Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As is the case with confirmation processes we have recently been through, for example, in Blackpool in Cork, a small urban village in an old part of Cork city, which my colleague, the Minister, will be familiar with, just when we thought everything was ready to go, we were taken into a judicial review process at the last minute. None of us knows the length of time it will take to get through it. That is very frustrating, particularly for old people living in old communities. Many of these towns, villages and urban centres are particularly old, vulnerable places, and Crossmolina is no different, that have been scourged for years by the plague of flooding. I have put it on the record of the House previously, in the presence of both the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and the Ceann Comhairle, that the current system for the delivery of these schemes is just not fit for purpose. There has been a great deal of toing and froing in COP26, but if these Houses are going to respond to the scourge of climate change, they might do me and the Office of Public Works a favour and tackle the system in respect of planning for the delivery of climate mitigation measures. They would be doing all the communities they serve a huge favour.

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