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Select Committee on Finance and General Affairs díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 21 Jun 1995

SECTION 3.

I move amendment No. 1:

1. In page 4, between lines 21 and 22, to insert the following subsection:

"(2) It shall be lawful for the Commissioners to execute works to prevent or reduce periodic flooding in an emergency without the necessity to prepare a drainage scheme.".

In section 3 (1) (a) and (b), the word "lands" is used. Do I take it that flooding of lands also includes flooding of buildings?

Yes. There is an Interpretation Act which describes land as including the buildings on it.

The aim of this amendment is to ensure that emergency works can be carried out where, due to the prevailing situation, it is not possible to prepare a detailed scheme. It would allow the Office of Public Works to move with speed to deal with a rapidly deteriorating situation and where, if the procedures which are laid down in the Bill are to be followed, important time could be lost and serious damage could ensue which could have been prevented if action had been taken immediately.

The view has been expressed that the Local Authorities (Works) Act, 1949 is the vehicle which should be used to tackle the emergencies referred to but the problem is that the local authorities, so far as drainage problems have been concerned, have not used the powers in the Act to any great extent. The Minister, Deputy Higgins, stated in the Seanad debate that the local authorities have a greater local knowledge than the Office of Public Works, but they have not used their powers for drainage problems to any great extent. One of the reasons remedial and emergency works have not been carried out is because the local authorities do not have the finance. Works must now be carried out at great expense which could have been carried out at less cost some time ago.

The local authorities, the Department of the Marine and the Office of Public Works are all involved. People tell all of them about works which need to be done; the works fall between two stools and the immediate work is not carried out. This is why it is important that the Office of Public Works is given the powers to carry out this type of work. It has an expertise and is the most suitable vehicle to carry out emergency works. It is not the intention of the amendment that there be a free for all with regard to carrying out remedial works without detailed schemes or plans. The regulations could include controls to ensure this would not happen by specifying that there be authorised persons within the Office of Public Works to give authority for the carrying out of immediate works. It is important that there be certain controls to ensure operations do not become laissez-faire. It is important that the Commissioners be given authority to carry out immediate works without having to put detailed schemes into place on every occasion.

I have great sympathy for Deputy Ahern's amendment. I do not know if it can be catered for in the section. This may be possible from the point of view that flooding, of itself, occurs over a short period. It could reach crisis stage over a weekend when emergency works would have to be carried out. If the amendment can be incorporated into the section, people might avoid taking action into their own hands out of the frustration of seeing their houses and property flooded. They would not have to do this if the Office of Public Works was able to step in quickly to relieve the flooding. There is great merit in the amendment.

At the peak of the flooding people in south Galway took work into their own hands. Even though they did the job well and correctly, this should not be universally encouraged. If this amendment were accepted, we might avoid the necessity for people to have to take action themselves. It might be useful if the Office of Public Works was empowered to do this work. If my house was flooded in the manner some houses in south Galway were flooded, I would certainly have taken action to avoid this, as I saw nine householders do in the Kiltiernan/Caheradoo area, where access to the road was cut off by seven or eight feet of water. When I visited the area on a Sunday evening, access to fields was cut off by the flooding.

That night the people of the area decided to start work themselves the following morning. While they hired engineers to design the scheme before the work was completed, they started the relief work without designing anything. From their local knowledge they knew the fall of the land and to where the water could be brought. If the Office of Public Works had this power, people would not have to take this action. I would not disagree with people taking action at any time to relieve flooding of their houses, provided they did not affect anybody else by doing so and did not damage the environment.

I also see a great deal of merit in the amendment. The Minister's proposal is meritorious but it may get bogged down in bureaucratic detail. Its thrust is that the Office of Public Works will be able to act in local situations whereas heretofore they could not, under the 1945 Act. This will be lost if people have to go through the rigmarole of preparing plans and surveys. We are dealing with situations where there are flash floods and vagaries of the weather and where properties, houses, land and crops are being lost. Time is of the essence in situations like this.

