Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. As I said, it is not a competition and I do not expect all questions to be answered. I acknowledge that the flood defence mechanisms that were put in place, such as in Mallow and Fermoy, actually worked. There should be an emphasis on that. Nobody could have predicted it affecting such a large area. In Midleton where the two rivers meet at the estuary with a high tide, one could say there was a problem there. However, given what happened in Killeagh, Youghal and Glanmire, there is a bigger picture.

On other days we could talk about flood defences, catchment flood risk assessment and management studies and stuff, but this is about making sure that we can get the information to the people who need it. We need to make it is simple as possible. We should acknowledge that the last time we were in trouble when a proper co-ordinated plan was put in place with the local stakeholders, the volunteers, the fire service, An Garda Síochána, the local authority, it worked extremely well. I thank them for that and I hope we will see such co-operation again in future. I want to reach out to everybody.

A while ago I came off the phone from talking to a teenage girl, who rang me up to tell me that she and a friend spent €40 on bottles of water and just walked around the town, handing them out. That is the community spirit we need. It is all about communication which is the most important thing here. I hope that by working together we can get this right for everybody in east Cork.

Then we can truly, genuinely start addressing where we went wrong, and it is to be hoped this will never, ever happen again.

I thank the Minister of State for his time.

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