Kevin Moran (Longford-Westmeath, Independent)
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I very much welcome the opportunity to address the House matters relating to flooding. As Deputies are aware, this is a priority issue for the Government. We are focused on the delivery of flood relief management measures to address flooding issues for communities across the country. I will be brief in outlining some of the relevant context, achievements and challenges in relation to actions that have been taken to tackle these flooding problems. I look forward to engaging with the Deputies on the issues and working with them on the delivery of much needed solutions for our communities that are affected by flooding and flood risk.

The Office of Public Works, OPW, co-ordinates the whole-of-government approach to manage coastal and river flooding and its social, economic and environmental impact. It does this through the interdepartmental flood policy co-ordination group. The whole-of-government approach is necessary to support flood risk management. The Departments and the State agencies involved each take a lead in the context of providing efficient supports and policy measures within their areas of responsibility and promoting and addressing community and individual responses. The core policy objective is to reduce to the greatest extent possible the impact of flooding on homes and businesses across the country. In doing so, the OPW provides support for non-structural measures and delivers structural measures, including working closely with local authorities to progress flood relief schemes for the at risk communities nationwide.

Flood policies have three key pillars, namely prevention, protection and preparedness. These are underpinned by research and data evidence. Prevention is aimed at avoiding or removing flood risk and can be achieved by, for example, avoiding construction on flood plains. Protection is aimed at reducing the likelihood or severity of flood events. This typically involves physical work such as defending at-risk areas against flooding through the delivery of major flood relief schemes. Preparedness includes actions and measures that can be taken to reduce the consequences of flooding. I refer, for example, to informing the public about preparing for the risk of flooding and taking appropriate actions during a flood event.

Historically, risk management focused on arterial drainage to improve land for agriculture and to mitigate flooding. Arising from increasing flood risk in urban areas, the Arterial Drainage Act 1945 was amended in 1995 to permit the OPW to implement flood relief schemes to provide flood protection for our cities, towns and villages. To identify the communities that are at risk from significant flood events, in 2018, the OPW completed the largest study of flood risk ever undertaken by the State. The catchment-based flood risk assessment and management, CFRAM, programme was undertaken by engineering consultants on behalf of the OPW, working in partnership with the local authorities. The CFRAM programme studied 80% of Ireland’s primary flood risk and identified solutions that can protect over 95% at risk.

As the Minister of State with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works and flood relief at the time, I was pleased to publish the 29 flood risk management plans to address flood risk in Ireland in May 2018. These plans have provided a roadmap for the Government's significant investment in flood relief schemes today, identifying 150 new and additional flood relief schemes that will provide protection to approximately 23,000 homes and businesses in communities across the country. The Government is supporting the delivery of the measures outlined in the flood risk management plans by means of national development plan funding of €1.3 billion to 2030.

Progressing this significantly increased programme of flood relief schemes requires capacity and capability in the highest specialised areas of engineering. Many of these schemes are being led by the local authorities in partnership with the OPW. As each scheme is progressed by multidisciplinary teams, designing the optimal technical solution, ensuring a robust approach to environmental assessments, and meeting other regulatory requirements are all essential steps that are required to be undertaken. To assist in the delivery of the of the schemes, the OPW is funding 50 engineering staff in local authorities across Ireland.

Nationally, significant progress has been made to date in the delivery of these ambitious programmes to protect communities against flooding from rivers and the sea. Investment through the national development plan and working in partnership with the local authorities has allowed the OPW to treble the number of flood relief schemes at design planning, or construction to some 100 schemes at this time. Work to protect 80% of all at-risk properties nationally has either been completed or is under way. To date, the OPW has invested €570 million in 55 flood relief schemes, protecting 13,500 properties with an estimated economic benefit to the State in damages or losses avoided of €2 billion.

The OPW's major flood relief schemes are typically designed and built to a standard that protects areas against one-in-100-year flood events and coastal areas against one-in-200-year flood events where it is feasible to do so. These are major flood events that can cause significant impact and are often called once-in-a-lifetime floods. In reality, the phrase "one-in-100-year floods" means there is a 1% chance of such floods occurring in any single year. While the likelihood is low, the impact of these floods is significant in terms of the damage caused.

The OPW’s work is particularly important in the context of climate change, which will have a significant impact on flooding and flood risk in Ireland due to rising sea levels, increased rainfall in winter, more days of heavy rain and more intense storms. Certain studies indicate that climate change has already had an impact on our climate on the basis of recent flood events. These effects will become stronger over the decades to come. As with managing existing risks, the first step in managing the potential future risks associated with climate change is to assess what the possible impacts will be, where they are likely to occur and how severe the impact may be.

The OPW flood mapping programmes have included projections of future scenarios, taking into account the potential impacts of climate change. As a result, the OPW has comprehensive national information of potential future flooding from rivers and the sea for all areas across the country. These include the impacts of a range of possible scenarios for mid-range to higher end projections, such as a mean sea level rise of 2 m.

As well as informing where flood relief measures might be required, the flood maps prepared by the OPW are an essential support to sustainable planning and development management, and the effective implementation of the statutory guidelines on planning and flood risk management. The OPW provides support, workshops and seminars to the various planning authorities and reviews all forward planning documents to help ensure that flood risk is taken into account in planning directions and that the guidelines are implemented efficiently.

While the OPW strives to expedite the progress of flood relief schemes, major flood relief schemes involve complex engineering and construction operations that can impact people's lives and the built and natural environment. The process is lengthy and detailed and follows five stages from feasibility through to design, planning and construction. While timelines may vary significantly from project to project, completion of stages 1 to 5 takes, on average, a total of 11 years. Specifically, the five delivery stages are as follows: scheme development and preliminary design, an average of 48 months; planning process or public exhibition and confirmation takes an average of 24 months; detailed design takes an average of 12 months; construction takes an average of 36 months; and, finally, the handover of the works takes an average of 12 months.

Any flood relief scheme that is being developed needs to map and understand the location and the flooding sources and constraints. These are achieved by extensive and wide-ranging surveys to understand the topography, hydrology and environment of the community. Market demand and competition for these necessary surveys for flood relief schemes and other developments has resulted in an extension of the period of time needed for these surveys to be completed. Detailed technical analysis is further required to establish the most appropriate solutions, technically and environmentally, from the range of possible design options.

Extensive public consultation is required at various stages to ensure that those affected by the scheme have the opportunity to input into the design and implementation. The delivery of all schemes must meet the regulatory and planning requirements. While a key part of due process, timeframes to obtain planning decisions, as well as managing judicial reviews to those decisions, impact on delivery timelines.

Notwithstanding these challenges, I am pleased to report that in 2024, five schemes - those at Crossmolina, King’s Island, Morrison’s Island, the River Poddle and the River Wad phase 1B - progressed to construction stage, as planned. This brings the total number of flood relief schemes currently at construction stage to 11 schemes nationwide. Such schemes will benefit communities in a wide range of counties, including Cork, Clare, Dublin, Kildare, Limerick, Tipperary, Mayo and Westmeath. I have visited a number of these sites. Recently, I was pleased to turn on the interim pump solution to help manage the flood risk at Lough Funshinagh in County Roscommon pending the completion of a permanent solution. Roscommon County Council, with the assistance of the OPW, is actively working towards preparing for submission a planning application for the permanent solution to flooding at the lough.

When the schemes in the flood risk management plans are completed, 95% of those properties assessed in the CFRAM study will be protected from flooding. The residual risk is being addressed by other flood risk management measures, including the minor flood mitigation works and coastal protection scheme, individual property protection, the voluntary homeowners relocation scheme and enhanced preparedness, including through the development of a national flood forecasting and warning system and the promotion of individual and community resilience.

As well as managing significant flood events, the OPW supports local authorities in managing localised flooding risks. Under the OPW minor flood mitigation works and coastal protection scheme, local authorities can undertake minor flood mitigation works or studies to address localised fluvial flooding and coastal protection problems within their administrative areas. Under the scheme, applications are considered for the projects, and the estimated cost is no more than €750,000 in each. As of the end of 2024, the OPW had approved funding of €68.6 million across 900 unique projects.

Under the Arterial Drainage Act 1945, the OPW completed 34 arterial drainage schemes on river catchments and five estuarine embankment schemes. The OPW has a statutory duty to maintain and complete these schemes. The arterial drainage maintenance programme comprises 11,500 km of river channel and up to 800 km of embankments. This provides drainage for 260,000 ha of agricultural lands, as well as a level of protection from flooding to essential infrastructure, including in excess of 20,000 properties, 2,400 km of roads and 77 towns and villages.