Although the preparation of a drainage scheme is very important, the underlying motive of the amendment is not that every emergency would obviate the need to have a drainage scheme prepared but where there are extreme emergencies, like the ones which occurred in Deputy McCormack's constituencies and in other areas in February and March, the Office of Public Works will have flexibility to carry out works or prevent periodic flooding where there is a danger of this. There must be discretion vested in the Office of Public Works to carry out works. This is the underlying thrust of the amendment. The Office of Public Works has a great deal of expertise which it will utilise in the best way possible.

I agree with Deputy McCormack that nobody wants work done which has knock-on detrimental effects on the environment or causes a worse situation further down the line. Nevertheless, the Minister should consider if he can accommodate the thrust of the amendment. This may be worth while in the long term and would give greater impetus to the worth while amendments he is proposing to the main Act.

Like Deputies McCormack and Penrose, I can see that the amendment is worth while. For many years we have look forward to a revised arterial drainage Bill, which has been in commission for 50 years. While I appreciate the urgency of emergency schemes, I remember a former Taoiseach promising that the Shannon would be drained. Successive Governments have been promising for 30 years that there would be a scheme in my area.

There must be flexibility if schemes like this are to be put in place. It would be worth while if local authorities could assist these schemes. Local flooding sometimes affects roads and property. From reading newspapers in recent months, one would think it only rained in Clare and Galway. We had as much rain in Tipperary as in any other part of the country. The Office of Public Works, together with local authorities, could resolve the problems if there was flexibility and a sense of urgency.

There are strong views on this amendment. Can the Minister accept it?

I am afraid I cannot. This matter was raised by way of amendment in the Seanad as well. It was proposed that the section be extended to include emergency powers of entry to land without the necesstiy of preparing a scheme. The Bill is framed in such a way to enable the Commissioners of Public Works to deal with a lasting solution to flooding rather than emergency relief works, which are much more a matter for local authorities. These authorities are better equipped to deal with local relief and they already have the necessary powers available to them under the Local Authorities Works Act, 1949 as well as their own emergency plans.

Furthermore, the Government has established an interdepartmental committee to prepare a national response plan for flooding. This plan is based on the existing emergency plans operated by local authorities, health boards and the Garda Síochána. The commissioners have no wish to duplicate or usurp the functions of local authorities. It is up to local authorities to use the powers available to them.

In so far as doing works without preparing shcemes is concerned, there are many issues to be taken into account, not least the environment and the danger of simply transferring a problem from one area to another. While emergencies require emergency action, we do not envisage the Office of Public Works being involved in this kind of emergency, unplanned, fire brigade type action. It is felt that if such powers were given to the commissioners they would more than likely be inundated with requests for works which they would find difficult to refuse and which would have the effect of impeding rather than assisting the long term resolution of the flood problem. It is considered that the best use of resources would be achieved by operating on the basis of a planned programme of works. Section 5 of the Bill, as it stands, already provides for a substantial reduction in the exhibition period for example, of schemes of localised flood relief, a much shorter period than was necessary under the Arterial Drainage Acts previously. For those reasons, I regret we cannot accept that amendment.

That is an understandable answer. However, those of us who are members of local authorities will tell the Minister that although we may have many powers, statutory regulations and instruments and so on, power without money is not worth a "losser", as they say in my area.

We do not have the money either. It is all coming from the same source.

That is the problem. Local authorities have often undertaken works and to reimburse them, we are strangling other worth while initiatives at local authority level. Much has been devolved to local authorities, but they cannot pay for it — they need money. That is why Deputy Ahern tabled the amendment in the first instance. He mentioned the Local Authority Works Act, 1949, which gives a lot of power to the local authorities. I appreciate that and I read the Act recently. I am worried about the future of local authorities in terms of finance. However, this will be another imposition. If there is no possibility of recouping money, local authorities will be squeezed into a straightjacket. The amendment was reasonable from that view point. I ask the Minister if he could accommodate some element of it.

