Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

I thank the Minister for his supplementary comments. The emergency situation comes down to two single factors, one is the emergency plans themselves and the other is risk assessment. The latter determines the level and ultimately the quantity of the response. The reports being sent to the Minister are intended to capture information on both those matters and how the emergency responses were worked out. I assume that to a certain extent not everything was foreseen in the risk assessment. The Inniscarra dam was a case in point where 500 million metric tonnes of water were going through it in a single second.

As the Minister indicated, there is a particular difficulty in Cork where the western side of the city flooded as opposed to the traditional eastern end of the city which was prone to flooding during periods of inclement weather. What action will be taken ultimately? Will we see an adaptation to various emergency plans or to how risk assessment is carried out in future?

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