Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Aire is correct in saying it was a tsunami and the concern is obviously that there will be more tsunamis and that they will be worse. As the Aire mentioned, we were very lucky in Galway that there was no loss of life. We need to do everything in our power to ensure the people and the communities of Galway are protected going forward. I note he said there were not enough of these specialists, particularly the specialist engineers, both on a national level and on an international level. Does he know if we are training these specialist engineers ourselves at the moment and how many there are? Does there perhaps need to be a focus on it because as that particular business owner said to me this will only get worse so how do we ensure we have the people trained up? In the here and now we want to get this progressed as quickly as possible. However, we also need to look at the long term or fadtéarmach to make sure we have specialists who are able to do the work going forward. As a result of that I hope these issues will not take so long to be rectified. I welcome what the Minister of State is saying and we do need to see as much of that information go out to the general public. The general public will of course want things done as quickly as possible but there is obviously a realisation as well that it needs to be done to the best of the ability to ensure the safety of the people of the area.

While looking at these things on a long-term basis to ensure people's safety, what is being done on a short-term basis to protect communities while we wait on longer term measures to be enacted?

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