Can the Parliamentary Secretary tell us what has become of the programme for the reorganisation of the Board of Works? When the last Government were in office we undertook consideration of the common complaint that civil service administration lacked much that business administration provided and that there was a waste of money because business methods were not applied. I asked leave of the Government to employ the leading firm of business consultants in London to reorganise the Department of Agriculture. The same firm had, in fact, reorganised two or three Departments of State of the British Government at the request of the British Treasury. They are at present engaged on the reorganisation of the entire civil administration of Ceylon. They did very valuable work in the Department of Agriculture. I was informed that, at the request of the Minister for Finance, they prepared a report on the reorganisation and administration of the Board of Works. I should be interested to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary if he has had time to consider that report and what recommendations he has made to the Minister for Finance for implementation by the Government. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider whether it might be appropriate or proper to make copies of the report available in the Library—though I fully appreciate that, administratively, that may not be desirable. If the Parliamentary Secretary came to the conclusion that he would not feel himself free to make the report available to all and sundry until the Government had decided what it proposed to do in regard to it, I have no complaint to make. On the other hand, if the Parliamentary Secretary did feel free to make the report available I believe the document would be of great interest to those of us who are concerned with the reorganisation of Government Departments.
It is to be borne in mind that the administrative machinery of the Board of Works was designed in the middle of the 19th century, when the functions of the Board of Works were very limited and circumscribed. Over the years the practice has grown up to saddle the Board of Works with more and more duties of a wide and growing variety. They are struggling to carry out a relatively vast programme of works with an administrative organisation which, in my submission, was never designed to carry the burden which it is now called upon to carry. I know the House will appreciate that, so far as the investigation directed to the reorganisation of the board's administrative machinery was concerned, no one was more co-operative in facilitating that investigation than the Board of Works themselves. I feel that the Board of Works are aware that in many respects their own administrative resources are archaic and that much of the work that they themselves would desire to expedite and transact on behalf of this State is being held up, not by any reluctance on the part of the servants of the Board of Works to do their work, but by red tape, to which, I think, Deputy Davern referred. It is an inheritance from a past age which no Government has yet turned its mind to correct.
I want to submit one proposal which is of some importance. Our Botanic Gardens, which come under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture, is circumscribed by the development of the City of Dublin. It contains a lot of very precious material and it is a very pleasing amenity for the citizens of Dublin. Part of a wellrun botanical museum must be what is technically known as an arboretum. But an arboretum, which consists of a display of varieties of trees, takes up a very large acreage. The maintenance of the arboretum at the Botanic Gardens means that the Botanic Gardens must forgo a number of other botanical displays which they would like to undertake but for which they have not space. I think I made the suggestion to the Board of Works, when I was Minister for Agriculture, that the arboretum could more conveniently be accommodated either in the Phoenix Park or at Muckross, Killarney. An arboretum would not interfere with the amenities of a park such as the Phoenix Park. On the contrary, it would, rather, be a decoration. It could conveniently be annexed, for the purposes of students, to the main botanical collection if it were located in the Park but it would be no serious inconvenience if it were located at Muckross. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that he might turn his mind to that desirable reform. If the Minister for Finance would consult with the Minister for Agriculture, I believe the proposal to transfer the arboretum to the Phoenix Park would confer a very great benefit on the Botanic Gardens and a substantial benefit on the citizens of Dublin to whom the arboretum would be an agreeable amenity. I believe, too, that the colleges would appreciate the larger and more convenient space that would be available for the maintenance of the arboretum in the Park.
I would like to inquire from the Parliamentary Secretary what has become of the report of the Dutch engineers on the reclamation from the sea of the back strand at Tramore. Deputies will recall that, under the land reclamation project, there were four divisions, the fourth of which was the reclamation of the estuarine marsh land from the sea. We wished, naturally, to get the other three divisions of the project working before we turned our minds to that but, when the first three sections to the land project were well launched, we turned our minds to the question of how to go about the problem of estuarine marsh reclamation.
