Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I too would like to hear something about the due diligence and metrics applied in terms of the compilation of Project Ireland 2040. It seems upon reading it that much of it was a restatement or rehash of announcements that had long been made and that people have been long awaiting.

The Taoiseach spoke earlier about the weather event and the status red the country has been through. He quite correctly commended the public services and emergency services. There has been infrastructural damage as a result of the very severe weather. The Taoiseach was in Wexford and he saw at first hand the devastation there. The stories among the farming community, where sheds caved in due to the bearing down of record snowfalls, were extremely worrying. It may be a mundane matter, but does committee D propose to look at this weather event and assess the infrastructural needs or gaps that arise as a result of such weather events, for example, the issue of technical specifications for sheds? This might seem mundane but it is an important matter. Will these types of issues be addressed? In terms of transport and housing equally, it not just a case of picking over the damage that has been done but planning in a concrete way for future episodes. Sadly, with climate change and global warming, it seems that increasingly these severe weather events are with us.

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