Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There were a lot of questions there, with respect. I will try to go through them all and give as many answers as I can.

On the Red Cross flooding scheme, I, as the Deputy knows, spent quite a bit of time in Midleton speaking to businesses that had been impacted by that flood. It was one of the most extreme flooding events I had seen in nearly 26 years in politics. Effectively, it triggered the need for the Government to introduce an enhanced flood support scheme through the Red Cross, which is what we have done, so we now have two schemes. We have the standard scheme, which allows businesses to get €5,000 upfront and then up to €20,000 in supports on the back of a proper audit and an assessment. Then we have the enhanced scheme for more extreme flooding incidents, whereby a business can get €10,000 upfront, although there is a checking system there linked to damage to make sure we are not overpaying. A business could also then claim on the back of an audit and an assessment up to €100,000, which is a fivefold increase on the previous scheme.

I felt it was justified and the Government supported me in that. We now have a good template for how the State needs to respond to flooding incidents, whether it is a standard cash injection to get businesses back up on their feet in respect of things like changing carpets, floors and so on, or whether it is a more extreme incident where businesses have significantly more damage and very limited or no insurance.

This week, I went back to the Cabinet to look for more money because the cost of the scheme has effectively doubled. We had anticipated this scheme would cost about €4.3 million and it will now cost around €11 million. We got approval to ensure that the Red Cross can continue its work and make the financial allocations. About 75% of the business are in Cork and the other ones are across Galway and Louth. There were other parts of the country as well that were part of those schemes.

We are trying to be as flexible and practical as possible with regard to the assistance while, at the same time, making sure the insurance industry plays its part too. We cannot have a situation where the insurance industry only offers limited insurance to businesses in some parts of the country because they feel the State will pick up the tab for the rest. There are parts of the country where it is not possible to get insurance because of flood plains, historical flood damage and so on, and until we put flood protections in place, that is unlikely to change. We are talking to the insurance industry and have done so. We are pushing hard to try to get flood defences in place. It is absolutely worth noting the difference between the towns in Cork that were badly damaged by floods and the towns that were not. Towns like Fermoy, Bandon, Skibbereen and Clonmel, where significant flood defences have been put in place in recent years by the OPW, are not getting flooded, even with the more intense rainfall we have seen in recent years, and that is because those flood schemes work. Therefore, we need to provide those protections in more towns that are potentially vulnerable, Midleton being an obvious one. There is a big priority for the Government to push ahead with that scheme as quickly as we can.

I hear what the Deputy is saying with regard to under-insurance. We have spoken to Red Cross representatives about that and have asked them to be practical. This is a humanitarian response, after all. There are parameters, of course, that the Red Cross has to operate within but it is also given flexibilities, within reason. To be fair, much flexibility has been shown for many businesses in Midleton. I know some feel a bit hard done because they have not been able to get more. However, there has probably been more flexibility shown in this particular flooding case than in any other I have been involved in. We will continue to work on that and work with businesses that want to relocate. I am happy to be helpful to those business through the agencies and any other way we can help.

On the Unified Patent Court, the Deputy has been a strong and consistent vocal advocate for getting on with this. We are now doing it, so I hope he will help us to get it across the line. I have been slow to be too public about explaining this referendum and the reasons behind it because I do not want to distract from the other two referendums that are happing before it in March. We need to get them across the line first. I do not want to create confusion in respect of what is being asked in three different referendums taking place over the next few months. As soon as the March referendums are out of the way, I intend to be very vocal in explaining what is on offer and the potential risks of not passing it, which are quite significant for Irish businesses. Roughly 550 patents are registered each year, with some companies registering multiple patents. In simple terms, we want businesses to be able to register a patent which will then have protections across the European Union, or at least the vast majority of it, through a single patent court. That makes a lot of sense in respect of efficiency and cost. It also allows us to take advantage of our place in the EU Single Market from an innovation and protection of IP perspective. There is no downside to doing this at all in my view. However, it requires a change in the Constitution. If we are going to set up an arm of the Unified Patent Court in Ireland, our court system has to accommodate that, and that requires a constitutional amendment.

Regarding the cost and the timelines around it, first of all, we are trying to get this passed and get the Irish people to approve it. We will then work with the Department of Justice and the Courts Service to get the physical infrastructure in place, which will not be too demanding, by the way. We are not talking about hundreds of thousands of cases. This will be an important office but not one that is dealing with enormous numbers. For the businesses concerned, it means they will be able to protect innovative new products and services right across the European Union at much lower cost. If they have to take a case because someone is breaching that IP protection in another EU member state, being able to do it through an arm of the Unified Patent Court in Ireland is much easier.

I hope people will support this. It seems like kind of a technical issue that will not impact on the lives of most people and families in Ireland. That is why we are holding it at the same time as the local and European election. I think we would struggle to get enough interest otherwise. When people are going to the polls in those elections, it makes sense to ask them to approve this.

On the IDA sites, I can give the Deputy the detail of what the IDA is doing in respect of regional sites if he wants me to. I know he is particularly interested in one site in east Cork, which is right at the centre of his constituency. I am familiar with that site, as he knows. I pass it on a regular basis. I continue to talk to the IDA about how we can use the larger sites we have strategically, and this one of them.

One of the things I have said to this committee before is that we will fund the IDA to undertake a strategic land purchase programme over the next number of years. We need to assemble new landbanks around the country for large and not-so-large multinationals coming to Ireland in the future to operate international business. We are running out of large sites. Looking at opportunities in places such as the Shannon Estuary, for example, we need to build publicly owned landbanks that the IDA can sell internationally in strategic locations that are well connected in respect of energy and water, and strategic from a university and skills perspective as well. The Amgen site, as it is called locally - which gives Amgen a lot of coverage every time people refer to the site – is part of the mix. East Cork is doing pretty well from an IDA perspective. There is enormous investment and huge employment there, and this can add further to that.

The Chair can stop me if I am going on a bit too much with regard to time.