More than 100 'unauthorised' developments on River Shannon

Details of a "remarkable" level of unauthorised development along the River Shannon were outlined at an Oireachtas Committee meeting last week, which heard of how over 100 “major” large-scale developments are operating without a licence and pay no fees to Waterways Ireland.

The meeting also heard that the total number of “encroachments” along the Shannon currently stands at 430 and, while efforts are being made to regularise the situation, no legal action has been taken against the operators of any of the unauthorised developments.

The CEO of Waterways Ireland, John McDonagh, confirmed that the organisation does not have “a permit system or licence arrangement” in place with the operators of the unauthorised structures and “no fee income” is being collected, while fees are being collected from developments that have planning permission and a licence to operate.

The situation was described as being “remarkable” by Public Accounts committee chair, Brian Stanley, who accused Waterways Ireland of doing “shag all” to regularise the situation. In response to a question from Deputy Stanley as to how much work it has done with the local authorities to sort out planning permission, the CEO replied that they had not done “an awful lot of work” on the planning aspect. When questioned as to whether they had done any he replied, “No. The work we are doing is research on how many exist, where they exist, what the arrangements are."Pointing out that it was “not as simplistic” as driving along either bank of the Shannon with “a notebook and camera... and a mobile phone,” in a bid to identify unauthorised development, as had been suggested by Deputy Stanley, John McDonagh said there were “300 or so in place” before Waterways Ireland was even formed and many were over 25 or 30 years old.

Deputy Stanley accepted there were “many legalities” around changing ownership and title deeds under the umbrella of Waterways Ireland, but he wanted to know why more urgency was not being applied to “large-scale operations without licence, permit, fees or planning permission? Zero. Nothing. It is a remarkable situation.”

Operations Manager with Waterways Ireland Éanna Rowe said unauthorised development notices had been served “in some cases” and they had looked to “regularise the situation”.

“You have looked to regularise it, but have you taken any legal action?” asked the PAC Chair.

“Not that I am aware of,” replied Mr Rowe.

He clarified that the reason they had not initiated legal action was because they had “started the process” in relation to the identification of the “actual encroachments on the Shannon” and had resourced an internal unit with five people to deal with this issue, with plans to increase that number to eight. He added that the process would take “a considerable amount of time”.

In response to a question from the PAC chair about the amount of “lost revenue to the State” as a result of these unauthorised developments, Linda Megahey from Waterways Ireland said that, having worked with “other bodies” who had experience similar situations “what we have found is that the income will be offset by the cost of regularising and maintaining these encroachments, so there really is a nil effect overall.”

Ms Megahey also confirmed that Waterways Ireland is currently examining the “major encroachments” along the River Shannon. “We have resolved 18 recently, 37 are in progress and 55 are open,” she said.

The unauthorised developments were described at last week's meeting as including commercial developments such as moorings, jetties and other hard-surface structures, with many of them operating in direct competition with other businesses which have followed the rules around licencing and are paying the prescribed fees.

Éanna Rowe said Waterways Ireland had classified small-scale developments as “anything under five berths, and what we call large scale are anything over five berth” and he said none of the structures they are currently researching are temporary.

Waterways Ireland undertook to supply “a detailed brief” to the Public Accounts Committee outlining the number and scale of the 430 alleged encroachments on the River Shannon and also to provide them with full details of all the contacts they have had with the 10 local authorities operating along the Shannon.