Mr. Michael Horan:

I will address the question on the length of time taken to deal with a flood claim. When a property is badly damaged by flooding, it can take time for all of the repairs to be done. It cannot be repaired immediately. Rather, it must dry out and be professionally cleaned. Only then can it be repaired and restored. This process can take some months, given the time it takes for some properties to dry. In extreme cases, as much as a year may be necessary. Unfortunately, this is a fact of life where serious flood damage is concerned. There is no point in trying to carry out rushed repairs on a property before it is fully dry. The repair would not work and would need to be done again.

We have suggested the establishment of a flood liaison group comprising stakeholders, including the insurance industry, to advise on flood risk management, planning strategies, etc. We see a role for ourselves in that regard. The IIF has a role as a conduit of information to insurance companies, for example, to update them on the remedial measures, large and small, that have been taken throughout the country. The OPW has carried out large projects in a number of major towns and cities and local authorities have taken smaller remedial measures in respect of flooding blackspots. If that information can be communicated to us, we can pass it on to the insurance companies, which can take it into account when making their underwriting decisions.

In terms of liaising with the OPW, we have made submissions on a number of CFRAM exercises. The briefing material that we have supplied is an abbreviated version of some of the points we made during those exercises.

Deputy Corcoran Kennedy mentioned the flood policy review group and those of its projects that took ten years or longer. We identified a number of cases as having taken longer than ten years. For example, the St. John's river project in Waterford was at stage 4 in December 2003 and stage 5 in late 2009. The Templemore project was at stage 2 in December 2003 and stage 4 in 2009. The Fermoy project was at stage 1 in December 2003 and stage 5 in 2009. It is a six-stage process. In some cases, it took a project five or six years to move from one intermittent stage to another.