Under the 2024 programme of works, maintenance was carried out on 1,937 km of arterial drainage channel and 207 km of embankments. These works comply with all relevant environmental legislation through a range of environmental assessments, including strategic environmental assessments, appropriate assessments and ecological assessments, and are supported by widespread stakeholder consultation.

Concerns about the impact of arterial drainage on the environment have resulted in calls to review the Arterial Drainage Act. I am not opposed to a review of the legislation, if necessary, but I am concerned about the importance of schemes delivered under the Act to the communities that are protected by them. In that context, the Programme for Government - Securing Ireland’s Future, contains a commitment to completing the second phase of the land use review, which is aimed at balancing environmental, social and economic considerations. Any review of Arterial Drainage Act requirements must be framed by land use policy and have regard to flood risk and existing and future requirements for arterial land drainage.

If I may, before I conclude, I will take the opportunity to sincerely thank my officials in the OPW. They deliver key services to a wide range of clients and communities. I am pleased to work with such a dedicated team. I am proud of the long legacy that the OPW has in delivering these services across the country. I would also like to thank the Members of this House for their time, work and commitment in the context of improving society and the lives of our citizens. I appreciate their interest in matters relating to flooding. I invite and welcome statements from them.

Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Tá a fhios agam gur rud é seo atá fíorthábhachtach don Aire Stáit. Fáiltím go bhfuil na hóráidí seo ar siúl inniu.

I recognise that this is an issue that is of particular interest to the Minister of State. I thank him for facilitating these statements, which are very welcome. I also recognise that there has been a significant increase in funding for the OPW's flood defence programme in recent years. I understand that from a financial perspective and acknowledge that more has been done with regard to flooding. As the Minister of State outlined, this is not solely a financial issue and it was never predominantly one. I remember having significant engagement with one of the Minister of State's predecessors, the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, on this issue when there was bad flooding in Clifden, which he visited at the time. We have had bad flooding in Galway city as well. At the time - almost five years ago - I stated that many of the issues were due to how long it takes to develop flood defences, as the Minister of State outlined just now.

Flood relief schemes are complex, multi-annual projects in respect of which detailed analysis of the sources and causes of flooding is required. Of course, there is a need for detailed stakeholder engagement, whether that is with people who live in an area, who are affected and who have seen how things have changed. I always think it is quite interesting speaking to people who live in a locality and discovering how the nature of flooding there has changed.

One of the things we all recognise is that it takes far too long for projects to go from the initial stages to completion. At the moment, there are the initial phases that involve scoping exercises, scheme development, preliminary design, the planning process and detailed design, and that is before we even get to the point of doing the physical infrastructure part. It can take many years for larger projects to be completed. The Minister of State mentioned 11 years. Previously, some projects took seven years to complete. For those who are faced with the fact and fear of having their homes flooded and have previously had them flooded, this is deeply concerning. This is a situation where we have good news to the effect that flood defences will be provided but where it then takes a long time to get them in place.

In Galway, there is the area of Spanish Arch, the properties around the Claddagh and the city itself. We have the Coirib go Cósta scheme. I welcome the fact that approximately 940 additional properties will be protected once that scheme is complete. We were told last year that planning permission for the scheme may not be applied for until 2027. Will the Minister of State provide an update on the Coirib go Cósta scheme? Specifically, will he indicate whether he is still planning towards 2027 in respect of this scheme? Can the scheme be expedited or has it been delayed? It is very important that people have all the information in this regard.

I am aware that a significant commitment has been made to Galway when it comes to flood defences as part of the national development plan. As a result, the review of the latter needs to be published soon. Is there anything in the review that the Minister of State can tell us about which might be relevant to the Galway flood defences?

The Minister, Deputy Chambers, has set up a new task force on infrastructure delivery. I hope the issue of flood defence will be included in that. When we are looking at lands that can be built on, flood defence is a crucial consideration. We had oral questions with the Minister this morning. He stated that the task force will look at barriers to getting infrastructure delivered. If the length of time we know it takes for flood defences to be completed could be a particular focus of the infrastructure task force, that could be quite worthwhile. There have to be ways for us to find efficiencies, whether it is procurement or identifying steps that can be a bit too onerous - without making them not onerous enough - and that are contributing to delays in delivery.

The Minister of State's predecessor, the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, previously stated that skills shortages are an issue. From my previous role as spokesperson for further and higher education, I know that there are major issues in our craft apprenticeship system in terms of delays. I have often floated the idea of a craft apprenticeship guarantee scheme for the public sector in order that we can build capacity within it. The OPW is about growing its in-house capacity and using it. The organisation has staff who are qualified engineers, architects and tradespeople. Perhaps that is something we could take a look at. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other Members.

Louis O'Hara (Galway East, Sinn Fein)
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Flooding has caused significant damage to the properties of and given rise to costs for and anxiety among residents in my constituency of Galway East. I recently met representatives of the Save our Shannon Organisation who represent more than 600 farming families whose livelihoods are severely impacted by summer and winter flooding in the Shannon Callows. Flooding is also causing the destruction of the bird population, biodiversity and wildlife in this area. Over many decades, various Governments have promised to tackle the issue of flooding in the Shannon Callows, but, to date, no action has been taken. The group has four key demands. I know the Minister of State is aware of these, having engaged with the group previously. They are: the reduction of water levels in Lough Allen, Lough Ree and Lough Derg by 1 m; the establishment of one agency to manage the River Shannon; the removal of the pinch points in the Shannon River between Athlone and Portumna; and an ongoing river maintenance programme. The Minister of State will be aware that Sinn Féin has introduced the River Shannon Management Agency Bill, the purpose of which is to create a single authority. I urge him to allow the progression of that Bill and to act on the proposals outlined by the group to alleviate the flooding. It is absolutely critical for these communities and for their livelihoods.

I also wish to commend on the slow pace of progress on the south Galway flood relief scheme. It has been more than eight years since engineering consultants were first appointed to this project. Yet, family homes, farms and businesses still remain at risk of flooding and there has not been any work carried out yet on that scheme. The failure to deliver this flood relief scheme endangers local infrastructure. Weather events can cause roads, such as the M18 motorway and other local roads, to become impassable as well as the Galway to Limerick railway track which has had to close previously due to flooding.

As Ireland's weather patterns become more intense and volatile, we need the Government to progress flood relief schemes. People's lives, livelihoods and businesses are at risk. The time for action is now. I call on the Minister of State to engage with the local advocacy groups and to listen to and act on their concerns.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I congratulate the Minister of his State on his new role. He held it before in the Government before last and I worked well with him in the past. Sometimes, an old fiddle can play a very good tune and I hope he will be able to do that in this case.

We look forward to more investment. My constituency of Sligo, Leitrim and south Donegal, like many parts of the country, has suffered grievously from changes in weather patterns and, in particular, flooding. It is a major issue for many farmers and communities in areas such as Carrick-on-Shannon, Leitrim village and so on where there are serious problems. There is a scheme in place. Many people there wonder about the value of spending millions upon millions of euro on flood protection without first making the small investments needed to remove pinch points on the river and make things a little bit easier and seeing how that works. That is an argument for another day, though.

The Minister of State mentioned Lough Funshinagh in Roscommon where the farming community has been devastated for years. There is an interim measure in place now, which I welcome as a temporary solution, but what we need to see is the permanent, long-term solution being fast-tracked and moving at the same pace. I understand that is not happening and there is frustration with the delays in moving it forward at pace to ensure we have a full and long-term solution in place for Lough Funshinagh and all the people of the area.

I welcome the small schemes that local authorities provide, which do much of the work on the ground. There is some money there and many local authorities are availing of it, but they are often up against it because there are people who have a problem with a river being cleaned somewhere. We all understand that the environment and wildlife have to be protected, but we have to look at the big picture. When something like this is done and a river is cleaned or a drainage system is put in place, the environment very quickly recovers. That needs to be seen and recognised. While it may be a disruption for a short time, the long-term impact is positive, both for the environment and the human inhabitants of the area. We need to put more effort into ensure we can provide that.

