Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like previous speakers, I acknowledge the dedication, commitment and, above all, the actions of the emergency services over the course of the weekend. I acknowledge the fact that the Minister of State got an opportunity to send his people to Cork, so he had some notice. He got there within 24 hours. We left here last Wednesday, and some left on Thursday, knowing Storm Desmond was on its way. I find it appalling that we had sufficient notice of the degree and scale of the storm but did not have a greater reaction and response on the ground.

In November, I asked the Minister of State two parliamentary questions about Peterswell, a village which is not a million miles away from Deputy Cannon's area. It was with regard to small remedial work and a proposal from Galway County Council which asked the OPW to take some responsibility at little cost. This proposal was based on local knowledge and contribution from the community along with Galway County Council. Will the Minister of State review these parliamentary questions, because today the village is under water? We could have made an intervention at some point prior to this at little cost, which could have saved significant amounts of money. I am conscious of the fact that we spoke in some detail about the role of the Department of Social Protection, but we should be preventing these situations. In his response, will the Minister of State give me some idea of the immediate, medium and long-term strategies in respect of dealing with these matters?

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