Mr. Lawrence Owens:

I compliment the Minister of State's knowledge of the potential areas for flooding and she is absolutely correct. With respect to inbuilt resilience, she is correct that businesses would have placed an onus to invest an extra portion, but that must be controlled with some degree of logic. Even if businesses do the work, they may not get the credit with an insurance spin-off. There should be an agreement to put this in place from a legislative perspective, so if someone does A or B, there will be recognition of that from the insurance company. A voluntary process is still not good enough. The Minister of State is correct that the process has begun. Food businesses have a particular difficulty as the water that comes up is sewage water and it is polluted, so the entire building must be reinstated to a certain specification. There must be an agreed guideline and benchmark that the insurance industry can live with and which is in line with best practice in terms of the Government's understanding. It must be managed in this way. That would be a help but currently the process is just blowing in the wind with respect to what particular businesses do.

The Minister of State is correct about flooding in Cork. Blackpool is a particular area subject to flooding. One of the reasons is a lack of maintenance and she was quite right to highlight the waterways coming to Blackpool. Much of the water was cleared by local businesses to ensure water flows back to the Lee rather than flooding Blackpool. A combination must involve better management of waterways but the Minister of State is also correct in stating there is a lack of clarity about who controls the waterways. It is a case of it being one party or another but nothing happening, leading to it being someone else's problem. There must be understanding as to whether Waterways Ireland or the local council is responsible. If no one is responsible, no one does anything. That is a concern that we must clarify.

Some of the solutions are already there in plans, particularly for Cork, and they are on the conveyor belt to be rolled out. There are certainly areas with which we can examine models from the UK or elsewhere that have potentially effective strategies for introduction.

One can cherry-pick what is out there. In some countries, adverse selection is not allowed; an insurance company cannot refuse insurance. I believe that applies in France and Belgium. There are certainly areas we can examine where countries are doing it better or being more efficient. We can put our own efficiency in place in terms of our strategy and how we plan to go forward and, through a combination of those, we can try to resolve the problem.

Again, for the next six years at least, if the status quocontinues, there will be no insurance cover for the vast majority of businesses in Cork, irrespective of what they do to their premises.