New OPW Minister commits to finishing Athlone flood defences

On his first official visit to Athlone just before Christmas, the new Minister of State for the Office of Public Works has given a commitment that the Athlone flood relief works will be finished as planned.

Minister of State for the Office of Public Works Patrick O’Donovan, who took over from former Athlone TD Kevin 'Boxer' Moran in the role, visited Athlone for a series of meetings and to view progress on flood alleviation works at a number of locations.

The Minister met with the ‘Save our Shannon’ group and listened to their concerns in relation to flooding issues along the River Shannon. The Minister outlined to the group the progress being made by the Shannon Flood Risk State Agency Co-ordination Working Group in the implementation of its programme of work to assist in alleviating flood risk on the Shannon, following on from his attendance at the Working Group’s meeting earlier in the morning.

The Minister visited works at The Strand, The Quay and Deerpark and was updated on progress at these and other locations in Athlone.

Speaking afterwards, the Minister said: “I’m delighted to see so much progress has been made on the Athlone Flood Relief Scheme. This has been the result of great cooperation between Westmeath County Council and the OPW which has led to the scheme being implemented in a very timely manner”.

The Minister paid tribute to the great standard of work being carried out by OPW’s Direct Managed Workforce and said: “already, many homes have been protected from flooding by the works completed to date and I can assure the people of Athlone that I am committed to having the rest of the scheme completed as soon as it possibly can be”.

Speaking to local media, he reiterated: “We are committing to finishing it.'

And he said although there had already been considerable investment, more money would be provided.

He also said the scheme remained on target to finish in 2022, despite time as a result of Covid.

However, he stopped short of committing that the largest part of the scheme, the Deerpark cell, would be completed by the end of next year.

“We'd hope so,” he told the Westmeath Independent, before explaining: “The only thing I can say in terms of a commitment is that there are no resources being held back by the Office of Public Works, staff on the ground, or Westmeath County Council.”

He said the aim in Athlone is to get to a situation “where we are not looking at the paper and seeing the Defence Forces being deployed out or calls for volunteers.”

“That's what we want to get away from because this town has has too much of that and that's what the OPW are committed to.”

He argued that the biggest difficulty facing flood relief schemes around the country was “objections and delays and schemes being frustrated.”

“We will never be able to protect all of the communities around the country that need to be protected if we work with the regulatory environment that we are working with at the moment and with the pace that we are expected to work with.”

Minister O'Donovan argued: “The process that can get us to the situation where we can put a digger on the side of the road here in the Callows in Athone is too slow.”

However, he denied that the solution lay in the creation of a single Shannon Management Agency.

“I could spend the next five years creating an agency in the Dail.

I have to take powers off Bord na Mona ESB, Waterways Ireland, over 20 local authorities, all of those agencies. I would spend the next five years bogged down inside in the Dail.”

He said instead he would prefer to look at the existing legislative environment around timeframes and see if time could be shaved off there. However, he acknowledged: “Realistically I'm talking about months, not years.”

He said he had asked his own officials and the Attorney General to look into this.

Minister O'Donovan said there needed to be reappraisal or priorities.

“We need to have a really difficult conversation in this country in relation to hierarchy of protection.

What's at the top to be protected? In my estimation, it needs to be the person, life, number one, and then the human habitat. But in some people's estimation, unfortunately, it is the habitat for everything other than a human that comes first.”