Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

The flooding in Cork city has been the worst in living memory. Most of us living in Blackpool would realise that approximately four or five years ago there was a significant flood. It had exactly the same consequences, and the memory of being washed out of businesses and homes and having a contaminated water supply still resonates with people. They rarely forget it entirely.

The floods in Cork have ruined both houses and businesses, which we should remember. There are entire streets of homes - where people are living - now looking like a scene of devastation. Businesses throughout the city have also been devastated. One of the most awful results was the damage to the Glucksman Gallery and its paintings. This astonished me because it is not really in the basin of the valley and is on fairly high ground. That indicates how high the floods were.

The Kingsley Hotel had a €13 million renovation recently but has been completely destroyed, with people having to be evacuated in the middle of the night. In the Mercy Hospital, the river knocked a wall in rather than out. The damage occurred at 4 a.m. I met Mr. Paddy Madden, the CEO of the Mercy Hospital, the following night and he had been up all night trying to ensure that patients and equipment were saved, which they were. We should be eternally grateful that nobody was seriously injured or died, unlike in England.

We must be very grateful for the public services which have rallied in Cork and other areas of the country, going above and beyond the call of duty. They do not at all resemble the sort of people who are being vilified in the press as we speak. The Army and Naval Service were out, as well as the fire service and local county council workers who were filling drums of water. When people could not get there themselves, these public servants carried them to their cars. It was above and beyond the call of duty.

Some 18,000 households in Cork city are still without water, including mine. People here will be grateful to know that I had a shower when I got to Dublin, which is in everyone's interest. There are many people in Cork who do not have such a facility but those who still have running water and shower facilities are asking their neighbours to their house. They may not know these people or even met them but that is the type of community spirit that has always existed in Ireland. Unfortunately, it has been lost in the past few years.

We have been told by climatologists time and again that this will not be the only time this will occur and that it will become more frequent. Once in a century flooding will now occur every five years. What precautions are we taking and what will we do about it only very little? We need to start putting in place the type of measures which will ensure we do not come back here next year - or in two or three years - and have to talk about this again. Maybe we will not be so lucky next time.

There are people in Cork who will suffer a horrendous night tonight. The weather has been terrible and that only adds to the type of discomfort which people are suffering. Their homes and businesses have been destroyed, and it has quite an impact on people when they do not have what we have come to accept as normal facilities.

We must consider communications. The only public announcements were from the local broadcasters, such as P. J. Coogan, Paul Byrne and Paschal Sheehy. We need to take serious consideration of where communications failed.

See this speech in context