Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleagues for their contributions. I am sorry that we did not have more time for this debate. We needed more time to discuss it. I am available to come back to the House at any stage to discuss this matter.

Taking up Deputy Ó Ríordáin’s last point this problem is not going away. The reality of climate change must be confronted. Only in recent years have we started to ramp up expenditure on capital flood relief schemes big and small all over the country. Where we have put in that investment in Clonmel, Mallow and Waterford the difference is enormous. The same is true along the Tolka and the Poddle where we have put in place enormous savings for people. That takes a lot of money. A total of €390 million has been spent in the past ten years and that has given much protection to people. This Government is spending €250 million over a five-year term, €45 million a year on an annualised basis. We would need to spend billions of euro every year to resolve all the problems in the country. That is not economically viable. We have to make sure that we have a cost-benefit model, that the funding resolves the problem for the greatest number of people, communities and businesses up and down the country. We also need buy-in from communities. There was a case in Deputy Ó Ríordáin’s constituency two years ago where we had funds ready to go, Dublin City Council had funding to go and 4,000 people objected to the proposal we were making.

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