Farmers have a major role to play as well. Many farmers complain to me that one of the issues they face is ash dieback. Ash trees are the major tree across most parts of the country. They are falling into rivers and drains and blocking them. Farmers have no way of getting them out. They are a serious problem. Unfortunately, there has been no funding in place to date. If one has a plantation of ash, there are funds to help, but if one has ash trees along a road or river and they fall and become an obstacle, there is nothing to help. A measure needs to be considered because this impacts on flooding and the Minister of State's wider brief.

The general concept we have in this country that we try to protect after the flood happens needs to change. In other countries, they have permanent maintenance boast on major rivers like the Shannon. These boats remove the debris that builds up at pinch points like the eye of a bridge and bends in the river to ensure that the flow of water is uninhibited at those times it needs to be.

Another issue that needs to be looked at was mentioned by my colleague in terms of the lakes on the Shannon and ensuring that their water levels are low at the times of year we expect to have a lot of rain, thereby ensuring there is capacity to hold it and let it out slowly without flooding down river. Lough Allen is a typical example and needs to be examined seriously, along with Lough Ree and others.

The issue with the Shannon Callows is ongoing. I spoke to the group. The Minister of State knows its members well, as they are in his area. They have looked for years to get something done in respect of the callows. It is an ongoing problem.

I welcome the Minister of State's reappointment to this role. I expect that because he has held it before, he will be able to make progress faster than somebody who has not had that experience. We need to move with haste to get the investment in place to ensure we have flood mitigation measures, not just along ten and 12-year timelines, but much more quickly and with a much greater impact.

Natasha Newsome Drennan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome this opportunity to contribute on the crucial issue of flood relief schemes. My home county of Kilkenny has borne the brunt of devastating floods far too often in recent times. We do not need to look too far into the past; we all remember the damage done across Kilkenny by Storm Babet in 2023, when the banks of the River Nore broke, leaving Kilkenny city suffering heavy flooding and scores of homes, businesses and roads submerged. During the same storm, Thomastown also suffered heavy flooding.

This was far from an isolated incident. Heavy and persistent rainfall kept the risk of flooding high for months. These incidents show just how vulnerable Kilkenny city and the likes of Thomastown are to flooding. While I acknowledge that some progress has been made on projects like the Kilkenny city and Ballyhale flood relief schemes, it is disappointing to see that the Thomastown flood relief scheme has been kicked far down the road. There is no current timeline for planning, let alone commencement, and this neglect is unacceptable. We need to support growth in towns like Thomastown across Ireland.

How do we expect someone to invest in the community and to take the challenge of setting up a business or buying a home in the town when he or she cannot even get home or business insurance to cover premises in the event of flooding? A lack of insurance has taken a heavy toll on the town. We have fewer and fewer families living in parts of the town due to flood risk. The reality is that people do not want to run the risk of investing in the heart of Thomastown. Families living in the town live in constant worry of their homes being submerged once again. People are sick and tired of the damage, the long clean-up process and putting down fresh flooring over and over again. There is a heavy cloud of uncertainty hanging over the whole town. At the start of the month, there was more flooding in Thomastown. A local business that had served Thomastown for decades was left crippled due to flood damage.

We are fortunate to have such a strong community and emergency service, which have all worked around the clock to help the community in times of crisis. It is disappointing to see the Thomastown flood relief scheme being kicked down the road. We need the scheme made a priority by the OPW. The floods in Thomastown are not once-in-a-lifetime floods. Thomastown cannot wait an average of 11 years.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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I am sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Ahern. We will divide our time into seven and three minutes.

I will focus my comments principally on the Drogheda and Baltray flood relief scheme, which was announced in 2021. Four years later, the latest newsletter proclaims it is still at stage 1 of five stages. The Minister of State set out quite clearly that, on average, the process involved five separate stages. It appears that this particular process is still at stage 1, which is scheme development and preliminary design. The Minister of State said that, on average, it took 48 months to carry out.

We always use examples from our own constituencies to illustrate wider points on national policy questions and concerns about delivery, and I am doing that in this case. Louth County Council, the Office of Public Works and RPS Consulting Engineers Limited are working on the project and I congratulate them on their communications initiative regarding it. They provide regular newsletters on a dedicated website informing the public of progress. However, the trouble is that progress and where we are at the moment. The latest newsletter was published in April and reported that the project was still at stage 1, which has created some frustration. The newsletter went on to explain that stage 1 involved the identification and development of a preferred scheme. The steering group driving the project continues to collect data, we are told, to ensure that accurate and up-to-date information is used to inform the development of the project. I am not an expert on flood relief programmes, but I imagine that some of the delays and concerns have to do with the fact that we are dealing with a special area of conservation on the Boyne Estuary, a very important habitat for protected species, some of which spend their summers here, such as little terns. The little terns conservation project protects some very important birds there. The steering group continues to collect data, but there are a bewildering number of surveys taking place, from aquatic ecology walk-over surveys to geophysical surveys and overwintering bird surveys. Notwithstanding what I said, that is of course important.

At the same time, RPS is modelling to provide an accurate representation of the flooding mechanisms within the study area and all of this is happening before we even get to a cost-benefit analysis of the project.

The depressing news for locals anxious that the project progress and be completed is that the current projected date for the scheme to be fully operational is 2033. That is probably optimistic, given the fact that we are only at stage 1 at this point and we know that can take 48 months. Why does it take so long to get through this particular part of the process? In the case of the overall project, it is probably a 12-year timeframe at a minimum.

Deputy Farrell mentioned earlier, and we both raised with the Minister for public expenditure in Priority Questions today, the initiative he was taking in the development of the infrastructure division and the task force in his Department, recognising as he said in recent days that the infrastructure delivery system was in a state of paralysis and simply not delivering. Will the Minister of State, in his closing remarks, intimate to colleagues in the Chamber what the position is regarding OPW's relationship with that new division in the Department and with the task force? Will flood relief programmes and the expedited flood relief programmes form a part of that?

The Minister of State will be aware that there are similar schemes under way in Dundalk, Blackrock south and Ardee in county Louth, which have had a year's head start on the Baltray and Drogheda project, but they too appear to be progressing at the same rather sluggish pace. He will be familiar with some of the issues residents on the Cooley Peninsula in Louth have experienced over the past few years with serious flood events. I note in the Minister of State's remarks - he went on to clarify them somewhat in the context of the climate challenge we are facing - that many of the projects we are dealing with now and the OPW is rolling out are designed to address what might be termed one-in-100 year events. Climate change is a reality and these are no longer one-in-100-year events. We need to be prepared for that and have our adaptation and mitigation initiatives ready. There is work under way on the Cooley Peninsula and Louth County Council has engaged a geospatial contractor to carry out topographical area surveys as part of the Carlingford and Greenore flood relief scheme. Data gathering will play a crucial role in flood modelling and could help shape the future of flood protection measures for the area. It is good, of course, to see this kind of modern technology being utilised in the development of these projects.

I wish to raise with the Minister of State the issue around financial support for businesses and communities when these flood events take place. I recall engaging with the then Minister for enterprise, Deputy Coveney, back in 2023 regarding a flooding event on the Cooley Peninsula that adversely affected villages like Carlingford and elsewhere. I recall being rather concerned that, when events like this occurred, a memorandum was required for every event to be brought to Government to provide a discrete support scheme for businesses affected by flooding. This is not strictly speaking within Deputy Moran's remit as Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW, but he will engage with the Minister for enterprise on such matters. Often, businesses find it challenging to obtain the insurance cover they need. Will the Minister of State update the House, if he has the information available, on whether that scheme, as I have requested for many years, will be put on a statutory footing? These are no longer one-in-100-year events. Unfortunately, they are problems associated with the reality of climate change, an issue that is very much here now. I would appreciate if the Minister of State could address some of those questions in his concluding remarks.

Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I will put Labour Party environment spokesperson hat on and raise a specific issue with the Whitechurch flood relief scheme in Rathfarnham in my constituency of Dublin South-West. I do not think any of us would deny that some flood relief interventions were required for the Whitechurch stream. There was a serious incident of flooding on Whitechurch Road a number of years ago now. While it may have been partially due to unauthorised developments and culverting along that road, that is another matter. I understand that certain residents along the Whitechurch Road have had some difficulty getting flood insurance in recent years, so some intervention in respect of flooding is certainly welcome.

