The Taoiseach's nonchalant wave of his hand in the Dil on Wednesday last when Deputy John Bruton mentioned the sewerage pipe on his land did not convince me or anybody else in this House that he did not have [963] any personal interest in this famous pipe. The Taoiseach, more than any Member of this House, understands the real significance of a main sewerage pipe going across his land. After all, has he not experienced this before on his land on the outskirts of Dublin in the Donaghmede area in the late sixties?

In that instance rumours and stories abound of undue pressure put on corporation engineers to extend pipes onto his land. Whether or not these rumours or allegations are true, the facts speak for themselves - the Taoiseach's former land was rezoned, thereby greatly inflating the value of the land and many hundreds of houses are now built on that land. One can be forgiven for sensing a touch of dj vu. Incidentally, that land also was zoned for agriculture use.
The history of the approval of the now famous Baskin Cottages pipe is one which smacks of undue political interference by the Minister for the Environment. The Kinsealy-Feltrim sewerage scheme has been planned for a number of years. In 1981, Dublin County Council submitted preliminary drawings for the scheme to the Department of the Environment. It is important to note, however, that neither at that time nor at any time in the intervening years was a pipe to the Baskin Cottages included in this scheme. On the contrary, on 17 September 1984 a motion was proposed by two Fianna Fil councillors asking the manager to extend the scheme to the cottages. In his reply, the manager said:
This scheme is independent of the Feltrim-Kinsealy Drainage Scheme proposal and there would be no necessity to connect the two.
The motion was never voted on or passed by Dublin County Council. Again, on 7 February 1985 in a further Fianna Fil motion efforts were made to extend the scheme to include the Baskin Cottages. [964] This time the manager was even more adamant in his reply. He stated:
The Baskin Cottages scheme is independent of the proposed Feltrim-Kinsealy drainage scheme and there would be no necessity to connect the two. There are no plans, therefore, to extend the Feltrim-Kinsealy scheme to serve the Baskin Cottages.
As a result of this report from the manager the Fianna Fil councillors amended this motion to remove this section calling for the extension to serve the Baskin Cottages.
In 1985, Dublin County Council sent the fully prepared scheme to the Department of the Environment for approval. One will recall that during those years due to severe financial restrictions very few capital programmes such as this were approved. During the following two years I tabled a number of questions to the county manager asking if we had received any approval from the Department for this scheme - the scheme without the Baskin Cottages. Each time I was informed that no approval had been given and the council were not in a position to proceed out of their own resources due to the cost of the project. As one famous Irish seanacha from Deputy Deenihan's county says, "things rested so" until July 1988.
By way of background let me remind Members that during the years 1987, 1988 and 1989 Fianna Fil in Government had a Pauline conversion and were for the first time ever responsibly, or so it seemed - perhaps it is not so clear now - tackling the severe financial problems of this country. They were being assisted at that time, again for the first time, by responsible Opposition, by way of the Tallaght Strategy. All over the country county councils and county councillors of all parties were screaming that they were getting no resources from the Department of the Environment for any of their planned schemes, water, sewerage, housing, etc. I say this by way of background in view of what happened in 1988 with regard to the expenditure of money in north County Dublin.
[965] At a Finglas meeting of 5 July 1988 under "correspondence" a letter was tabled from the Department of the Environment concerning the Kinsealy/Feltrim scheme. The letter indicated to Dublin County Council that the Department of the Environment had given approval to the working drawings as submitted to the Department and "to the Council's proposal to extend the scheme to provide for the disposal of sewage from the Baskin Cottage Scheme as outlined in the Council's letter of 9 May 1988". I was immediately alerted by the wording of this sentence as I had a clear recollection that at no time had the council or their members passed any motion or proposal to extend the scheme to the Baskin Cottages. On the contrary, the manager had advised against taking such action.
I then proceeded to investigate the matter more fully and in September 1988 I tabled a series of questions which outlined the exact history of this proposal. It would appear, and it has been confirmed, that on 7 July 1987 a short time after Fianna Fail's return to power the Department of the Environment on the instructions of the Minister wrote to Dublin County Council after a number of years silence from the Department and asked them "as a matter of urgency" to reexamine the Kinsealy-Feltrim scheme with a view to extending the pipe to serve the Baskin Cottages and other houses in the locality of the Baskin Cottages. Normally the Department of the Environment tend to ask councils to remove portions of schemes because of cost etc. and not, as in this case, to add expensive extensions. Following the letter of 7 July 1987 to the council - remember that this was during the summer holiday period when a number of engineers, etc., would have been on holiday - the Department wrote no fewer than twice more in the following two months demanding to know why the county council had not responded to their request for new plans and asking them to proceed with all haste to provide the necessary extension drawings, etc. These two letters were dated 14 August 1987 and 10 September 1987.
