Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

There is not a word about them. All we can hear is yelping. I do not know what it is about, but it is certainly not good debate. However, I am happy to be part of it and to pay tribute to those bodies of which I spoke and which came out in the most awful weather, put out their trucks and brought us all up around Clonown, Golden Island and Clonbunny where nobody else could go but in a high Army truck. Of course we never had weather like that. On top of the floods, we had snow and the frost and then we had water shortages.

It is a marvellous tribute to the bodies of which I spoke. Local authorities, which practically to every county, most amazingly, are chaired by Fine Gael or Labour, think they can put all the blame onto central Government.

We have learnt a deal through those four deluges - the real deluge, the snow, the frost and the water shortages.

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