Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is the first that I have heard about it. Trucks are parking on the side of the road. The facility has not been provided in the way that an undertaking was given here at this committee, as well as other meetings of the transport committee. That facility still has not been provided. I ask Mr. O'Connor to give the committee, for the benefit of road safety, the correspondence the OPW has had from TII and the other stakeholders on preparing the facility. This is not about me getting on to the OPW; this is about joining the dots and giving value for money if we spend €10 million. I was involved in the haulage sector for 25 years so I know that there is never more than four to five trucks at the facility but there is parking spaces for 54 trucks. We do not need another facility to park HGVs. We need to give value for money to the Exchequer to utilise that space. In particular, at this point in time, we should not have anybody parked on the side of the road where there is an extremely busy community. There is a school that has over 300 children located right beside the facility and we should not have trucks anywhere near the roadside when the facility is virtually idle. I do not consider the facility to be value for money at this point in time. Maybe it will be in the future but at this point in time the facility is underutilised. We can save the Exchequer a lot of money by utilising it to its full potential because it is going to be at least five years before we see infrastructural change in Rosslare port. I do not want to know, Mr. O'Connor. The bottom line is that the facility is underutilised. The committee is here to discuss value for money and public Exchequer funding. The facility needs to be prepared and I need to see the correspondence to get that work done.

I wish to discuss the flooding of Bridgetown. Last year, on Christmas Day, we had serious floods in Bridgetown and I suppose this is Mr. Casey's area. I heard Mr. Buckley mention certain monitoring stations. Can Mr. Casey tell me which monitoring station did not work, thus resulting in Bridgetown and surrounding areas being flooded on Christmas Day?