The current flooding along stretches of the River Shannon – which weather reports are indicating could get considerably worse – “raises the need for a single waterways authority”.
The president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has said that a single authority “would take over responsibility for the oversight and maintenance of the state’s internal waterways”.
Pat McCormack outlined: “The present system of oversight – where a plethora of agencies, semi-states and bodies all jealously guard their own positions – practically guaranteed that no effective planning or response was possible.
As it stands now, we have the various county councils, departments, the Office of Public Works (OPW), the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), the ESB as well as various fisheries boards.
“It is simply not possible to plan or respond in any kind of timely fashion where actions have to be run past up to six different bodies all with different and often conflicting aims.
“The people who suffer most from the resultant indecision is the general population and, specifically, the farmers who lives and tries to earn an income from their holdings along the river.”
Concluding, the ICMSA president said: “A first and positive move by any incoming government of whatever hue would be the establishment of a single waterways authority to co-ordinate and manage state responses to what looks increasingly likely to be a much more frequent event.”