Dear Editor, The Houses of the Oireachtas are rising for one week’s break. The next column will be sent to you on Thursday, November 9. Regards Tim Ryan Connaught Telegraph Tim Ryan, Oireachtas Correspondent Concern at rising river levels Concern that river levels throughout the country are far higher than they would normally be at this time of year because of the wet summer and the events of recent weeks was expressed in the Dáil by Fianna Fáil Deputy Dara Calleary. While Storm Ophelia was not necessarily a rain-led event, water levels did rise considerably during Monday, 16 October, he said. “There is now nowhere for any excess water to go,” he said. “This will result in significant and severe flooding either at some stage during the course of the winter. What plans are in place to deal with that?” “It continues to be a source of enormous frustration in my area and places like Crossmolina that the OPW will not clean riverbeds and will not do basic maintenance on parts of the River Deel in a manner that was done years ago before we had the technology available now,” he said. “That was done regularly and ensured a water flow. We are still waiting for information from the OPW about the plans there and similarly for Ballina. They need to know that they have the support of the Government and that the practical measures that will make their job much easier will be done in advance.” In reply, Minister of State Seán Kyne said maintenance of rivers and other watercourses can have a positive role to play in preventing the deterioration of channel conveyance capacity. “The Office of Public Works carries out a programme of arterial drainage maintenance to a total of 11,500 km of river channel and approximately 730 km of embankments nationally,” he said. “These maintenance works relate to arterial drainage schemes completed by the OPW under the Arterial Drainage Acts 1945 and 1995. The OPW has a statutory duty to maintain the completed schemes in proper repair and effective condition. The annual maintenance programme typically involves some clearance of vegetation and removal of silt build-up on an average five-year cycle.” He said the OPW and Mayo County Council are progressing an individual property protection pilot project in Crossmolina. “This initiative will provide protection to up to 76 properties and, together with another pilot project in Kilkenny, will inform any future feasible assistance by Government to homeowners for individual home flood mitigation,” he added. Speaking in the Seanad, Fine Gael Senator Michelle Mulherin said in November 2015, there was a small flood in Crossmolina and then there was a deluge in December. “It was absolutely horrific to see the devastation it caused in the middle of the town - not in an area where a new housing estate was built on a flood plain, but in one of the oldest parts of town,” she said. “It was the same in Ballina, where I live. Old parts of town that were flooded had never really witnessed the like of it before. Work in Crossmolina had been in train in terms of consultants being appointed prior to 2014 to come up with a flood defence solution.” Very late in the day, in 2014, she said the consultants decided that the option they were pursuing, which was to build flood walls within the town, could not proceed because in doing so extra pressure would have been put on the one bridge that goes across the River Deel. The whole bridge would have had to be replaced, which would have incurred significant additional cost. “To me, it was pretty late in the day to make such decisions, but cognisance nonetheless had to be taken of the engineering and scientific findings, so it was back to the drawing board. However, from 2014 to date, we still have not had the second option.” Conway Walsh critical of removal of €10m for Leader The Leader programme is desperately needed across rural Ireland for investment in communities and in the start-up of small businesses to provide employment, Sinn Fein Senator Rose Conway Walsh told the Upper House. It is not going to be done by things being shifted around, she said. In particular, Senator Conway Walsh said she wished to talk about the removal of €10 million from that programme for this year to be put into the Local Improvement Scheme, LIS. “I have no problem with money being put into the LIS - in fact, it is desperately needed for all the private roads in rural Ireland to be repaired,” she said. “However, the way that this allocation was made, and its announcement at the National Ploughing Championships, gave the impression that €10 million extra was being given to rural Ireland for the local improvement scheme. What the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Michael Ring, omitted to tell people was that he was taking this money from the Leader programme's budget for this year and putting it into the LIS.” “Forget about giving the illusion of investment in rural Ireland,” she said. “We need investment in rural Ireland and not just the illusion of it, as in this case and many other cases. I would like the Minister to come to the House to explain why he was not upfront in telling people the source of this money and to give guarantees that the Local Improvement Scheme will be funded properly in the years ahead.” .