Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

We need to understand the severity of this problem. In a series of locations in my area, namely, Blackrock, Sallynoggin and Stradbrook, and I suspect this is also the case elsewhere in the city and across the country, people have been repeat victims of flooding. It keeps happening in the same places and the consequences of it have been devastating. Flood waters mixed with sewage have washed through people's homes. The inside of their homes have been utterly ruined and walls have been knocked down in some cases. Backgarden walls have been washed away and have smashed into houses behind them. People were forced out of their homes and are still out of them because of the damage done and they have to pay for alternative accommodation.

The key point is that this was not a natural disaster. The fact that it has happened repeatedly in the same places points to the fact that it was a man-made disaster arising from the chronic failure to invest in water and drainage infrastructure in those places where it has been known for many year, in some cases decades, that there was a serious problem.

There has also been a failure on the part of planners to insist on proper water and drainage infrastructure when development was taking place, which means more water has been displaced and flooding got worse. All the places that have been flooded indicate that the flooding has got worse. Therefore, there should be no restrictions on the compensation provided for flood victims because it was not their fault.

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