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

The successes are varied and the challenges are immense in terms of the delivery of protection to communities across the country. I am viewing them from a policy point of view as climate adaptation and that these are responses to serious events that can happen in terms of both the tide and river basin management. They can have an impact, which is getting worse thanks to climate change.

We have made some very significant progress. For instance, in the past week, we completed the one in Douglas and handed it over to Cork City Council. The work at Springfield, Clonlara, County Clare, which has dominated "Morning Ireland" winter after winter, is almost completed. We are only waiting for some pumps there. Templemore is almost completed and Ashbourne is due to be completed shortly.

Then there are others that are more challenging. In Deputy Durkan's part of the world, the Morell project, for instance, is moving along and, when complete, will demonstrate its effectiveness. The Chairman's city of Kilkenny was relieved with a very significant one. However, there are huge gaps. The gaps are well known. Enniscorthy, County Wexford, is one, Crossmolina, County Mayo, is another, Cork city itself is a huge one and then there are parts of this city for which we will have to come up with some serious remedies around how we will adapt to the challenges of climate change, both in terms of coastal communities where the coastline is being washed into the sea - I saw an element of that east Cork the other day - and in other areas, where tide will become a big problem. I visited Holland last week and saw a tidal barrage that was built almost ten years ago at a fairly extreme cost but it is protecting 1.5 million people behind it. No doubt the challenges are enormous. The OPW, even as late as this morning, was discussing how we incorporate nature-based solutions, particularly in the context of protecting our biodiversity and protecting habitats, while at the same time recognising that we have large urban spaces that need to be protected from the one-in-200 year or one-in-100 event which, unfortunately, is becoming more frequent. There was a time that such events were infrequent. They happened once in a blue moon. Now they could happen once a year.