Mr. Maurice Buckley:

I thank the Deputy and will deal with some of these points myself and will then ask Mr. Sydenham to come in on the relocation scheme, the insurance question and the coastal budget. Mr. Adamson is our expert here and he might be able to comment on the turlough study and the concrete defences.

The €1 billion budget is ring-fenced within the OPW budget for flood relief works. Insofar as the Government is in a position to meet the capital programme - there could be a national crisis but hopefully not - that money is allocated to flood defences. The emergency response is primarily through local authorities. That money is for defence measures, not for emergency response to individual schemes, which is good news.

On the River Shannon, there is a Shannon group, where we are bringing together all the agencies with an interest or involvement in the River Shannon. A number of targeted measures are being undertaken at present to address specific points along the Shannon, quite a number of which are around Meelick, to improve the river flow and capacity, to remove trees and so on. There is no maintenance programme per seand to do so would involve an extensive change of legislation and environmental work.

What is happening is that two very important studies are being undertaken. One is on the callows region below Athlone that the Deputy himself knows well and is an environmental and economic assessment of the possible removal of a number of the pinch points there. It will examine whether that would make sense and be justified. A second study is being undertaken in the lower, old channel of the Shannon, parallel to Ardnacrusha to assess the hydromorphological - do not ask me to spell that word - impact over the 100 years or so since Ardnacrusha has been in place on the old channel. This will examine how it has changed, how will it change in the future and whether there are measures that could be initiated to help preserve the capacity of that channel. There is a lot being done there.

I will ask Mr. Sydenham to come in here on the relocation scheme, the statistics on that, as well as insurance and coastal issues.