Mr. Jim Casey:

The Deputy will be aware of the impact of Storm Babet in October 2023 in Midleton. The impact of that event required us to review the design standard.

At that stage we had a design for Midleton to bring forward to the stage 2 planning stage, but the scale and impact of that event required us to review the design for Midleton. Following the review of the event and relative to the proposed scheme design we made some small modifications to the proposed scheme. We are currently at stage 2 in the planning process for Midleton and the OPW has funded additional resources to Cork County Council to expedite the delivery on the Midleton scheme. Our next key milestone for Midleton is to submit for planning in quarter 3 of next year. Midleton is one of the most complex projects in the State because it suffers from flooding from all four sources, namely, tidal, fluvial, pluvial and groundwater, so it is a highly complex project and the total budget is of the order of €56 million to protect up to 720 properties.