That is very highly specialised work. If we had chosen to ask our own chief engineer to organise staff for that purpose I doubt if our resources would have reached such a project. As Deputy Donnellan has informed the House, one of the chronic difficulties of the Board of Works has been to get a sufficient number of trained engineers and, therefore, with the entire approval of the Board of Works, as I believe, we inquired who were the leading firm of engineers who had experience of this work of estuarine marsh reclamation. We were informed it was the Dutch firm who had carried out the reclamation of Walcheren Island after the recent war. We asked them to make an inspection of the back strand at Tramore and report as to whether reclamation was feasible and what it would involve.
That particular reclamation work was chosen more as a pilot plan to see if our experience there would encourage us to proceed to similar works which we would undertake in Clare and in certain other coastal areas, where extensive areas of potential agricultural land are rendered useless by the encroachment upon it of the sea. To the best of my recollection the report had not been made available when we left office. I would be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would let us have such information as he may now have at his disposal in that respect.
I would also be glad to know what progress has been made on the Rye. The House will remember that authority was given by the Government to the Department of Agriculture to bespeak the assistance of the Board of Works, and accordingly, in pursuit of our desire to clear the bed of rivers which were beyond the engineering capacity of the Department of Agriculture and yet did not fall within the category of arterial drainage work, the Department of Agriculture were authorised to bespeak the assistance of the Board of Works and on their undertaking, to carry out the repairs of a given river. The charges connected therewith were levied on the Vote for the Department of Agriculture and the work was done on an agency basis by the Board of Works.
I should like to avail of this opportunity of expressing my profound gratitude, as Minister for Agriculture at that time, for the invaluable help extended to the Department for which I was responsible by the Board of Works. We do not deny that we used on occasion to have what I will describe as metaphorically bloody battles, but if we had it was merely in rivalry of zeal to get the works for which we were severally responsible expeditiously done.
In retrospect, I welcome this opportunity of expressing my profound appreciation of the invaluable work that was done on behalf of the Department of Agriculture by the Board of Works and of the ready willingness of the board to undertake unreasonable demands that were perennially made on them to provide assistance in completing works which were really beyond supply.
There was one work on the Rye which involved the removal of a large rock at the point of the Rye joining the Liffey. There was another work on a river, I think, in Clare. I would be glad to hear a word of their progress.
I am in a position to report to the House myself on the admirable progress that has been made on the Tinnecara Rock because, on my way home from this legislative Assembly, I not infrequently pass the scene of operations. I know from my own experience how precious that work is to the people of a large area in Roscommon and East Mayo. I can only hope that in that connection, if it should become necessary to secure the maximum advantage from that work to clean the bed of the Lunge river and the Bridogue river, that somebody, under the inspiration of the Parliamentary Secretary, whether it be the local authority or the Board of Works or the Department of Agriculture, will excavate the bed of the Bridogue and the Lunge rivers. I hope that will be undertaken if the necessity appears to exist, when the level of Lough Gara has been reduced by the work on the Tinnecara Rock.
I find myself somewhat abashed because, when I heard Deputy Davern clamouring for something for which I was clamouring for four years, I began to wonder which of us had taken leave of his senses. Deputy Davern mentioned that he thought that whatever should be done ultimately about the catchment area of the tributary rivers of our main arterial rivers the urgently necessary thing to do was to get the main channel of the arterial rivers cleared and then deal with the tributaries as circumstances would allow. I think Deputy Davern is entirely right.
I fully understand and appreciate the outlook of the Board of Works. It is the outlook which underlies the Arterial Drainage Act of 1945. The Board of Works became exasperated by having their efforts perennially dissipated in doing what they regarded as substantially nugatory work on a lot of tributary rivers since that work was fated to be destroyed by the passage of time if the main arterial river was not first attended to. The result is that there is a provision in the 1945 Act prohibiting the Board of Works from dealing with a tributary river unless and until it deals with it as part of a complete arterial drainage scheme over the catchment area in which that tributary flows.
