Ms Clare McGrath:

The call has to be made as to whether flood mitigation measures are put in place on top of what might be required for planning purposes in those areas if there are plans to proceed. The concern is the terror and horror for people of flooding in their homes. Would any have been avoided if the planning guidelines been in place in 2009? There is a question around that.

The contracts placed for the pilots were not €3.5 million; the contracts placed were €6.8 million. It was known because the information that came back from the market was that was the price for what we were asking them to do. We did get that estimate wrong but that was the price, placed at €6.8 million. That learning fed into the national programme where we are coming in within the overall estimated budget. We have learned from that.

I take the point about development of schemes. We have been developing capital schemes. This is taking us 18 or 24 months on for each of these areas that we would otherwise consider individually but now we have it all together. It is a question of capacity to drive that forward, which is why we have the additional funds and that is profiled out.