Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I am also thinking that in order to succeed in any such situation there needs to be evidence available to support the concept. We have, for example, for want of a better word, flashpoints around the country where severe flooding takes place and has taken place again and again. We call it a hundred year flood or whatever it is. The fact is that there is a means to stop it. We have the means to stop it. A drainage system, if operated, will curtail the kind of flash floods we have in the centres of towns and villages and so on. To what extent can we deal with that more quickly than we have done in the past? The same floods appear again and again, and the same floods threaten houses again and again, year after year.

Why should that be? Is it not possible with today's technology to be able to ensure the drainage takes place to be able to alleviate the potential for flooding?

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