Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach hit the nail on the head when he said he has visited some of these places. Lots of visits have taken place. I even remember President Michael D. Higgins came to visit Gort in 2019 and 2020. That is all fine but everybody goes away and people are left with the flooding. As the Taoiseach said, the design team was appointed in 2017 for the south Galway Gort lowlands flood relief scheme. We are coming into 2024 and we are looking at whether it will be a viable scheme. There is an issue around Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, doing a culvert under the motorway. That needs to be taken out of the cost of the scheme because it should have been done properly by TII when it was building the road. The Taoiseach quite rightly said that the likes of the Dunkellin or Claregalway schemes have brought immediate comfort to people living in those areas. The people there are delighted and the jobs were done fantastically well by the OPW and the local authorities. The problem remains that the pace at which this work is carried out is too slow, given the devastation flooding causes to people, property, farms, farmers, livestock and the environment.

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