Mr. Maurice Buckley:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. I will bring in my colleague in a moment on the recent IPCC report on climate change. The €1 billion investment is a good sum of money. Obviously, we would always welcome more but it does allow us to put in place a very wide-ranging programme covering a very large portion of the schemes that can be economically justified at this point in time. The climate change impact will arrive progressively over the coming years - no one can say how soon - and as that happens, new investment will undoubtedly be required to extend the existing schemes and put schemes in place where they are not currently required or economically justified. The two scenarios I spoke about - the 50 cm sea level rise with the 20% increase in river flow, and the 1 m sea level rise with the 30% increase in river flow - have been selected on the basis of the climate change science and the best analysis with the experts in Ireland and internationally on the best assumptions and scenarios to take in this context.

I might ask Mr. Mark Adamson to comment on how that has been impacted by last week's United Nations report.