Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The fact is that we had absolutely devastating rains in north County Louth and Dundalk. As bad as they were, they could have been worse, which was the fear of everybody. When I submitted this issue for debate, I was not sure what Ministry to include because I have questions for the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on the OPW and flood defences and questions for the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on local government and its operations, and also on the entire issue of drainage schemes, a very particular issue that I will deal with in respect of Dundalk. Obviously, the Department of Transport has responsibility in that a large number of roads and bridges have been destroyed. Carlingford and parts of the Cooley Peninsula have been absolutely devastated. People are going through the rack and ruin of what are their homes and businesses.

I commend the community for all the work it did, even the mitigation work in parts of Dundalk, particularly the part I am from. In fairness, I have to commend the considerable work done by members of the fire service, members of the county council and many others, but there are questions about how we respond to issues like this. There are huge gaps.

We welcome the humanitarian assistance scheme and the emergency business flood relief scheme. We need to ensure there are flexibilities because, as I met people, particularly with Councillor Antóin Watters, I found more anomalies and more questions. In fairness, we have a fair bit of information flowing freely back to us but we just need to ensure we are looking after people.

There is a request for a scheme for farmers whose lands have been damaged and whose feedstock has been destroyed. I raised this with the Taoiseach and also the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue. We do need some sort of relief scheme delivered. As I said before, there are still people who cannot get to their homes because roads and bridges have been destroyed. As quickly as possible, the repair work has to get under way.

Let me refer now to the big piece of work. It was brought up by several councillors, particularly Councillors Antóin Watters, Edel Corrigan and Kevin Meenan. Councillors from every party across the Dundalk municipal area and north County Louth brought up all these issues at a meeting yesterday. The OPW is to be met by the council concerning flood defences and anything else that needs to be done. While people are talking about the need for works to repair their houses and businesses, they are also saying they need mitigations dealt with. There are question marks over actions that were carried out around drainage and legacy issues. Huge parts of the estate where I live in Dundalk were under water. While some people unfortunately got flooded, there was a fair amount work done to hold back the tide, for want of a better term. However, in real terms the only thing that saved us was the fact that the Tuesday night rains were not as significant as they could have been and storm Ciarán passed us by. Cluan Enda, Bay Estate, Greenwood Drive, Avondale Park, Meadow View and all the areas off Avenue Road and between Red Barns Road and St. Alphonsus Road in Dundalk flood regularly during normal times. What that tells me is that there is an issue concerning the combined system that deals with storm water and sewage. We have a pump station that Irish Water is responsible for but that is run by EPS Water, a subcontracted company. We need to have a major assessment of north County Louth and what can be done by way of mitigation, but we really need to consider that Dundalk cannot deal with these issues regularly, which means that times like these represent an absolute disaster. We are very close to one.

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