Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to make political capital out of the hardship of so many families whose lives were destroyed, in many cases by losing what they had worked all their lives for, but I am concerned about the delay. I had some experience of this in my local authority a number of years ago where there seemed to be reluctance on the part of the county manager to address delays. There is an emergency management framework and the Department of Defence is not part of that framework. Would that be a way forward? Civil powers such as the Garda Síochána, the local authority and the HSE are included, yet the Minister's Department is not at the table. The Minister has those extra resources that could be used and perhaps that is something to consider. We are running out of time before the next election but the Minister might address the issue with his Cabinet colleagues. Perhaps we should discuss it in the House when we come back - look at this whole area, learn from what we have done wrong in the past and try to start doing things differently in the future.

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