Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Anecdotally, Senator Denis O'Donovan, from west Cork, told me when we were in Bantry, which is where I am going tomorrow, that when he was growing up a massive Atlantic storm was likely to hit Bantry once every ten or 15 years but now the area is hit by four or five Atlantic storms every two or three years. We are playing Russian roulette with these communities unless we can get on and deliver to them. However, we cannot deliver to them and pretend that the legislative basis on which we have been asked to deliver to them is fit for purpose. It simply is not. I know that people will cry foul of the Aarhus convention and all of that. That is all very well and good when one has the Atlantic Ocean coming through your front door when you are living in the Claddagh. There is no one going to say protect the Aarhus convention when there is a wave coming bursting through the front door in Salthill so we have to get real. We cannot continue in the way that we are going.

As Minister with responsibility for the OPW, I must be honest with people. I cannot protect the communities that I am being asked to protect while I have the legislative basis on which I am being asked to deliver on. I ask my colleagues, as a Member of this House, to please bail me out. The way that I need to be bailed is that I need a new legislative basis in the planning Acts. When the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, says that he is talking about a judicial review for housing that sounds like manna from heaven to me because everything that I am trying to get delivered across the country at the moment is tied up in court and the only beneficiaries that I seem to hear at the moment is not the people who must use pales to get water out of their houses but people who are in courtrooms. The only people who seem to benefit from the work done by the OPW are the people who seem to be getting largesse out of courts and that is not sustainable. It is not sustainable where we have communities waiting 20 years, and in some cases more years, for flood relief schemes, especially when we know that the sea is rising at the current rate. A 1 metre rise in the Atlantic Ocean will wipe out whole communities on the west coast. If I am saying to people in the Deputy's constituency, and in my constituency up the Shannon estuary, that they have to wait 20 years then they may as well start asking themselves if they are better off moving now because we will not be able to protect them. This Oireachtas must respond in a positive way to climate change. I do not mean to start saying how much emissions we will claim to cut and clapping ourselves on the back saying we are great for cutting emissions by 30% and 40%, and that means absolutely nothing. I am talking about how are we actually going to deliver physically to these communities, and I do not mean cheques to barristers and solicitors who are the real winners at the moment.