Mr. Kieran Kehoe:

In relation to the Deputy's comments to us, there is good and bad news on the funding compensation. I thank my colleagues here. We deployed a lot of our staff over that period, and the costs of the resources and people were all fully compensated. Substantial damage was done to our social housing stock, particularly in those areas I mentioned. A line could be drawn from County Louth to County Clare, and everything to the north west of it was very severely impacted. It involved lots of damage to our housing stock. That is going through the process of being recouped too.

The one area where we are having a challenge in seeking recoupment is roads damage. One of the things that may have been somewhat missed in the overall context is that west Cork took the initial impact of the rain that came in with Storm Éowyn. I mentioned the snow events that happened earlier in January, particularly in Limerick, north Kerry, west Tipperary and north Cork. Severe damage was done to the roads network there and we are still trying to recoup the costs. It is beyond our normal capacity. We are all familiar with our annual roads programmes. This damage is well beyond the capacity of the local authorities to repair.