[966] In the meantime the council themselves had proceeded to prepare and examine the possibility of extending this scheme to the cottages. I now know, having seen the report on the file which mysteriously turned up again in the last few days, that the council engineer who prepared the report said:
I would recommend that the Kinsealy-Feltrim scheme should not be extended to service the Baskin Cottages as the present treatment works is quite adequate. I have discussed the operation of the treatment works with the maintenance Department and they confirmed that the works can adequately treat the existing sewage from Baskin Cottages.
This would confirm the earlier reports in 1984 and 1985 as the council engineers responsible for these matters did not feel there was any need to extend the scheme. The county council officials and engineers were now in a difficult position; they were being offered an additional sewage pipe which their own engineers did not feel was necessary. There are certain similarities between the position in which the council found themselves and the position regarding Carysfort College. As one council engineer put it to me at the time: "we cannot look a gift horse in the mouth".
In the event, the report which went back to the Department of the Environment on 20 October 1987 - remember all through this time we, the councillors, elected members, knew nothing of this, it all came to light after 1988 - did not include the council engineer's reservations about extending the scheme. There is an interesting portion in that letter of 20 October 1987 in which the principal officer said: "following numerous discussions and phone calls", but there is no evidence of what was discussed and what the nature of those telephone calls was. Instead it indicated in the manager's report to the Department that the most desirable way to instal this pipe was across the valley of the Sluice River through private lands. In the letter [967] from the Department of the Environment of 7 July 1987 it was made absolutely clear across which land this pipe would go, and I quote:
I am to request the county council to have these (Kinsealy/Feltrim) proposals re-examined, with a view to having the scheme extended to provide for disposal of sewage from Baskin Cottages which at present has an outfall to the stream flowing through Abbeyville.
I would like to stress here that at no stage am I alleging any wrongdoing on the part of any council official. They were in the predicament of being offered something which they felt they should not turn down but I was extremely critical of the proposal in view of the fact that so little money had been made available to Dublin County Council in 1988 for any new capital works and here was an unnecessary 78,000 going to be spent. I indicated publicly over and over again that this money would be better spent on some other schemes in the north county awaiting approval for a long number of years. In September 1988 when I first raised this issue, the Department not only approved the full Kinsealy-Feltrim scheme, at that stage priced at approximately 1 million, but they also approved a further two schemes in north County Dublin, namely the Darcystown drainage scheme in Balbriggan and the Barnageera-Blackhills scheme in Skerries. I am very pleased, for the sake of the people affected by the Darcystown and Blackhills-Barnageera schemes, that they got their main sewerage system but there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that these schemes were released and approved in that year in order literally to shut me up.
The net result of these approvals is that at a time when the Minister for Finance was demanding tightening of belts all around, Dublin County Council and specifically north County Dublin received in excess of 1.3 million to build these new sewerage schemes. I have [968] talked to many of my colleagues in councils around the country and they tell me that at that time it was virtually impossible to get even a penny out of the Department.
Much has been made about the new Development and Planning (Compensation) Act. It is true that the Bill was tabled in November 1988 but it was not passed into law until 1990. In the meantime the council had received the go-ahead to seek tenders and to place contracts. A contract was placed in May 1989 at a cost of 720,786.44. The Minister, Deputy Flynn on a radio programme recently, in his defence, indicated that he was only acting on the instructions of Dublin County Council in granting permission for the contract because they had approved the tender. He neglected to clarify that it was only the Fianna Fil councillors on 1 May 1989 who accepted the tender, as the minutes of the meeting - which I have here - will show. Fine Gael councillors and one Labour councillor voted against and two Labour councillors abstained.
There are still crucial questions to be answered about this issue. Who wanted or needed this pipe? Not the cottage owners who in recent times indicated that they were not even aware they were now on a main sewer as opposed to their own drainage scheme; not the council engineers who persisted, even after the Department's request, in saying that the pipe was not needed. Why, as was told to me, did the Taoiseach invite the council's chief engineer to visit him in his home at Abbeyville to discuss the issue if it was a matter of such indifference to him, as he has tried to imply? Why did the Garda planning inquiry request this file which they kept until very recently? What exactly were they looking for in the file? Who asked them to carry out this inquiry and what has been the outcome? Will we ever hear?
