Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

There are three parts to the Fine Gael motion. The first is the approach to the recent severe weather we experienced around the country. The second is the aftermath of the recent weather and flooding in November and the costs which will have to be borne by local authorities in clearing up the damage to our roads which resulted. The third issue is water disruption and what needs to be done in response to that issue, which was also caused by the recent weather.

I read an article by Tom Clonan in The Irish Times on how the Government responded, what the framework was for its response and if its response fitted into that framework. One point he made, which is the correct description of our recent weather, was that it was a slow-moving and entirely predictable emergency. We all knew before the Christmas holidays there was bad weather and we would have a white Christmas. The bad weather was predicted for at least a couple of weeks before it happened. The snow started in earnest on 1 January. I was travelling from Cork on that Friday. It started to snow and the traffic started to slow down on the N7.

By Monday it was clear there were problems arising. People were having difficulty getting out of their housing estates and getting into work and there were many slips and falls. The Government's emergency co-ordination committee did not meet until the following Thursday. We know that because it was confirmed by Sean Hogan at the recent meeting of the Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. There was a Cabinet meeting around that time. The emergency co-ordination committee meeting took place very late in the day. After Sean Hogan made his presentation to the committee I am still not clear who was in charge of co-ordinating the responses to the bad weather. I am not clear who the lead agency was.

My reading of the framework document for major emergencies is that the lead agency for the situation we had regarding the recent snow, ice and flooding should have been a Government Department. In regard to the snow, it should have been the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, but Sean Hogan argued that was not the case and that it should have been the local authorities. That is my understanding of the debate. He had a document which said the lead agencies for responding to the flooding in November were local authorities. I do not accept that was the Government's correct response. It has misinterpreted its own document because when I read it, it said local authorities should only be the lead agency by default and that ideally the lead agency should be a Government Department.

I read Tom Clonan's analysis and he has the same interpretation. He refers to the lead agency and the severe weather, and says the document identifies the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government as the Department with responsibility for co-ordinating a national response in emergency situations. There was a major problem, namely, that the Government was not willing to take on board the responsibility to give leadership regarding how to respond and co-ordinate the response to the recent weather and the flooding. There was an idea that local authorities should be left to fend for themselves. To be fair, their response was not perfect but local authority workers were out in many areas on New Year's Day and Christmas Day and were very much left to their own devices until the emergency co-ordination committee met on Thursday 7 January when the crisis was well under way and all of the problems had arisen by then. There had been many small accidents an many people had slipped and fallen. Schools were also in a problematic position, nobody knew what would happen regarding the opening of primary and second level schools.

For future reference, the Government has to take responsibility. The weather and flooding do not fit within local authority boundaries. The idea that local authorities should be the lead agency is not the correct response. In future the Government must take responsibility from the outset as soon as it becomes apparent that there is a crisis. It needs to meet and co-ordinate activity much earlier.

In the aftermath of the severe weather, local authorities have had severe cuts in funding to their roads budgets and have had to cut a large number of staff. For example, Cork county, which was very badly impacted by the flooding and bad weather has lost some 500 staff over the past year. I note the Cork county manager said it would need substantial funding to repair the roads in the aftermath of the flooding, snow and ice, that the roads had been damaged by gritting and that substantial road repairs would need to be carried out. Cork County Council applied to the Minister, Deputy Gormley, for €16 million to carry out the necessary repairs after the flooding and it was granted just under €6 million, which falls well short of what it needs. The county manager also complained that its overtime budget has been cut substantially so it cannot have people working overtime to carry out the necessary repairs.

Cork County Council is just one example and is probably one of the worst hit local authorities, but local authorities will be struggling in the year to come unless special provision is made for them to carry out proper road repairs. If these road repairs are not done, it will get worse. We will have accidents and lives may be lost because of the condition of the roads. I urge the Government to make sure that when the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, announces the road budget in February he makes extra provision for local authorities which need to carry out road repairs because of the recent flooding and bad weather.

On the issue of water, over the past few years the focus on investment in water infrastructure seems to have been on meeting the need for increased capacity in the water supply because of all the extra housing we built, the need to improve the quality of our drinking water because of requirements under European Union law and the need to comply with the water framework directive by 2015. That investment has been made. As a result of the recent problems with the existing creaking water infrastructure, the Minister has now decided to divert moneys which were to go new capacity and projects to deal with existing infrastructure. That appears to be a knee-jerk and crisis driven response by the Minister. He is also being opportunist because he is using the issues that have arisen as an excuse to say he will introduce water metering and water charges.

Whatever about the merits of those proposals, they are a red herring in terms of what needs to be done about our water infrastructure. A national strategy is required to deal with the need to increase capacity, the need to improve water quality and the need to repair the creaking water infrastructure that is in place for many years. We do not have enough information about what needs to be done. Instead of responding in a knee-jerk and headless chicken way, the Minister should present a national strategy on what he will do to improve the water infrastructure. He must provide information on what needs to be done, where the problems arise and where the infrastructure is in need of repair. That information must be made available to public representatives and to the wider public.

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