However, the manner in which the scheme has been constructed and the type of flood defences could easily be described, and have been by many, as an act of environmental vandalism. The OPW, in many people's view, has taken an overengineered, concrete-pouring approach and the result is that the habitats and ecosystems along the Whitechurch Road have been decimated. There must have been hundreds of trees destroyed in the process, as well as otter habitats, and the severe engineering interventions have changed the character of what previously felt like a lovely old country road in the middle of our city as well as causing massive traffic and noise disruption for the past year for local residents on Whitechurch Road with unfortunately no immediate end in sight.

We have seen concerning developments in terms of the effect of the flood relief works on water quality in rivers in the catchment area. In the Whitechurch stream element of the scheme, works were shut down by Inland Fisheries Ireland earlier this year because materials being used by the OPW, known as "puddling clay", were deemed to be polluting this important spawning river. This material is clearly inappropriate for such works. I understand that interventions could have been made further up the river in the mountains that could have had the same effect on flood alleviation and would not have been quite so environmentally destructive downstream on the Whitechurch Road. Regardless, I ask that the OPW seriously consider taking a different approach to these kinds of flood relief scheme, one that does not necessarily put concrete first wherever possible and does not require the level of habitat and biodiversity destruction that we have seen with the Whitechurch scheme.

As the Minister of State will know, 466 of our water bodies - rivers, lakes and estuaries - are to be classified as heavily modified, meaning the State is signing off on the lowering of environmental protections for our rivers and lakes. This potentially allows for the degrading of our natural water habitats by damaging works such as river dredging and clearance in circumstances where it would not otherwise be allowed. We call on the Government to pause this reclassification. With all of this in mind, we need to be ever more conscious of the effect of the OPW's approach when it comes to flood relief and what that is doing to water quality. I ask that we beef up Inland Fisheries Ireland in that regard. It does not have enough inspectors. It is all well and good having plans in place but if Inland Fisheries Ireland does not have the power and resources to carry out its monitoring and enforcement mandate, the optics are that we just do not value our rivers and waterways.

Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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I begin by sincerely acknowledging the Minister of State's continued commitment to tackling flood risk across the country. I have worked closely with him in my own constituency of Roscommon-Galway and I have first-hand knowledge of his deep engagement with local communities and his determination to deliver real, practical outcomes. His leadership has been instrumental in progressing key projects that matter to people on the ground. These are projects that do not just promise change, but deliver it.

One such project is the interim pumping solution at Lough Funshinagh, an area that has faced enormous pressures from flooding for far too long. Since the system was activated earlier this year, it has been operating efficiently and effectively and it has already made a tangible difference to people's lives. The reduction in water levels has significantly eased pressures on families and residents around the lough, people who have lived for years under the constant threat of flooding, evacuations and property damage. The emotional and mental toll of that kind of uncertainty cannot be overstated. For some, this was the third time since 2016 that they were forced to leave their homes. What we are seeing now is relief stability and some well-earned peace of mind. That is not just the result of engineering; it is the result of political will, partnership and the Minister of State's determination to act.

This is, of course, an interim solution. While it is working well, we are under no allusion that the job is done. I am delighted to hear that planning for the flood relief scheme will be lodged in quarter 4 of this year. That will mark a major milestone and I know the Minister of State will continue to support that process every step of the way.

This same focus on long-term sustainable solutions is just as important elsewhere in the constituency. In Ballinasloe, particularly Derrymullan, we know all too well the devastating impact of recurring flooding. That is why I warmly welcome the news that a statutory public exhibition of the proposed scheme for Ballinasloe is scheduled for quarter 3 this year, with a full planning application expected in 2026. It represents long-overdue progress for a community that has waited with patience and resilience for action. We also look forward to welcoming the Minister of State to Ballinasloe in the coming weeks to assess the situation on the ground and to meet residents directly.

His ongoing attention and support are invaluable as we work together to secure meaningful, long-lasting flood protection across Roscommon and Galway. The Government has committed €1.3 billion to the delivery of flood relief schemes under the national development plan out to 2030. This is a significant and welcome investment that reflects the scale of the challenge we face. It is aimed at protecting approximately 23,000 homes, farms and businesses in communities threatened by both river and coastal flooding. This level of commitment demonstrates that flood relief is no longer seen as a short-term fix but as a long-term infrastructural priority that is essential to protecting people's lives and livelihoods.

I want to acknowledge the ongoing communication from the Minister of State and his team with communities along the Shannon and sub-Callows who continue to face real and difficult challenges. Those engagements matter deeply to the people affected, including farmers, homeowners and business owners. I know they greatly appreciate the respect and seriousness with which the Minister of State approaches those discussions. Continued dialogue and follow-through will be key to ensuring that they too see progress. Flood relief is not just about engineering and planning but also about safeguarding homes, protecting livelihoods and restoring confidence in the future. It is something that I know the Minister of State takes seriously and I will continue to work with him on it in the future.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I want to congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment and to wish him well in his role. I have had dealings with him in the past when I served as Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. He presented his Estimates and every time he came in I reminded him of Carlow, Kilkenny and the schemes that were waiting to be planned and completed and encouraged him to spend the money that was there as quickly as possible. I also encouraged him to engage with county councils to ensure that there was efficiency in the system that would make it work because these schemes are vital to local communities. The time is now to look at the planning process for all of these schemes. In a lot of cases, the planning process holds up the real delivery of the results that are being asked for by the people we represent, the communities that have had serious difficulties with floods down through the years.

The Minister of State is very welcome to come to Carlow and Kilkenny. I extended that invitation to him previously when he was before the finance committee. I would like to see him looking at the various areas that are affected so that he gets a sense of the extent of the work that is needed to relieve some of the issues that I will highlight now. Freshford is a small village on the outskirts of the city. It is a village that I spent a lot of time in being looked after and reared by relations. It is sad to see a beautiful village like that being flooded on a regular basis, houses being destroyed and people being disrupted. I have seen new houses that were constructed there that were damaged by flooding. I know that the relief scheme is in tranche two but I would like to see that delivered as soon as possible. Anyone who has experienced a flood knows that it is extremely difficult to get one's house back into order and there is always an issue with insurance. Likewise, in relation to the village of Inistioge, I have seen the flood waters there rise to the level of the crossbars of goalposts. There has been really serious flooding, with lots of properties on the square being absolutely destroyed on a regular basis. Thomastown and Piltown experience flooding also. The plans need to be fast tracked for the areas that are deeply affected by flooding. History will tell us about Graiguenamanagh and Tinnahinch which have been flooded consistently. Efforts were made by the county council and the Department to get a scheme to the point of construction, with money being allocated as far back as 2018 but we still have no sign of the relief scheme being put in place.

I am sure the Minister of State will look at the systems that are there to deliver these schemes. Perhaps he will use his good offices to ensure that when county councils put forward proposals for these schemes they ensure there is no delay in the context of accepting the money from Government and implementing the schemes as quickly as they possibly can. Kilkenny is no stranger to flood relief schemes. One of the biggest schemes in the country was put in place right through the city of Kilkenny. It is often said that what we did was provide a scheme at a cost of millions of euro but the floodwaters now hit the villages downstream a hell of a lot quicker and therefore cause difficulties for them. I do not believe that is the case because there are various pooling areas along the route of the River Nore but at the same time, it does make some sense and needs to be examined. Likewise, we need to look at the schemes that have been completed, the smaller flood relief schemes, to see what we can learn about delivery and how best we might be able to improve the system and the funding mechanism as we go along. Some of those schemes, although completed, are now causing further difficulty because, as with the River Nore, there are now smaller streams, and lands that are being drained into those streams, that come into the flood relief section that has been delivered and then move quickly to flood the next area downstream.

