Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

As the Deputy knows, discussions are continuing with the public service unions. That engagement is continuing this evening, so it would not be helpful for me to say publicly where we are at the moment, other than that there is an engagement taking place. Work will continue to see if we can find a resolution to the issue, which is sufficient to meet the requirements of the situation.

A day of strike action is not within my remit. This issue is being dealt with by others. As I made clear last week, the Government's position is not influenced one way or the other by the existence or prospect of strike action on Thursday. It is about trying to address the issues as we have outlined them. We will not be changing our approach because of what others contemplate doing. The fact is that an engagement is taking place, which is resuming this evening. We will continue to work and if there is anything to report in terms of an outcome, that matter can be dealt with by the House in due course. However, I do not envisage having anything further to say about it today.

The Deputy also raised the flooding question. There are ways and means for Deputies to raise that issue again. It was dealt with extensively last week by agreement in the House. As the Deputy said, the situation continues to be serious. We are continuing to work in accordance with local emergency plans that are in place. The vagaries of weather patterns, including rainfall, are dictating that response in different parts of the country. As we have seen, the east of the country was also affected over the weekend. We will continue to deal with that through the central mechanism of the emergency co-ordination committee and local task forces that are implementing the emergency plans.

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