I am disappointed that the Minister cannot accept the amendment because the purpose of the amendment is to bring emergency drainage under control. There is no point in talking about local authorities because they will not act in an emergency. A week after an emergency they will raise roads and place paths through fields and they will say it is their job to keep the roads clear. However, this adds to the long term problem. If a particular stretch of road is flooded, the local authority will raise it by three or four feet, but the following winter it becomes a dam and causes further flooding. However, the local authority will say it is its responsibility to keep the road clear.

The scheme to which I referred went as far as the national secondary route between Kilcolgan and Ballinderreen. The local authority refused to allow the scheme to cross the road. It took five weeks to get the works licensed. Only for the fact that a nursing home, a national school and roads were flooded and there was a threat to houses, it would still not be licensed by the local authority. It said it was not responsible for drainage despite the fact that in the past 15 years the same local authority raised the Kilcolgan-Ballinderreen road by five or six feet in places and stopped the natural flow of water to the sea a mile and a half away. Although the drainage scheme had done all the work as far as the Ballinderreen road and from that road for a further mile and a half to the sea, in co-operation with the local farmers, the local authority still refused to open the road. We can forget about local authorities responding to emergencies.

In support of Deputy Ahern's amendment, if the commissioners took over that responsibility, it would stop groups like that with which I was involved doing the work themselves. I am delighted that the group did so because it was contentious and its work was borne out of the frustration of seeing the road cut off. In 1990-91 when water on the Caheradoo road flooded nine houses, their occupants were unable to use the road until 15 May, three months after the flooding.

On this occasion they were able to drive on the road after twelve hours because of the relief drainage. I do not believe that will always happen, although in this instance the group was responsible and the sea was only four miles away. People will take emergency action to relieve flooding in their village, house or land, with possible damage to people downstream. I want to avoid that situation by giving this responsibility to the Office of Public Works. This amendment is a vehicle to give the Office of Public Works that responsibility.

The Office of Public Works could, for example, cut through a hill for 500 metres so water could travel to a lake, which would relieve flooding in a village. If the lake then rose by four or five feet, it could drain it into the sea a mile away. Such a simple decision could be made in an emergency situation. If people in Caheradoo had not taken on this responsibility, the local authority or the Office of Public Works would have been responsible for nine houses being under water. Somebody in the nursing home or national school which were flooded could have died. The septic tank in the national school was flooded and the children drank water from the same source. If ten or 15 of those children had ended up in hospital, who would have been responsible? The local authority washed its hands of that.

I want the Office of Public Works to deal with emergencies by quick action. One would need to visit these places to understand the hardship, frustration and pain suffered by these people. As a result of the action taken by the people of Caheradoo, that village will never be flooded again. This involved only the removal of surplus water, not draining turloughs or lakes, and channelling it, partly through a natural course, five and half miles to the sea. Channels of 500 or 600 metres were required in two or three locations to channel the water through hills and across the national secondary road which was flooded because the local authority had raised it over a number of years to relieve flooding.

It is clear that there is a strong view about this. I take the Minister's point that if the amendment was passed in its present form there could be a raft of claims and it would be hard to distinguish genuine emergencies. Would the Minister consider an amendment along these lines on Report Stage, perhaps giving powers to direct a local authority to take action in an emergency?

Local authorities already have that power, but they will not exercise it. The county manager will say that the local authority will not be responsible for flooding further down the line. This amendment would be useful in terms of avoiding that. If that right is there, at least the Office of Public Works will be the adjudicator as regards an emergency. Otherwise people will take it into their hands to relieve flooding by emergency measures.

I understand the strong views expressed but they are based on a misconception about the role and remit of the Office of Public Works. It is not a local authority and it is not geared to deal with local emergencies. It is a national body. Much of the comment is an indictment of local authorities. The thrust of this and other comments about local government is that more should be devolved to local level. This runs counter to the idea that a national body should become the local emergency service for flooding. That is unrealistic.

The Office of Public Works does not have the remit, the equipment or the local centres to do that. It is unrealistic to expect the Office of Public Works to take over a job which local authorities should be doing, although they may not be funded to do so and that is another question. It would be a retrograde step to suggest that the Office of Public Works should become the emergency provider of services to every local authority which has a flooding problem.

