Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

One thing that strikes me about this is that the benefit of a strategic approach to flood risk mapping and planning, etc., is to the benefit of the Irish people. I do not see that it actually has much relevance to the EU because it is not funding measures to respond in general.

The directive was concerned that all of Europe would be advancing at the same kind of pace and when the directive came along, it had deadlines in it and they were taken up as being the national deadlines. I would say in this situation we should have had our own deadlines anyway for delivering this and we should be reporting progress in relation to that. That is just an observation on the EU's role.

As to why the EU would be penalising us for being late on these, there is probably not a lot of reason because it does not affect the Single Market or whatever. However, getting to strategic delivery of flood protection and flood response is in the Irish interest.

I have a number of questions. I will not repeat the ones which have already been asked. I have a degree of sympathy for the OPW in relation to this topic because it is virtually impossible to measure the scale of this. I have spoken on this topic before and I also feel that, perhaps, some people do not want to know the scale of it because the costs associated with it could be incredible into the future. It is almost like being in a slow bicycle race towards the inevitable future we know we will have to embrace, which is putting in flood prevention measures across the country. That said, there were serious concerns in relation to costs, timelines and the management of the process. At the initiation of this, nine projects were proposed, which number was then reduced to four. I know some projects were done by local authorities in different combinations and avenues. Were there projects which did not get to the starting line? How were projects ranked? Surely, there is a piece of paper somewhere recording the ranking on the four and how the decision was made. There must be some critical analysis somewhere. The projects were not just picked at random.