I have seen the OPW and council contractors ensure that nature is protected and that it is done in a very sensible way. Indeed, Alan O'Sullivan in Kilkenny is an expert in this area and reconstructed the Lacken weir in Kilkenny. He is a man who is into biodiversity and protecting whatever wildlife there might be along a stream or river and has given fantastic help in terms of planning. Indeed, he planned an outdoor pool on the River Nore in Thomastown. There are experts out there but we need to tap into them and learn from the mistakes of the past. I would encourage the Minister of State to drive the councils to get the job done, get plans into the system and get the money drawn down.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The first time I met the Minister of State was in County Louth when I was a county councillor. Our meeting was about flood relief schemes but unfortunately, on some level, it is the big plans that we still need to see delivered. It goes without saying that a significant amount of County Louth, and of Dundalk where I live, is below sea level. This goes back to land reclamation projects completed a few hundred years ago following visits that were made to Holland by Lord Loden, I believe. The fact is that there are plans in place for several schemes, including the Dundalk, Blackrock South scheme which aims to protect 1,880 properties. I am not going to get into the ins and outs of the answer the Minister of State gave me to a parliamentary question but the design options are expected to be presented to the public in quarter 3 of 2025. A preferred option is expected by the middle of 2026, with a planning application expected to be submitted in quarter 2 of 2027. We will be still be waiting a considerable amount of time for that. The Drogheda and Baltray scheme is further behind than that, while the Ardee flood relief scheme, which aims to protect 30 properties, is currently under review by the OPW. We would need to see some of this work happening to a greater degree. Regarding the Carlingford and Greenore scheme, the council has made an application to the OPW for funding for any viable options that provide interim mitigation measures that may improve the conveyance characteristics of the Carlingford drainage system. We are all aware of the big flooding event that happened in 2023 in the Cooley peninsula and Carlingford. Some of the resources that were available around CFRAM have also looked at what can be done from a mitigation perspective in relation to that particular event and what could possibly happen in the future. Obviously, we need that to happen. On Annagassan and Termonfeckin, the OPW is finalising a review.

There are discussions on that but we need to see action.

I am always worried about timelines, particularly when we are talking about planning permission applications. As we know, planning is a long way from actually delivering. The big issue will be delivery. When I put the question I mentioned to the Minister of State earlier, I hoped there would be an option in regard to the over and back. The problem is CFRAM has done its work and the maps are drawn up. That has had an impact in terms of people getting flood insurance. Once upon a time, Louth County Council would provide information such as that there had been no flooding in a particular area. That option is not open at the moment. There must be engagement between the Minister of State and other Departments to deliver that. We also need to be able to deliver the funding to deal with emergency weather events.

Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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In certain parts of County Cork, and nationally, we are dealing with a set of challenges to do with flood risks that are enormous in their scale and complexity. These challenges will test us more as time goes on and as the climate crisis deepens. Prior to our day of devastation in east Cork on 18 October 2023, and since then, the response by the State to the flood risk has been detached, disjointed and inadequate. Settlements throughout east Cork that were struck on that day remain as exposed as ever to severe flooding. In some cases, we have no real clarity on a timeframe for works.

The OPW has subdivided its flood relief delivery programme into tranches. It says it is not possible to devise schemes concurrently due to "limited capacity" in the OPW, in local authorities and in the specialised consultancy market. It is alarming to see this piecemeal approach to a challenge that requires a comprehensive response. How much effort has been put into recruiting experts from abroad? East Cork remains at huge risk without a dramatic increase in ambition and a sense of urgency. I spoke to residents of Mogeely and Castlemartyr who are in a state of disbelief and despair after receiving correspondence from the OPW telling them they must wait for so-called tranche 2 projects to be pursued to protect their villages.

We are now fast approaching the two-year anniversary of October 2023. In east Cork, after long delays, we finally had a floodgate grant scheme approved last October. I very much welcomed that at the time. More than seven months later, many of the property owners have been assessed but have not yet had their gates installed. Many applicants who managed to keep the floodwaters out of their property interior on 18 October because they happened to be at home or, in some cases, they erected makeshift barriers - they were very resourceful under severe pressure - have been denied this grant but they remain at risk alongside neighbours who were deemed eligible. Cork County Council has said it will reconsider these applications at a later stage but it has clearly been so poorly resourced to carry out the work required that we are nowhere near that stage. We have a large-scale flood relief scheme for Midleton very slowly moving towards the planning phase and other smaller-scale projects for villages in east Cork in various stages of limbo. Many properties that should have had floodgates installed long ago are still without them. All the while, residents of Midleton, Killeagh, Castlemartyr, Ladysbridge, Rathcormac and Whitegate wait for the next major flood event. The indications from climate science are that it is a matter of when, not if. Other villages like Ballinacurra and Ballymacoda are also at risk.

The scale of this challenge calls for a wider agency to co-ordinate all the entities involved in managing flood risk and responses to flood events. These include the OPW, local authorities, the Departments of environment and agriculture, Irish Water, Inland Fisheries Ireland and Coillte. If we had one overall agency with the power to lead, we would see better co-ordination, speed and efficiency in all aspects of flood management. Land use changes can also substantially improve flood resilience in some parts of the country. These natural flood defences or nature-based solutions are not silver bullets but they are very effective for some settlements, with Mogeely and Rathcormac appearing to be cases in point. Land use changes would involve interventions like paying farmers to pursue measures such as strategic planting or allowing their fields to soak up excess water. Why is the OPW not pursuing these measures, which generally do not require planning permission, with a sense of urgency in tandem with the more standard relief works? We need to be on a sustained emergency footing, with cross-departmental and cross-agency work that is properly led, resourced and co-ordinated. When it comes to the huge challenges we face with flood risk, anything less puts us on a hiding to nothing.

I hope the Minister of State will visit Mogeely, Castlemartyr, Killeagh and Rathcormac in the coming weeks.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I welcome the Minister of State's indication that he is open to reviewing the Arterial Drainage Act. We have heard a lot this afternoon about the financial, emotional and social cost of flooding. When flooding hits people's homes, businesses or land, it is very difficult. Aside from climate change and a changing weather regime, one of the reasons we experience such large and problematic flood events is the effect of the Arterial Drainage Act. We have come from a situation where our rivers were not seen as entities within their own right but just as channels, their primary purpose being to drain water from agricultural land and get it out to sea as quickly as possible. We absolutely will not be able to engineer our way out the climate impacts, changes and events we see coming towards us.

As a Government and as a society, we need to look at our rivers and see how we can move them back to the more natural way they operated. We must start putting the meanders back in. Up to now, we have, in essence, seen them as channels. We wanted to straighten them because we needed them to move water quickly. That is why the water moves very quickly when there is a flood or heavy rain event. It is really important that we bring our rivers back to their natural way. When we talk about flood relief, we need to look upstream to see what we can do. We have disconnected ourselves so far from our natural environment that it is very hard for us to trust natural solutions. When we look to the UK, we can see the success of that approach. While pursuing flood mitigation measures, which is the engineering solution, it would be really interesting, even in a few pilot samples, to also do the upstream work, including rewetting, planting and rewiggling the rivers, to see whether that work can provide a solution and negate the need for flood mitigation works. We would still have the insurance policy of those works but initiating some pilots would prove concept. I ask the Minister of State to look into it.

Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats)
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I ask colleagues to imagine it is a mid-July night, it is bucketing rain and there are warnings of high river waters and potential flooding of 1 m. A few hours later, the warning changes to 3 m of flooding and then to 5 m. Eventually, when it is dark and cold, there is an 8 m river flowing through the valley, destroying everything in its path and killing 135 of your neighbours. Thinking you are going to die, you sit on the roof and drink your best wine. The only thing you have to drink out of is the toothbrush holder you grabbed on the way out of your home. Eventually, when it becomes brighter and the water subsides, you go down and see your village is absolutely destroyed. It looks like a bomb exploded there and every single thing is destroyed. That disbelief lasts months and years.

That is what happened in July 2021 in the Ahr Valley in Germany, where my husband's family has lived for generations. Four years later, the buildings, bridges and train services are still being rebuilt. The horror of that night not only left a scar on the landscape but also scarred every single person who lives there or has visited there, including my husband, children and all my German relatives. That is what the future looks like if we do not mitigate climate change; if we do not, as my colleagues outlined, look at rivers and do the things that need to be done.

Dublin South-Central has a history of flooding by the Camac and Poddle rivers. While those rivers are not huge in comparison with other rivers in this country, their flooding causes damage. The River Poddle flood alleviation scheme includes plans for underground storage tanks, channel upgrades, flood defences and so on. Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council are working collaboratively on those measures, which is really welcome.

This relates to my constituency. I am sure everybody here has their own experience of what it needs to do. We really need to learn from other countries. It has taken Germany, a country renowned for being organised, technical and practical, four years to ensure that businesses are back up to scratch and got the full amount of funding and bridges are being rebuilt. If we are not pre-emptive, prepared and proactive, we face that here with the devastation it brings to communities. This will last generations. They have never seen anything like this in Germany before and that is what we face here. I am giving a deeply personal experience because it has lasted. When we arrived two weeks later, the place was devastated. We were there at Christmas and it was still devastated. This is four years on in a country like Germany. That is what we face if we are not proactive.