The Office of Public Works is not above criticism. We have been banging on the door for 30 years. We are as near to this now as we were in 1965. I ask the Minister not to criticise local authorities. I am speaking about my own area. We have been banging at the door for 30 years and we are as near to it now as we were in 1965. Please do not criticise the local authorities.

The criticism that local authorities will not do the work came from the Deputy.

I have the height of praise for the actions of the local authority in south Galway as it did everything possible when people were isolated by flooding. However, it did nothing and cannot do anything to solve the problem of flooding.

I thought amending the 1945 Act would allow the Office of Public Works to be involved in the emergency relief of flooding. Under other sections it will have the power to get involved. In this amendment we are seeking a little extra power for the Office of Public Works. I would support a body — the local authority, the local community or the Office of Public Works — that would relieve flooding. Is it better to do nothing and allow houses to be flooded than allowing the water to follow its natural course to the sea? It is always better to allow the water to follow its natural course.

When I visited the village one farmer suggested cutting through a hill and bringing the water down to Caheradoo lake to save people's houses. The contractor said they would start it in the morning and that they would be paid sometime.

The purpose of this Bill is to extend the powers of the Office of Public Works, which were confined to major arterial schemes, to carry out local schemes in a planned and organised way. However, it is not the intention to involve it in emergency action locally. That is better dealt with by local people or agencies rather than by a national body.

I have been passionately involved in this matter. The area that was flooded is no longer in my constituency so I have no further political interest in solving the matter.

Can the Deputy arrange a flood in Connemara?

However, I have a passionate interest in solving the matter for the people who went through such grave suffering. The flooding has had a psychological effect on those people and some of them will not recover for a long time.

The Minister hinted at environmental damage but this aspect has been hyped out of all proportion. The people who have lived there for generations have as much interest in protecting the environment as anybody else. In the drainage scheme we carried out in that area, for example, we damaged ash trees but I got replacements from Coillte Teoranta and gave them to every farmer in the area. I have as much interest in protecting the environment as anybody else.

This hyped up idea that nobody can protect the environment except the wildlife section of the Office of Public Works is for the birds, if the committee will pardon the pun. I will not accept that people do not have an interest in protecting the environment. What is greater for protecting the environment than to divert the flood waters from areas that should not be flooded? Is that not protection of the environment? Taking flood waters out of houses and off roads to allow people to live their normal lives is protecting the environment.

I accept the Minister's view that this amendment cannot be accepted. However, it will lead to people taking emergency action themselves. That will happen more often because people simply will not put up with what they had to endure last winter and which I saw at first hand.

My attitude to this is different. Since the introduction of this Bill there has been too much emphasis on emergency flooding. I realise that it occurs and that it causes great difficulty, especially in areas such as Galway. However, of its nature and description, flooding occurs occasionally and disappears in a short period.

I am worried that if we over-emphasise this type of flooding, all the funding available to the Minister could be spent on emergency activity to the total neglect of the areas where there is permanent flooding, for example, on the Owenmore and Arrow rivers in my constituency. It is an emergency for the people along the shores which has lasted since 1929. This should not be neglected.

Under the Arterial Drainage Act, 1945, a list of priorities was drawn up. In fairness to the Governments and to the Office of Public Works in particular, which insisted on this matter, the list of rivers was strictly adhered to. There was no jumping of the queue. We lost out because we had not reached the top of the queue and just as we reached the top, arterial drainage is finishing although I appreciate why this is being done. Arterial drainage of the entire catchment area is being replaced in this Bill. That is good because we do not have the requisite finance to carry out major arterial drainage.

However, as we are at the top of the queue I would like an assurance from the Minister that arterial drainage — a limited amount such as taking out the main blockages on the main arteries, perhaps, without going into every stream and rivulet in every part of the catchment area — will go ahead. I would also like an assurance that the old list, in which we had reached the top, will not be neglected and a new list produced. I understand that there will be a list of priorities. The fact that we have reached the top of the old list should be to our advantage in the compilation of the new list. That is apart altogether from the fact that the flooding in the Owenmore and Arrow should put it at the top of any list.

