Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Taoiseach did not reply to my question as to whether any application has been made for European assistance with the emergency fund? I would like him to answer it.

As a first point, I put it to the Taoiseach that the normal means-tested community welfare officer response to situations where people find themselves without money is not appropriate in this situation, and this will have to be varied. We are talking here about people whose homes have been flooded. The kind of documentation that community welfare officers normally seek may well have been washed away in the flood in many of these houses and, in any event, it is not appropriate that people who have gone through the trauma of a flood would go through the kind of rigorous means test that is normally applied by community welfare officers. Therefore, I ask that this approach be varied and that new instructions are issued to community welfare officers which are appropriate to this set of circumstances.

Second, I ask the Taoiseach to arrange with the banks, which are now supported by the State, to provide short-term credit for businesses and farms that need to get back into operation again and that have a requirement for short-term funding. These are people who must get back on their feet.

Third, throughout the debate yesterday, many Members, including Members from the Taoiseach's side and including a Minister of State, suggested an independent review should be carried out, when the floods have abated, to examine what actually happened here. Given climate change and all that is happening, we can anticipate spells of bad weather like this happening again and we need to be better prepared than we were on this occasion. The review needs to consider the flow of information — for example, what happened in Cork, where the information seems to have been somewhat deficient for whatever reason — as well the water management systems and some of the planning permissions that were granted for development and building on what were flood plains. There should be a review of this situation and I ask that it be carried out after the floods have abated.

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