As I write this, over 100 people in Co. Galway and Co. Roscommon are seriously ill due to pollution of their drinking water supply. It is still unclear what caused this pollution, but incidents like this should serve to remind us how easily drinking water supplies can become polluted.

However, at last weekend’s Fianna Fail Ard Fheis, a motion was passed calling for the suspension of “no notice” cross-compliance farm inspections and the introduction of a 14 day notice period for all future inspections.

Similarly, the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, met with the IFA Executive Council on Wednesday March 21st, and promised that if Fine Gael were elected to Government, “no notice” farm inspections would end and that the IFA’s demands for 14 days notice of such inspections would be met.

Cross Compliance refers to a set of management procedures that farmers are legally required to implement in order to be eligible for the Single Farm Payment. 4 out of the 19 management procedures covered by Cross Compliance relate to prevention of water pollution. Inspections are carried out on a “No Notice” basis by the Department of Agriculture to increase the probability of uncovering high-risk activity on farms.

If it is the case that the contamination of the water supply in Co. Galway is due to agricultural pollution, will Fianna Fail and Fine Gael honour with their commitments to the IFA?

Or will they finally acknowledge that agricultural pollution of drinking water is a serious issue in the west of Ireland, and forego the electoral endorsement of the IFA in the interests of public health?

I have my doubts.

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INN, the news service that supplies news to lots of local stations like Shannonside, reported yesterday morning that the Green Party were proposing to add 20c to the price of a litre of petrol.

This is not true. INN misread the press release.

The actual proposal is:

The abolition of motor tax, to be replaced with a fuel levy of 2c that will be phased in each year over 10 years

The abolition of VRT, to be replaced by a levy that reflects the fuel efficiency of the car

The idea behind these proposals is that people will pay for motoring based on how much the use their car and how fuel efficient their cars are, rather than as is currently the case, where people pay a flat tax based on their engine size, even if they only use their car for one day in the year.

Under the draft Green Party figures, a person buying an average car (Ford Focus 1.6) and travelling 15,000km per year, would save €2,214 over five years (apr €443 per year). A person buying a 1.9L car converted to run on plant oils could save about €6,094 under the same conditions (€1,219 per year), while somebody buying a new 4.2L Range Rover would pay an extra €4,349 (€870 per year).

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I made a comment on a TV show in recent weeks that seems to have struck a cord with quite a few people.

I said that while talking to four 14 years olds whom I was bringing to a football match in Sligo, I discovered that only one of the four had Broadband access at home. I made the point that if I had been living in Poland, and bringing four 14 year olds to a football match there, all four of them would have had Broadband at home.

The absence of Broadband availability in rural Ireland is of deep concern to me. The view seems to exist that Broadband is only something that businesses need be concerned about, and because these generally locate in urban areas, Broadband is not an issue.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Every one of us now lives in a global economy, where jobs and capital can be moved around like pieces on a Monopoly board. In 20 years time, there will be no such thing as national economies; every service and every product will be traded globally, in real time, where distances of thousands of miles are reduced to flickers on a computer screen.

In that type of economic environment, knowledge is everything. Investment will be attracted not by tax rates or grant aid, but by the ability of workforces to deliver high levels of productivity.

This is the world into which we are sending our children, a world in which the only currency of any value is knowledge.

Broadband delivers knowledge into our homes in the same way that underground pipes deliver water. If we are not providing our children with the same access to knowledge as children in other countries, we are undermining their ability to be productive, and they will suffer for it.

Broadband is not a luxury; it is an economic and social necessity. Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats didn’t realise this when they sold Eircom (with Fine Gael’s support), and they don’t realise it now.

I want to see the State make whatever investment is necessary to ensure that every house in rural Ireland has access to affordable Broadband, even it no one is going to make a profit from delivering it. That’s a non-negotiable as far as I am concerned, and I won’t entertain any other proposal. This is just too important.

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I live about a mile from Leitrim Village and about 3 miles from Cootehall, 2 villages in the Upper Shannon Basin that know all about the effects of the Section 23 Rural Renewal Scheme.

Leitrim Village has quadrupled in size in the last 5 years, and there are now more holiday homes and apartments in the village than houses where people actually live. The centre of the village was also dug up to build an hotel, which was haled at the time as an economic miracle. The hotel, which still isn’t finished, is now up for sale.

