Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I know that Deputy Boyd Barrett expects the State to do everything and to provide resources to everybody and anybody, including the local authorities that are responsible in the first instance for making sure that the gullies are clean. He should direct his question to the local authorities and ask what they are doing with their maintenance budgets to introduce preventative measures so we do not experience the level of flooding to which he refers.

The Office of Public Works is in charge of providing the necessary remedial action for flooding. It has a rolling fund of €45 million for 2012. If the Deputy's local authority wishes to have matters prioritised, I am sure it is in a position to contact the OPW and request that certain areas be prioritised.

I sympathise with those people who suffered from the floods in October. Unfortunately, there was a huge amount of rainfall in just three hours. It was definitely unexpected at that stage that so much water would fall in such a short space of time. However, we have allocated €10 million to help people in these stressful situations to deal with their properties and their belongings and to mitigate the hardship in some way. Various voluntary organisations, local authorities and the Red Cross are dealing with those issues. Community welfare officers from the Department of Social Protection and the local authorities are helping people to mitigate the damage. However, we should never expect the State to do everything for everybody.

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