The principle having been established that the Board of Works will only be called upon to deal with the drainage problem of an entire catchment area, they are very reluctant to allow any encroachment to be made on that principle. Here I feel the Office of Public Works is wrong. I pressed on them at a very early stage the view that, instead of insisting that they would not do a hand's turn in a catchment area until the whole catchment area was done, they should make a survey of a catchment area and estimate the total probable maximum volume of water which would pass through the main channel to the sea when the catchment area ultimately was completely dealt with under a comprehensive arterial drainage scheme, that they should then allow themselves a margin of 10 or 15 per cent., that they should then determine to excavate the main channel from the sea to the river's source on the basis of an intelligent anticipation of the maximum volume of water which would ultimately have to pass through, allowing themselves a margin of 10 or 15 per cent. Then, gradually, every main channel in Ireland would be done, leaving behind in every catchment area a splendid volume of work on which we might fall back if any local pocket of unemployment showed itself at any future time.
Deputies may remember that I reported to the House that, under an agency agreement between the Department of Agriculture and the Office of Public Works, I asked the Office of Public Works to make a survey of the Boyne, the Moy and the Inny. They were precluded from doing that under the 1945 Act, which provided that they must not drain a catchment area unless they did the whole catchment area. It was possible, under the Land Rehabilitation Project, to make an agency agreement with the Department of Agriculture to engage technical staff and to charge up to the Vote for Agriculture the expenses of a survey of a main channel as distinct from a survey of a whole catchment area. It was in accordance with that scheme that I hoped to get the survey of the main channels of the Boyne, the Moy and the Inny undertaken.
People asked me: "Why these three rivers?" We, in the Department of Agriculture, resolved to ask the Office of Public Works to undertake three main channels at the same time, and we said that we would provide them from the Department of Agriculture Vote with the money necessary to employ and train survey staffs sufficient to drain the main channels of these rivers. When the chief engineers asked me what three rivers I would nominate on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, I said I would nominate the three rivers that the chief engineer of the Office of Public Works considered to be the most desirable. My recollection is that the Office of Public Works said that the rivers they considered to be most desirable were the Boyne, the Inny, and a river in Kerry called the Maine. I remember agreeing to that and asking the chief engineer of the Office of Public Works to take out the Maine and substitute for it the Moy. I informed him that we were experiencing very great difficulty in the Moy catchment area in getting work done by the local authority; the county engineer got it into his head that he would not open any of the drains which led ultimately to the Moy if the Moy were not drained.
We could not get the land rehabilitation project moving satisfactorily in Mayo north, south or east. The main drains leading into the tributary of the Moy could be closed under the Local Authorities (Works) Acts, but it appeared the county engineer would not give any such work to the local authorities in County Mayo unless and until the danger of the flooding of the Moy tributary was abated. Therefore a lovely vicious circle was created in which the Office of Public Works said they could not engage in work on the Moy, in which the county engineer said he could not open the drains into the Moy, and in which the Department of Agriculture said they could not move ahead with the land rehabilitation project while the main drains leading into the tributary of the Moy were open. I felt that that vicious circle had to be broken and, as usual, I turned, not in vain, to the Office of Public Works. In this set of circumstances the chief engineer of the Office of Public Works pointed out that, in his considered judgment, the River Moy must be regarded as a catchment problem. He said that he saw my difficulty and would be glad to help me so far as his duty would allow by making a survey of the channel. He warned me that in making that survey he might have views to express when the survey was completed as to whether that channel se ipse would be sufficient to cover everything in that catchment area, and that I must expect him to express that view resolutely when the time came.