Cootehall is another village on the Shannon, but is in Roscommon rather than Leitrim. Its famous for a couple of reasons. Firstly, its the home place of recently deceased and former FF Minister Sean “Doc” Doherty. Secondly, its where John McGahern grew up, which he describes in his book, “Memoir”.

When I first came to this area, I thought Cootehall was a perfect village. It was built around 3 sides of triangular green, unlike so many other villages that are built along the sides of national and regional roads. Every house on the green faced every other house on the green, which I though created a real sense of place and community.

This didn’t sit too well with Roscommon County Council, however, so they decided to granted planning permission for 40 holiday homes and helicopter pad on the green. Cootehall now looks like this:

Apparently, tearing the heart out of villages like this promotes economic development. I just wish someone would explain how.

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Leitrim County Council recently devoted an entire Council session to the issue of planning.

The debate that took place is interesting in that it yet again demonstrates that the elected members of Leitrim County Council don’t understand the basic principles of proper planning.

They appear to be stuck in some sort of pre-1964 Twilight Zone* in which issues like rural transport, waste management, water quality, road saftey, education, economic development and protection of the environment are a load of old nonsense made up by people in Dublin to keep themselves busy and have no meaning anywhere west of the M50.

Some of the utterances of the Councillors are worth repeating here (in some cases paraphrased) . I’ve added my own comments too. I haven’t noted the Party membership of the Councillors, given that there isn’t any distinction between them.

Cllr. Tony Ferguson (Manorhamilton):

“If we get a house built in Leitrim, its 5 jobs.”

Cllr. Ferguson would appear to be suggesting that we just keep building housing to keep people in jobs. I’m not sure how many houses Cllr. Ferguson thinks this would involve, or what we should do when there aren’t any more houses left to build. Perhaps we could knock them down and re-build them?

Cllr. Sean McGowan (Carrick on Shannon):

“I would ask the Council to look favourably on any planning application along the N4.”

Hopefully, at some future Council session, Cllr. McGowan can suggest a ways in which the N4 can be widened, if, as he hopes, it is lined with housing development.

Cllr. Michael Colreavy (Manorhamilton):

“I propose a reduction in site line requirements along the various roads in the County”.

Its hard to understand how an elected representative could publically call for a change in planning policy that would make our roads more dangerous.

Cllr. Enda McGloin (Dromahair):

“The 7 year Occupancy Clause needs to be removed from grants of planning permission.”

Where a grant of planning permission is made is an area which is experiencing development pressure, the Council will sometimes require the applicant to live in the house for 7 years. This is to ensure that valuable sites are used by people who want to live in the area and not by speculators.

The clause is very rarely used by Leitrim County Council, and where it is, it is never enforced. This had led to a situation in which up to 15% of houses for sale in Leitrim today are new builds that nobody has ever lived in.

I can’t understand why the Councillors want this removed. Given that suitable sites are becoming increasingly scarce in Leitrim, I would have thought that the Council should be doing everything it can to preserve these sites for people who want to live in Leitrim.
This might not be in the interests of speculators, builders and estate agents, but somehow I don’t think they’ll starve.

*Planning first became a legal concept in 1964

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If you are one of those people who installed a wood pellet boiler or stove with a Greener Homes Grant you’ll know how difficult it has been to source wood pellets over the last few months.

The situation has been particularly bad in the North West. The nearest place I was able to get them before Christmas was Ballymahon in Longford, so when I heard that Joe Simons in Boyle had taken a delivery I immediately headed over to get a few bags.

The pellets Joe is stocking are particularly good quality: very dense and no dust whatsoever. This makes a big difference in terms of the heat they generate.

But here’s the thing: they’re shipped all the way from Argentina!

This really frustrates me. I know that South American timber is much drier than Irish timber, and is particularly suited to heat generation, but surely there has to be a way that we can generate heat fuel of our own!

For instance, surely it would be better if we were producing our own miscanthus (Elephant Grass) which can be used in power stations to produce electricty, which could then be used for heat generation? And why do we not have funding of development to produce Irish timber that is more suited to heat generation?

I’ll be heading over to Simons again in the weeks to come. I can’t believe that my radiators are being heated with a renewable fuel produced in Argentina. It just doesn’t make sense…..

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