Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We can seek answers to that.

I raise the issue of capital works for flood relief. Item No. 18 in the response refers to Mountmellick flood relief scheme including the timeline and additional funding. It did not answer either of the questions on the additional funding for that. We also looked for a detailed report on Midleton and Rathcormac; I think Deputy O'Connor raised that. It is a problem to give a general note on what is committed to - the overall planned flood-relief works of €1.3 billion. That is all welcome and a number have been completed to date. They are included in tranche 1 of funding which is all to the good.

However, the Mountmellick flood-relief scheme has been in development since 2018. The town was seriously flooded in 2017. The reply states that the Mountmellick flood-relief scheme is currently approaching the end of stage 1. At that rate, it will be the second half of this century before anything is in place. I know that Laois County Council is anxious to push it and I am sure the same applies to the other schemes mentioned by other Deputies. To be approaching the end of stage 1 six years into it is awful. That is not progress at all. It stated that the Mountmellick and Midleton schemes are tranche 1 schemes and work on design for the scheme at Rathcormac went through as part of the national development programme.

Studies have been done. The public meetings and open days have been held. It is all welcome that there has been local consultation. There are still problems in the Derrycloney area and that needs to be resolved with local residents. The public cannot get their head around the fact that it has taken six years. This started out as a €3 million project and the last figure I heard was €8 million. One of the Deputies earlier mentioned construction inflation. The longer this goes on, the higher the cost will be. In our response back to the Department, we need to ask what it is doing to try to expedite these schemes. To take six years to get to the end of stage 1 is just not good enough. The town is at risk of serious flooding every time there is heavy rain.