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

I come to the length of time. What caught my eye in the briefing sent to the committee was that the average duration of the scheme development and preliminary design phase is 48 months. I understand what happens when you stop water from flooding one part of a town. In Mountmellick, for example, if you move it from Manor Road, you could finish up with it down in Acragar. There can be unintended consequences. I understand that the planning process must be carefully done. Public exhibition and confirmation can take 24 months, and detailed design can take 12 months. The average length of construction is 36 months and handover of works can take 12 months. That means it takes 11 years, assuming everything goes according to plan. Mountmellick was badly flooded in November 2017, which is almost seven years ago, and there is not a shovel in the ground, to put it simply. What can be done to shorten that? The public are looking at this. It takes 11 years. I hope I am wrong, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that this could drag on for 13 or 14 years. Houses and businesses on Manor Road, Derrycloney, Moore Street and Patrick Street were damaged. There have been several heavy rain events since, where water has come down from the Slieve Bloom mountains. It rains heavily and three hours later it arrives in Mountmellick. I acknowledge that the county council has done a lot of the work Mr. Casey has talked about. While they are not removing bridges, they are clearing the eyes, widening channels, taking away debris and putting in screens. It has come close to flooding again on a number of occasions. Businesses including a restaurant were flooded. Somebody mentioned plates floating around in Midleton. We were almost in that situation in Mountmellick. What can be done to shorten this, because it is not acceptable that we could be waiting 12 or 13 years for a scheme to come in for Mountmellick and Portarlington, which was also flooded that day? Surely to God, with all of the expertise we have, the 48-month timeframe can be shortened. Surely the planning process and the 24-month exhibition phase can be shortened. There is also room for shortening the detailed design phase. I understand that construction on its own takes 36 months and the handover takes 12 months. Surely all of those could be reduced. I was led to believe, in my naivety, that this would take three or four years. That was mentioned at previous hearings. Maybe I got the wrong impression when the OPW was here in the past, but I thought we were looking at between five and six years. However, I read last night in the briefing document that was sent to us that this will take 11 years, which is extraordinary.