I believe that that survey is now under way. However, I am not so sure that the agreement with the Office of Public Works to continue the programme of surveying the main channel of arterial channels is still under way. I want, on its merits, to recommend that to the Parliamentary Secretary. One of our difficulties, perennially, in rural Ireland is to find a programme of works reasonably adjacent to the homes of groups of people who may, for one reason or another, experience temporary bouts of unemployment. What is a more ideal backlog of suitable work for a rural community than draining the main channel of a river where heavy machinery is ordinarily used so as to have it clear and ready to receive whatever volume of water the catchment area can pour into it. There are many tributary rivers where a large percentage of manual labour could be used awaiting to be done. It is quite possible to do them in pieces and blocks as the necessity arises always knowing, in the meantime, that the main channel has been done. The situation to which Deputy Davern has referred cannot materialise while the complete treatment of a catchment area is postponed. Deputy Davern referred to the Suir. This is a huge river which requires to be done from the sea right up to its source requiring the most expensive machinery and highly skilled technical staff. Such a river would not be at all as fruitful a source of local employment as tributary rivers ordinarily are. These tributary rivers must be drained some time. There are about 14 or 15 arterial rivers in this country, and they must be done some time.
Every year we leave that undone involves us in a very substantial annual loss because the land which is rendered useless by flooding fails to produce income that it otherwise would produce if these main channels were cleared. I do not understand what is the delay. Up to two years ago the answer of the Board of Works was: "We will do it gladly if we get the staff but we have not any staff and we cannot get any staff." I think we got authority for the Board of Works to employ more staff. Certainly they got 40 engineers in one slap. They got authority to get substantially more engineers and doubtless the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us about that. I remember when I was trying to get engineers for the three schemes they were undertaking on my behalf, the Board of Works went out and scooped the pool. Having failed to get sufficient staff in ten years, the moment I got the sanction they got the sanction. They went out and scooped the pool and got a total of 49 engineers. They ultimately got their requirements as regards staff. The House will understand under what difficulties the board were operating when they realise that only two years ago they had to supplement their staff by over 40 engineers. They have got them now. These main channels must be drained and I am blowed if I can understand what is the economics of the situation or what is the sense of leaving these main arterial rivers undone. We have plenty of men. The universities are turning out engineers who are going abroad. The machinery can be obtained. Every year we postpone its acquisition it becomes dearer to buy. Everybody wants the work done and it will pay for itself over and over again but it seems that some queer kind of paralysis has set in in this matter which I am at a loss to understand.
I suggest to Deputy Beegan if he wants to earn immortality he has in this matter an utterly unprecedented opportunity, if Deputy Beegan would drop everything else in the Board of Works and really show his teeth on the subject of the main channels of the 14 or 15 arterial drainage catchment areas in this country, and say: "I am determined to have a survey party put on all these areas before I leave the Board of Works, on the clear understanding that I am not planning to do the whole 15 or 16 catchment areas in toto but I am planning to clear the main drainage channels and to leave it to posterity to do the rest of the catchment areas as circumstances will require and allow.” I speak from some experience in this matter and I assure the House that there is nothing to prevent that being done to-morrow morning except the kind of atavistic belief that it cannot be done. But if you once persuade them in the Board of Works that Oireachtas Éireann want it done and are prepared to meet the bill, it can be done forthwith. The work can be put in hand in 48 hours. The man primarily placed to get that work done is the Parliamentary Secretary. If he does not kick up a row the Board of Works cannot kick up a row. If he brings sufficient pressure to bear on the Minister for Finance, making a case that everybody in Dáil Éireann wants it, I think Finance will meet him. I suggest to Deputies on all sides of the House—because I do not think the matter raised by Deputy Davern relating to the main channels is a question of politics; everybody on all sides who knows anything of rural Ireland understands how vitally important this matter is, the drainage of our agricultural land—that they should impress on the Parliamentary Secretary our earnest desire not to demand a rate of progress in arterial drainage which is physically impossible but to demand the clearance of the main channels, leaving the balance of the catchment area to be done as opportunity offers; and he will be able to get it done. Perhaps I could encourage him. I will promise him this. If he does not get it done certain events may transpire in the course of the next month which will enable me to get it done. I warn him, if he does not get it done I shall.