John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Like many people who have already spoken on the issue, most of my comments will be confined to local issues as they pertain to flooding and the risk of flooding in my constituency. I ask the Minister of State about the ongoing study on the flood risk that arises on the coast line between Oranmore and Kinvara. A study was commenced in February 2024 and given a timeline of in the region of 12 months. We do not yet know the outcome of that study. I think we can take it as given that the outcome will propose that a significant level of protection is required to protect the community there. I encourage the Minister of State to ensure that, following the publication of the study, a budget is provided in his Department to facilitate the outcome of that study.

I am not sure if the Minister of State was in office during Storm Debi. He may recall the devastation it brought to business and life in the village of Clarinbridge in County Galway. This study aims to ensure that this does not reoccur. I am no engineering expert but I cannot see the remediation of the risk at this location coming within the minor flood mitigation works and coastal protection scheme category. I think it will require a far more significant budget than what is available. We cannot allow for a significant gap in time between the publication of the study, which I hope is imminent, and the commencement of the design of the flood relief measures. The risk of flooding of a nature that occurred during Storm Debi at that location is simply too significant. There will be challenges with that because it is an area of significant natural beauty and is located adjacent to the Galway Bay special area of conservation.

I also want to discuss the Clifden flood relief scheme. A draft options report for that scheme to manage the flood risk has been presented and I understand that it is with the OPW. My understanding is that the OPW has sought further information from Galway County Council and it is the opinion of the council that all the information the OPW needs is in its possession. What is required now is a decision to progress the scheme. I have not been able to access the draft report on flooding in Clifden. I do not know what remediation proposals are suggested in the draft report. This is something that interests the community there, which would be interested in reading that report, as would I. It would help to get more information about the decision-making process within the OPW but it does not seem as though a decision is imminent, when it should be.

I was concerned that in a recent response to a question of mine, the Minister of State advised that it is open to Galway County Council to make an application for funding under the OPW’s minor flood mitigation works. That should not be necessary. I understand that a budget has been provided and funding has been agreed. The OPW is saying that it accepts the report, this is the best recommendation coming from the report and we should progress to develop that scheme at the earliest opportunity.

The final scheme I will discuss is probably the most complex, and this is reflected in the length of time it will take to bring it to fruition. Consultants were appointed for the Coirib go Cósta - Galway city flood relief scheme in 2020 and it is now not expected that construction will commence until 2030. This is a ten-year design and planning phase, which seems excessive. I heard a colleague say earlier that it is hoped to go to planning in 2027. I am concerned by what the planning process might encounter. Galway city is proximate to Galway Bay complex special area of conservation. I think the community would be very interested in seeing the final design for the flood relief works in the city. The design may not meet with universal agreement. Hopefully, by the time it enters the planning process, the new planning Act will be in action and we will be guaranteed a decision within the legislative timeframe of 26 weeks. I hope this will be the outcome. I recognise that it is a complex project that will be designed to protect the city against tidal and fluvial flooding. Some of the complexities that have delayed the project have been caused by the processes and systems we use in bring projects to fruition. Even at this point - midstream - I hope we can expedite it and bring it to fruition more quickly. I ask the Minister of State to use whatever powers and resources are in his Department to make sure it happens.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I will pick up where Deputy John Connolly left off and talk about a number of schemes in Cork. It frustrates the life out of people that they are waiting ten, 12 or 15 years for these schemes, from concept through to design and being built. I accept that it is not straightforward. As Deputy Connolly noted, there are concerns about special areas of conservation and inland fisheries and a myriad of environmental concerns need to be addressed that are covered under EU directives, so we have to respect those. At the same time, any process that allows this to rumble on for ten, 12 or 15 years needs a radical overhaul.

I live a couple of kilometres from Glanmire. The scheme for Glanmire has been going since 2009 or 2010. Thankfully, we are in the last year of it. Despite the chaos, traffic inconvenience and all the other inconveniences, it will be a significant relief to people when it is actually delivered later this year or early next year. That said, this has gone on since 2008 or 2009. It is protecting a couple of hundred properties but during that period, Glanmire flooded three times. We were talking about this concept coming to design. We told people it was coming and that we were dealing with the council and the OPW but the village flooded three times during that period. That requires radical overhaul.

Unfortunately, it is the same for the scheme in Blackpool. There was flooding in Blackpool on multiple occasions in 2010, 2012 and 2013. The scheme proposed for Blackpool is caught up in an environmental impact assessment. It was challenged through judicial review by a local voluntary environmental group. That is fine. It is part of the process but, unfortunately, that has been sitting with the Minister since 2018. It was then green-lit in 2021 and subsequently challenged. Since then, it has sat on the desk of Ministers and an environmental impact assessment is still being considered. It needs to be brought forward urgently. It will cover 290 properties and commercial businesses.

I will speak more widely about insurance. I know it is not the Minister of State's brief but it is something we need to work on collectively. There has to be some provision brought before the House regarding schemes that are delivered and have been proven to work such as Mallow in Cork. The Mallow flood relief scheme has worked for a number of years without incident. It is the same with Fermoy. The people living in those properties are protected by the OPW scheme but cannot get flood insurance. I know this issue is brought up here every year. We need to look at it. If a scheme is in place, functioning and proven to work, I do not see why people cannot get insurance cover.

My last point concerns the Department of public expenditure. We are talking about doing things faster, whether it is related to flooding, housing or something else. We talk about cutting through red tape and bureaucracy. This is never more true than in the case of flood relief schemes but the knowledge that schemes can be delivered expeditiously and people can be protected is the greatest relief we can give these families.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Before I move to the next slot, I welcome 11 men from Cushinstown Men's Shed in New Ross, somewhere we are probably heading in our days. They know plenty about statements on flood relief. I welcome everybody. Have a good day.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent)
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Over ten years since the successful completion of the Clonmel flood relief scheme, householders and businesses are finding getting insurance flood cover impossible or it comes with very heavily loaded premiums. The Clonmel flood relief scheme was completed in 2013 at a cost of €44.5 million. The scheme has been completed to a one-in-100-year protection level and it protects all areas adjacent to the River Suir in the town, including the old bridge, the quays, Irishtown, Waterford Road, Davis Road and over 500 houses and businesses. The scheme has been very successful but despite this and the exceptional level of protection afforded by the scheme, insurance companies are still denying insurance cover or heavily loading premiums. This applies not only to properties which have previous flooding history but to homes and businesses that have never flooded previously and are far from previous flooding events. It appears that if you have a Clonmel address, the insurance companies are immediately suspicious and refuse to take into account the very positive effects of the flood relief scheme. Surely householders and businesses should be able to access flood insurance in return for the State's huge investments in flood defences. I know that the Office of Public Works has a memorandum of understanding with Insurance Ireland, representing the insurance companies, which sets out the principles of how the two organisations work together to facilitate the availability of insurance against the risk of flooding. This memorandum does not appear to be working and I believe it requires urgent review.

A further difficulty is that the insurance industry is working off a database of maps which have not been updated and still show flood plains even where the most modern flood defences have been provided. Currently, one in 20 buildings or properties has difficulty accessing flood insurance, according to the Central Bank. This, of course, will increase as Ireland is likely to see significantly more rainfall in future due to climate change, thus increasing the likelihood of flood events. I ask the Minister of State to intervene directly with the insurance company to make sure that properties in areas where modern flood defences have been erected have access to flood insurance on the normal basis. Ultimately, the State may have to step in to provide a type of Government insurer of last resort to cover those who cannot get insurance at all as this problem will increase over the coming years.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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There are three flood relief schemes in Laois, in Clonaslee, Mountmellick and Portarlington. I welcome that they are progressing and I hope the Minister of State puts some fire under them, but the facts are that the schemes and the processes are too slow. I welcome that money was approved recently for the Clonaslee scheme. The council has approval to go to planning there with the OPW for that, and that is to be lodged with An Bord Pleanála very soon, but that could take a year and then a further three years to build. The area was flooded in 2017. That would mean 12 years, assuming everything goes right, to complete the scheme. It is just too long.

As regards the Mountmellick scheme, the Minister of State saw the properties in Mountmellick that were flooded when he visited the area. Again, there was flooding in November 2017. That scheme is with the OPW seeking permission to go to planning and An Bord Pleanála. There are particular issues in the Derrycloney area. Residents are concerned about unintended consequences of water being moved from one place to another but the council is to come back there with an update, a report, to those residents within six weeks. The cost of the scheme is expected to be between €15 million and €17 million. Hundreds of houses will be protected when the scheme is in place but, again, it is just way too long. As regards the timeline there, again, you are talking about 15 years in that case before the scheme will be completed.