Because of the circumstances surrounding this project, despite the Minister for the Environment's spirited hindsight explanation and justification of his actions, one is left with the serious suspicion that the only person or persons [969] who stood to benefit, either immediately or in future, were the owners of the land across which the pipe was laid.
Perhaps I would not have these suspicions if, as I said at the beginning, land owned by the Taoiseach in the Donaghmede area in the late sixties, although zoned agriculture, ended up getting a main sewerage system and being rezoned for housing, thus inflating hugely the value of the land.
Professionals who are used to valuing land, particularly in the Dublin area, have indicated to me that even agriculturally zoned land with a sewerage pipe across it would have its value greatly enhanced by the provision of such a pipe. Certain uses are allowed under agricultural zoning, such as the building of hotels, rural industries, commercial recreation centres etc. However, if there was a possibility of land being rezoned, then the value of land with a main sewerage pipe across it could be increased from 3,000 approximately per acre to a figure as high as 35,000 to 40,000 per acre. It means that two or three hundred acres could be valued at anything from 10 million to 12 million.
The Taoiseach in a recent statement on 26 September 1991 failed dismally to explain the reasons his Minister got involved in this scheme in the manner I have described and at a time of severe financial restrictions. He attempted to imply that the extension pipe was entirely in keeping with the county council's policy where possible to eliminate small treatment works. Yet, he ignored the fact that consistently the same county council had refused to extend the scheme to the Baskin Cottages because they were satisfied with the operation of the treatment works there.
There is also a doubt in some legal minds that the 1990 Government and Planning Act actually applies to this particular pipeline as it was already under the ground before the Bill was passed into law. During the debate on that Bill a number of Deputies attempted to force the Minister into applying the terms of the Bill to land purchased before October 1988 but he refused. I believe there is a [970] possibility that some of the terms of this Act could well be challenged because of their retrospective nature.
The Taoiseach was given an opportunity, through his Fianna Fil councillors, to remove any scintilla of doubt or suspicion by requesting them to vote in favour of a motion tabled by me on January 1989 calling for the removal of the Baskin Cottages extension until such time as the Government Planning and Development Act, 1990, became law. He failed to do this.
Recently, it has been revealed in a Sunday newspaper - The Sunday Tribune of 6 October - and not denied, that John Finnegan of Finnegan, Menton Estate Agents and Liam McGonagle, Solicitor, have purchased a large parcel of land, 600 acres approximately, in the vicinity of Baskin/Cloghran.
Why are two men whose main source of living is not farming buying 600 acres of prime agricultural land in north County Dublin? These two men have been long time associates of the Taoiseach. One again wonders if they know something nobody else knows, or is it another one of these extraordinary coincidences that these two men appear to be members of the recently described golden circle? Can the Taoiseach tell the House if he has ever been involved in land or business transactions with either or both of these men? If we knew that we would have a better idea as to why they are buying the land in question.
Finally, my motivation in raising and investigating the Baskin Cottages pipeline since 1988 has been on behalf of my constituents and the taxpayers. My constituents do not want to see a concrete expanse being built in Kinsealy. The taxpayers are entitled to the assurance that their money is not spent wastefully or because of undue political pressure or favouritism.
I was accused in the Dil yesterday by Deputy Flynn, Minister for the Environment, of being uncaring about the environment. I challenge him to reread the reports given to me in 1988 by Dublin County Council in which it is clearly [971] stated that any pollution to the Sluice river was caused by houses and farms other than the Baskin Cottages, yet he refused to extend the scheme to these offending properties. Instead he limited the pipe to the lands of Abbeyville, thereby creating the whole suspicious scenario around this now famous extension pipe. It was within the power of the Minister to remove any suspicion of political interference.
Yesterday the Minister used words like "snooping" as if somehow I was worse than a worm going around looking for information. I did not have to snoop. The information available to me is widely available on the public record of county council meetings. I have received phone calls about all sorts of extraneous matters which I have not followed up because I do not think they are factual. Perhaps the Minister, Deputy Flynn, would like to know that his name came up as being a landowner in the area, but I have no evidence of that. I have not followed up every bit of information I have received.
This matter has come to the public attention again because of rumours of intention of disposal of land. The case rests there. It may be some years before it really comes to light as to what the real motivation behind this action was. I believe that the Taoiseach and the Minister still have questions to answer and I hope they will do so before the end of this debate.


