation — maybe not as many as we would like — will become choked. We will have water again spreading across those lands and the fruitful work that has been done will be lost to us.
Assurances from the Minister, Deputy Hegarty, are absolutely necessary that the maintenance will be continued at the same rate as heretofore. Maintenance is of major importance and a word, positively and clearly said, might eliminate some of the disquiet regarding the stability of the workforce involved in maintenance in the Office of Public Works. Main arterial drainage is a separate question and one which we should tackle in a separate way but the major worry concerns basic maintenance. I would appreciate if the Minister could give us that assurance tonight.
Acting Chairman
The Chair has agreed to give Senator Ferris one minute.
I will probably take 30 seconds in support of my colleagues. There are two points which they have not actually covered. They arise out of the transfer of responsibilities from one Department to another. From my experience as chairman of South Tipperary County Council, when we went to the European Community in connection with grant assistance for the Government to drain the River Suir, we were warned not to make an application under the FEOGA funding because of strain on it through CAP and other dimensions. It was important that we should claim on the regional funds for major arterial drainage. If the Department of Agriculture are now making a claim on the Community for any grant assistance it will be looked upon as an agricultural development. On a cost-benefit analysis of most of our drainage in the country, if we depend on agriculture solely, it probably would not meet the criteria laid down by Europe. It is imperative that we should deal also with the other benefits like tourism and industry and fishing, so that they will consider it under the regional fund within the European Community. It is important that the Minister should address himself to that problem.
It came to my notice today at a meeting of the general council of agricultural committees that lands that had previously been drained — and had been grant aided for drainage — had been refused grants for afforestation. When we are trying to develop other enterprises, to debar somebody from afforestation grants because they had drained their land is a disgrace.
The Minister for Finance yesterday issued a statement announcing the terms of the Government decisions in relation to arterial drainage. The motion before the House this evening raises a number of issues which are affected by those decisions, specifically the questions of a charge or contribution towards the cost of drainage, maintenance as well as construction and the use of contract, rather than direct labour, in the carrying out of drainage operations.
On the question of requiring a contribution towards future schemes, the Government concluded that a more active commitment to derive benefit from such schemes would be obtained by requiring the prospective beneficiaries to form local committees. One of the functions of the committees would be to collect a modest local contribution towards the cost of future arterial drainage projects, thus acknowledging the enhanced use and value of land which would follow drainage.
In regard to maintenance of existing drainage schemes it was decided that beneficiaries should make a realistic contribution towards the cost involved, which are, after all, incurred in securing for those beneficiaries the advantages gained by the maintenance operations. I should stress that the intention is that the contribution should be of modest proportions and that the vast bulk of the costs will be borne by the Exchequer. Indeed, the local county council would have the power to decide. They would know the local circumstances and the ability of people to pay. You would not have the very serious problem envisaged by Senator Killilea of a scheme being "knocked" because of a lack of contributions from one or two people. I accept that point.
Another decision taken by Government was to carry out by contract, on a trial basis, an element of the drainage scheme works currently in progress. Heretofore it had largely been the practice to undertake drainage projects by means of direct labour. Both systems have their advantages and their drawbacks in major engineering enterprises such as arterial drainage. Surely it is entirely prudent and reasonable to undertake the exercise proposed so as to obtain a yardstick by which the merits and demerits of the two methods can be assessed. A part of the Monaghan-Blackwater project has been chosen for execution by contract and the results will be closely monitored. The results might prove what Senators have been saying here this evening, that the old way is the best way.
There is nothing in these decisions which warrants concern on the part of small farmers in County Galway, large areas of which have been drained by schemes for the Corrib-Clare, Corrib-Headford, Corrib-Mask-Robe and Killimor-Cappagh rivers.
The Government are confident that the decisions provide for the future a sound basis for the improved appraisal and execution of drainage works. To dwell very briefly on the few points I have made, the unions are aware of what is happening. I reiterate that the fears of the Senators with regard to the modest sums involved — they will be modest sums — are groundless. It is just a check to see if we are getting the best value for money. Bear in mind that making out the contract does not mean we will have any shortfall in employment because contractors will also have to employ local people. As the Senators know better than I, most of these works involve building bridging and fencing and that sort of thing. They will have to be carried out by the self same people. There is a big worry for people about going over lands. We had this with gas lines also. The legal status of the Office of Public Works is being transferred in its entirety to the Department of Agriculture.
It has always been the position that requests for extensions to schemes are fully considered and they are included or excluded on the basis of their economic worth. Surely, since you have local farmers on a council, who better to assess the economic worth? To take Senator Higgins's point, if the farmer was not in a position to take up that land immediately, if he had a long term proposal, I am sure the local council would identify that.
Regarding the cost-benefit analysis, the criteria to be used would basically involve providing the Government with a range of options, thus facilitating decisions as to the best way to proceed.
To conclude, I would like to reassure the House that this is an exercise in finding out, having a yardstick to balance one against the other. It is appropriate that Senators should raise this matter so that they could allay the fears of their constituents.
The Seanad adjourned at 8.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 11 December 1986.