We are now winding up the arterial drainage of catchment areas. An incredible job has been done by the Office of Public Works through the years and it has yielded enormous benefit. I have seen the benefit in my native area where the Moy was the first five to be completed. The work was carried out in Mayo and Sligo, through my native townlands and up little rivers. I am aware of the benefit that work produced and a well deserved tribute should be paid to the Office of Public Works for its work on arterial drainage.

The answer to both of Deputy Nealon's questions is yes. His eloquent description of the list will be borne in mind. I cannot give a guarantee that it will be first but it would be most unfair if something that had come up through a list of priorities over a long number of years should be at the bottom of the ladder. That will not happen.

Deputy Nealon commented on ending the arterial drainage scheme. It might not be final. The probability is that the Deputy is right but a situation could arise in future where the economic value of the larger scheme might become a positive factor. However, the Deputy is right about the immediate future — the concentration will be on small local drainage schemes. The Deputy made the important point that we should not think only of emergencies. We should raise out perspectives and try to prevent such emergencies by taking permanent remedial action locally which would, perhaps, greatly reduce their number.

I fully support that and I hope that this amendment will never have to be utilised.

It would be a severe temptation.

I believe in nothing but a permanent solution. Water can only be drained from an area by bringing it to the lowest point of its exit, which in our case is the sea and which is, at most, only five or six miles away from the flooded area. The water itself is anything from 17 to 35 feet above sea level. What happened in 1990 and what became emergency flash flooding has now become permanent flooding in some areas. For example, the area around Tarmen and Roo just outside Gort has now become a permanent lake. It is, therefore, no longer a question of emergency flooding. The affected areas must be drained. In addition, it is not merely a question of flash flooding, which disappears after a few weeks. It is the kind of flooding that stays for months. If the Minister can assure me that work will proceed on the draining of those areas I would be willing to concede that there is no need for the amendment.

The Government has established an interdepartmental committee to work on a national response plan for floods, with an emphasis placed on local services and so on. I must take on board what Deputies have said with regard to the inability of the local authorities through lack of resources or whatever, to undertake the necessary services. If a national response plan does not produce a solution it is a very poor plan. The thrust of some of the Deputy's comments was mainly directed at the fact that the local authorities are unable to cope with this, therefore the Office of Public Works should do so. The national response plan must tackle the kind of issue described by the Deputy and must equip the local authorities accordingly.

With regard to the situation in south County Galway, we have advertised for consultants to produce a solution to this complex problem. We are down to considering three applicants and final interviews will be conducted next week. I expect an appointment to be made early next month to enable consultancy work take place on the area of south County Galway with which the Deputy has been so identified. However, because it is a complex issue, ecologically, environmentally and in every other way, it is not something that will be done in a couple of months. Until the study has been completed and the measures decided upon we will have serious problems again if we are unfortunate enough to get the rainfall this winter we got last winter. This would be unacceptable in the area described by the Deputy. Until we know what to do, which will not be decided in a very short time, there is not a huge amount that can be done. Hopefully, the consultants would, as part of their brief, identify some obvious short term measures.

This is the vital question. I accept the establishment of a group of consultants to consider the issue. However, I am slightly sceptical, as the only solution is to get the water to the sea. There is no other solution and I will not charge the Minister £1 million for telling him this. In the meantime, pending the appointment of consultants to consider the situation in south County Galway, does the Bill allow the Office of Public Works to open the swallow holes to see if it will have a beneficial effect?

I thank the Minister for his response. Most of the views expressed reflect the frustration that has been expressed to us in different parts of the country with regard to the response to emergencies. When is the national response plan likely to be established as something such as this is needed?

I accept the points made by the Minister on the amendment. The Office of Public Works has so much work to do that it would appear not to be doing anything. There is a need to do something.

Within the next three to four months.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Section 3 agreed to.
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