In the case of Portarlington, there was flooding in 2017. The surveys are done, the council is progressing its work as quickly as it can - environmental studies, surveys, etc. - and the design is substantially completed, but it has other stages to go through. Costs are estimated to be in excess of €15 million. I am told, however, that that will take another seven years to go through planning and construction, so that will be 15 years from 2017 before it will be finished. That is just too long. The schemes are too slow. Thirteen or 15 years as a best-case scenario is just way too long.

The one message I hear from local authority officials in a number of counties is that the Department needs to give more decision-making powers to the county councils. There are executive engineers and senior executive engineers. They are all qualified people. Having archaeological reports, hydrology reports and environmental and ecology reports all going to An Bord Pleanála slows the process. The delays are causing risk of further flooding. People are terrified of further flooding and rising costs. Does the Minister of State remember Mountmellick being talked about? The figure for that was between €3 million and €4 million. We are now looking at €17 million as the current estimates are from €15 million to €17 million. Will the Minister of State clarify that the money will be provided for Mountmellick and Portarlington? It has been approved already for Clonaslee, which I welcome.

As regards the issue of insurance, where a successful scheme is in place, there should be no barrier to getting insurance and there should not be escalating insurance costs. The Government needs to engage directly with the insurance companies on that.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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The Minister of State and I have had an engagement on this before. First, the scheme in Galway has not been prevented because of objections or bureaucracy. Second, the catchment flood risk assessment and management was the biggest flood risk assessment and it affected two thirds of the population. It was a brilliant piece of work. It was completed in 2018. Unfortunately, when the consultants were eventually appointed in 2020, they came back with a report that identified that the scale of the flood risk in Galway is much greater than that identified by the CFRAM study. We were therefore in trouble from day one because the study was based on outdated information on the scale and the rapidity of the change due to climate change.

What is proposed in Galway, and in Clifden, was already mentioned; I will not repeat it. We need those reports urgently on Clifden and Oranmore to Kinvara, which was greatly affected by the last storm and flooding. I have a parochial interest in what is proposed in the Claddagh because I live there. There was supposed to be a scheme for 312 properties and then 940. I have no problem with that but from day one it was obvious. The scheme moved forward and went backwards. I received the following reply: "As regards the increased work involved, Galway City Council engaged with its [consultants] to reprogramme the scheme. This has been agreed in principle by the steering group, and the revised dates are as follows." Submission of planning was to be September 2023, then July 2025 and then it went forward to July 2027, subject to the revised programme being agreed. Then, construction was to begin in October 2025, then 2029. Now it is March 2031. The planning was set for September 2023, then 2025 and then 2027. The Minister of State can see the frustration, all because the size of the project was never anticipated. They were working from the wrong figures and data. The following was the reply to my most recent question on the matter in February this year, "There will be an opportunity for the public to view and comment on the design options, currently scheduled to take place in June 2025." Will the Minister of State tell me in his summing up, which I will watch from my office, whether that specific timeline is on target? Will that be missed as well?

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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We face extreme weather and flooding has become more severe and recurring across the State. From the Shannon Basin to coastal towns and rural communities, the devastation caused by rising waters continues to impact families, livelihoods and local economies. Climate change, inadequate infrastructure and years of Government inaction have left too many communities vulnerable. Last year, 2024, was the fourth-warmest year on record, with storms affecting communities, bringing heavy rain and winds, flooding and coastal erosion. According to the annual climate statement for 2024, due to rising sea levels, the risk of storm surges and coastal flooding around Ireland is expected to increase along with compound events of heavy rainfall and high tides. It seems like every year storms get worse. I am originally from just across the Liffey, the East Wall area. There has always been a threat of flooding there because it is all reclaimed land and it is low-lying. I recall in the past number of years a severe flood event in the houses just behind my mother's in the north inner city and the floodwaters came close to her house. The fear was that the whole place would be submerged. It needs to be addressed.

I will focus on the impact on small businesses. They suffer massive property damage, loss of stock and prolonged closures without adequate support. Everyone accepts that local shops, cafés and services are the backbone of our communities. We call for a properly resourced and proactive approach to flood defence, not reactive, cleaning up after disaster strikes. We heard time after time over the past hour about areas where there is a constant risk of flooding. This issue must be looked at proactively, dealing with areas where flooding has already happened and where there are flood risks. Expansion of the emergency business flooding scheme should be examined to ensure quicker, fairer compensation for affected business. Long-term investment must also be proposed in sustainable flood prevention. Insurance is also an issue. Insurance companies are making record profits. A lot of work is done by insurance companies but they are making massive profits. Shareholders are paid large amounts of money by these insurance companies yet at the same time small business and voluntary groups struggle to find affordable insurance as they continue to be hit with rip-off prices.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Thank you, Deputy.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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It must be addressed, particularly for small businesses.

Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party)
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I may not have welcomed the Minister of State to his position yet; we certainly have not spoken one to one yet. I wish him the best of luck. It is a serious area in which he was previously actively involved. A lot of issues were improved but many are left to improve. Unfortunately, I have a public meeting for Independent Ireland to attend so I will have to leave straight away. I will listen to his response on the way down. The problem is rivers are not being cleaned out. I do not think anybody said that. Perhaps they did and I was not listening properly but nobody has concentrated on it. That is where the problem lies. If the Minister of State does not have the powers to strike the stick on the ground and say a river has to be cleared out, we will be in the same situation in every town and village as we were previously. The Government cannot expect concrete works around rivers. One example is Ballylickey. I took the Minister of State down to see it seven or eight years ago. I am not being disrespectful to him but it was a mistake because nothing ever happened and the pressure was put back on me. The Minister of State brought the Minister there but he did not deliver. The previous Minister was down there about 12 months ago; he has not delivered. The bottom line is the river needs to be cleaned and the pearl mussel is the problem. I have nothing against the protection of the pearl mussel but what has happened recently is that the river has flooded. That blew the pearl mussel into the field. The pearl mussel is gone now. In terms of protecting the pearl mussel, the Government is the cause of finishing of the pearl mussel because it was blown into the fields and houses were within one inch of being washed out again. The Minister of State was there at the time. I showed him the house and the depth of the water that came into Dan Dineen's house and others. It is outrageous that so many years on, I still have not seen one bucket there. There was a situation where the local farmer cleaned out his river tidily and carefully once every ten years probably. It would not have to be done often. The powers that be need to clear the river either, but neither is happening now. Ballylickey is gone with silt. Silt is a posh name - it is muck. It has backed up and is flooding Kealkill because the river has built up. There will be no river soon. The river comes back out into the fields and into people's houses. The Government needs to wake up and deal with this matter with a sense of urgency. That is Ballylickey; I will move on to the flooding in Bantry.

I looked at what the Minister read out earlier, he said "... scheme development and preliminary design, an average of 48 months ...". That is four years. That is codology; nonsense. It could be done in one or two years. We have to move with the times. That is 1960 stuff. He also said the planning process or public exhibition and confirmation takes two years, detailed design takes one year, construction takes three years and handover of works takes one year. That is about 11 years. People in Bantry have been waiting for 50, 60, or 70 years. People told me they were flooded 50, 60 or 70 years ago and they are still flooded today. Every time it floods, probably once a year, I go down there but I am ashamed of my life to go down there, walking into the same destroyed businesses. There is no compensation package. It is kind of a con system - it is handing out forms and saying you cannot qualify, you qualified before, you have insurance or you do not have insurance. It is a pittance in comparison to the damage. Bantry is washed out every so often, culverts need to be done, Ministers come down and promise to make sure there is funding for culverts. If they promised every time they came down, every culvert in west Cork would have been sorted by now but nothing was sorted in Bantry. It is the same situation. I will be down there and the Minister will probably be down in the next 12 months visiting shops, promising businesses the Government will do something. These 11 years can be brought down to three or four. Legislation needs to be brought before the Dáil to change that and it will have full support. Common sense is needed. We cannot listen to objectors when a person's livelihood or their home is gone because someone in Donegal is worried about what is going in Bantry. It is time to move ahead. It has gone on for 11 years. It is not acceptable to the people of this country. The system needs to be sped up. There are areas that cannot wait four years for scheme development and preliminary design. I could be here forever. That was my brother Danny Collins's argument to me this morning. That is what he is faced with in Ballylickey and Bantry. Councillor John Collins, my other brother, tabled a motion recently in relation to Ring in Clonakilty. It might be outside of the Minister of State's area; I respect that if it is. It concerns cleaning out the river and bay. Clonakilty Bay is full of muck, silt and sewage.

