Mr. John Hegarty:

In the future, if sea levels rise, the tunnel in Cork will be flooded, the rail line will be flooded, the roads coming from Dublin will be flooded, the roads that take people to work will be flooded and the roads that take people to the major hospital, CUH, will be flooded. Our tidal barrier protects all of that whereas the wall scheme cannot adapt to that. We are talking about a scheme that any time there is a major flood event would shut the city down, and as time goes on, it would shut the city down even more.

We are also talking about the cleanliness of the water in the river. We are talking about good soil quality. We are talking about a scheme that looks at the best practices in flood relief management and uses them on our river to create a completely integrated and managed river that is safe and clean and works into the future. The wall scheme is an old-fashioned scheme and if it is built, it is so engineering heavy that it will move problems to places that have never ever had problems.