Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I saw the Palestinian flag flying at the United Nations on the day of the climate change discussions. Obviously, that was remarked upon by a number of people. The point I am making in response to the suggestion that we should follow through with it now is that we need to be conscious of the fragility and uncertainty that exists at present as a result of the violence in Jerusalem, etc. I will certainly be happy to ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, to sit down with the Opposition spokespersons on foreign affairs to discuss this matter. I was invited to go to Israel and Palestine when I met the Israeli people at the UN. They were sitting across the aisle from the Irish delegation because the seating arrangement was decided on using alphabetical order. I raised this issue in conversation with them.

I assure Deputy Martin that we have set out the flood relief plan for the period ahead as best we can.

Clearly there are problems in his own city of Cork and in Galway, as well as a number of other places around the country that have been very severely damaged both by storms in the Atlantic and on the Irish Sea and because of rising tides and exceptional levels of water in rivers and lakes.

We will have a mid-term review of the capital programme, which sets out the spending of over €20 billion between now and 2021. The flood relief programme is being driven by the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Harris. Obviously some of the works involved are pretty major and will take a while to put in place, in terms of planning, laying foundations, engineering works and so forth. One would like to think that we would have more but between now and 2021, quite a substantial amount of money will be spent, reaching €100 million by 2021. We could look at that question as part of the mid-term review of the capital programme. There may be some items of planned infrastructure that cannot go ahead because of court decisions or planning objections. If the economy continues to improve, which I hope it will, and we arrive at a balanced budgetary position from 2019 onwards, there will be more money available for whatever Government the people elect to deal with many of the social and infrastructural challenges that we have. We could certainly look at it in the context of a mid-term review.

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