Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister of State back. I always shoot straight from the hip. I thank him for all the engagement. I am grateful for the engagement of Cork County Council and the municipal district council. He knows what I am going to bring up. It is Midleton again. The last time we were here, when he was Minister of State previously, I raised the Midleton northern relief road bridge final study, the CFRAM study, in October 2013. What was frightening about that was that it gave a detailed map and depths of the potential flooding and what would happen. It tells us the route but, unfortunately, for some reason, the report seems to have been shelved. According to its recommendations, between €12,500 and €25,000 would have alleviated a lot of the flooding. The report predicted approximately 1 m to 1.5 m of water at the railway gates on the Mill Road in Midleton. It actually flooded up to the fascia board and the soffit of the bungalow before it overtopped and went down the Mill Road. That was documented in 2013.

I thank the Minister of State again for engaging with people in east Cork, whether it was in Rathcormac or Midleton, and on the big problem we have in Gleann Fia in Mogeely or the issues in Castlemartyr, Killeagh and Whitegate. I am grateful also for the engagements from Cork County Council and the OPW. I have made my feelings known to the Minister of State about inland fisheries.

The crux of this is that, like everything, we have tranche 1, tranche 2 and tranche 3. People are getting very anxious and many of them panic any time there is a warning of heavy rains. A lot of work has been done on flood protection barriers for the houses and I know there have been little tweaking issues there. Some doors are not standard, so Cork County Council has had to go back and retender, but I thank the council for its speed. I asked the question only on Tuesday; it was back to me Wednesday. It was on top of it straightaway.

My biggest fear is the pace. The Minister of State has heard other speakers say the issue is the pace of getting these flood mitigation works done. Some 600 homes and 300 businesses were absolutely haunted. Nobody was killed. I had never seen water like it in my life. We are making progress but it is slow. The biggest fear I have for people is the loss of a home, in particular in Gleann Fia because they are timber-framed homes and you cannot get flood protection barriers for them. I urge the Minister of State to try to expedite this. The farmer next to that estate has given land. There is the possibility of diverting any more flooding - if it will happen again, which it probably will - into that field and the culvert into Castlemartyr. That will give those living there at least an assurance. If their timber-frame home is flooded for a second time, it is goosed. I appeal to the Minister of State on that.

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