People saw it and took pictures. There are those who have to walk across this silt as they try to access small boats. It is like quicksand. Basically, it was stated that it cannot be cleaned up because of the environment. Someone will lose their life, or perhaps it will be two or three people, and then something will probably be done. That is not the way to do business, but, unfortunately, that is the way it is being done. It is being done the wrong way around. People are being completely forgotten and neglected in this area.

With regard to Ballinascarty and Councillor Daniel Sexton of Independent Ireland, the Minister of State has been notified of matters in that regard. I visited the village. Houses and businesses there were flooded. The first thing I did when I arrived was ask what was wrong. That is what the Minister of State will also have to ask. The river is blocked. I said at the time that we were back to square one . The rivers are the problem. While they may not be the problem everywhere, they are the cause of the problems in Fermoy and Midleton. There are all these places where rivers need to be cleaned out. The Minister of State was meant to visit Ballinascarty. I am not sure whether he is still going to do so. That is up to him. His visiting the village will not resolve the issue, however. Resolving issues means him working on this site to make sure rivers are cleaned, works are carried out and that matters relating funding are dealt with immediately. I do not want to be in a situation, nor does the Minister of State, where I have to come back down to Ballinascarty or stand outside the community centre in Ballyhennessy. There are so many good people there who work hard and who re willing. They are looking at water literally coming into their beautiful community centre, which they basically killed themselves to build, all the while knowing they are going to be facing this over and over again.

It is the same with roads. The problem with rivers is why roads are being washed away. I saw the Kilbrittain Road to Bandon when I visited Ballinascarty during the flood there. Beautiful roads are being washed away because rivers were not cleaned out and then burst their banks. If you run the bath at home and it is half full of sand, you know where the water is going to go. It is going to eventually flow over the side of the bath. This is the situation. I really want it addressed.

I am not having a go at the Minister of State by any manner of means. He is a hard-working man who I respect. If we cannot have delivery on that end and if the blockages up along the line are preventing rivers from being cleaned, we are finished and will go nowhere. We will be back in here talking about the next flood, the other flood or the flood the time before. I would appreciate it if the Minister of State could look into this matter. The situation is serious. While pearls of mussels are important, they are certainly being lost when rivers are overflowing and water is flowing down people's gardens. Birds are picking at them. I call for the rivers to be cleaned. That is the mighty starting point. It could be done by farmers, by means of a grant scheme, or voluntarily, as they did previously. Alternatively, it could be done by the OPW or some other body.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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Climate change is here. The Minister of State knows this. It is very real. Coastal towns in constituencies like mine are very much on the front line of this emergency. Extreme weather is inevitable and the Government’s record on climate preparedness is absolutely shocking. Yesterday, The Irish Times reported that the EPA has published its latest projections in respect of Ireland’s climate targets for 2030. Those projections are very bad news for Ireland. The State has the worst emissions levels per capita in Europe. Projections show that our greenhouse gas emissions will fall by just 23% by 2030 compared with our original target of 51%, according to the EPA. Stop Climate Chaos has described these emissions levels as both alarming and shocking. The latest figures indicate that none of the State’s biggest emitters, namely the transport, agriculture and electricity sectors, will meet their climate targets. In most sectors, emissions are continuing to rise. We know what is going to happen if we do not hit those targets. Ireland will potentially be fined up to €26 billion. In light of its record, the Government is either not prepared or is incapable of taking the necessary action.

We know we are going to face more extreme weather events and that this Government and those that succeed it are going to have to deal with them. The most recent extreme weather event this island experienced was Storm Éowyn, which showed up a number of things. First, it showed the meitheal that exists within our local communities. People showed up for each other. People and local communities came out and looked after and helped each other. It also showed that communities and individuals were badly let down by the Government’s failure to plan. Deficiencies in infrastructure and a lack of basic things such as access to generators left vulnerable people badly exposed.

I will mention a case which I mentioned at the time of the storm. It relates to a young woman who uses a power-assisted wheelchair and who was completely stranded for days. She could not leave the house, move around, go to college or get out to do any shopping. She was literally stranded. She needed a generator and access to power to charge the battery on her wheelchair. While we know vulnerable people will need access to generators and community hubs, in many cases, when people went to the community centres, they found them in a poor state of repair. Now is the time for the Government to be planning. It is the time for the Government to look at the humanitarian assistance scheme and how it operated. While it was great at advertising all the forms people had to fill out, it was not so good at getting the money to people when they needed it. I urge the Minister of State to recognise that now is the time to plan. The Government does not seem interested in taking action on climate change. As a result, it must plan for the climate disasters that are going to happen.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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I wish to address something to which reference has already been made, namely our climate targets. This is a matter I have already spoken about. We know it will be beneficial for the Government if we invest millions of euro in our ports and expand them. While there is going to be huge offshore renewable energy coming into the Port of Cork, the latter is not a viable location for brining in the big vessels necessary to allow for the swift change in our infrastructure.

On behalf of the people of Clontarf, I thank the Minister of State from the bottom of my heart for visiting the ongoing flood works there. I also thank his Department for announcing the €2 million it is giving towards flood defences. That was really well received. What residents in Castle Court and Auburn experienced in 2008 was horrific. Since the Minister of State’s Department announced this funding, I have been on the phone with multiple residents who have had restless nights every time there is heavy rain. The fact that the culvert is being worked on is really helping people. The Minister of State has helped people have their homes, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart. When I knocked on doors during the election campaign, the message that people were tired of living in fear came across loud and clear. The Minister of State has now removed that fear. They are tired of the sandbags in Clontarf. The people of Dublin Bay North and I thank the Minister of State for visiting last week.

We need permanent, modern flood defences. I welcome the announcement on the 22 May that OPW approval has been granted for Dublin city flood works. The key part of the River Wad phase 1B flood relief scheme, and specifically the construction of the necessary culvert combined with the upgrade to the outfall, which began in April, represents real, practical progress. I thank the Minister of State for that. I am grateful. He is well suited to this role. I thank Dublin City Council, the OPW and all the civil servants who helped us get over the line. These works will protect more than 60 properties from flood risk. This is the result of years of planning and engineering studies. The Minister of State and the OPW have shown real leadership in progressing this project. I acknowledge all the technical work done by all the engineers involved and the consistent engagement of Dublin City Council.

Make no mistake, the work is not finished. I look forward to working with the Minister of State on phase 1B of the larger multistage process. When he visited, he announced that he will be putting the alternative long-term flood defence solutions out for public consultation. I look forward to seeing those in the next three months, as he announced. I thank the Minister of State again. The community is delighted. Peoples’ marriages have been saved. There are individuals who were really stressed for the past few years and who could not get insurance on their houses. That has now changed. This is cross-party, constructive work. I welcome the involvement of everyone who has contributed positively to moving this project forward. We also must say clearly that the sandbags must go. We cannot accept a situation where parts of Dublin Bay North are reliant on temporary barriers.

The OPW is currently investing €200 million in flood relief measures across County Dublin. A total of seven of those schemes have been completed and seven more are under way. Nationally, the Government has committed €1.3 billion to flood defence. I thank the Government for that, because it is significant. What matters most to the people I represent, however, is that there will be delivery. I thank the Minister of State on behalf of the people. We must also thank the engineering experts. I thank him for the funding. Let us put in place permanent flood defences that protect homes and livelihoods. Let us deliver real security to a community that has lived too long under threat.

I also wish to put the following matter on the record of the House. There is a public perception that the people of Clontarf objected to flood defence. They did not do so. They objected to a berm that would be put in place the entire way down Clontarf seafront. This is a complete lie. It must be made clear that the people of Clontarf want and welcome flood defence. They are very grateful for the Minister of State’s visit.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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I, too, congratulate the Minister of State on being reappointed to the post he held previously. He is suited to this role. He has first-hand experience in Athlone. We all saw him on television manning the pumps.

I thank the Minister of State for coming to Clonmel and other places. Now that Clonmel is 97% or 98% secure from flooding, I appeal to him to deal with the insurance companies because, as far as Kilsheelan and Cahir, which are located ten miles away, houses are being built on flood plains.

People are being ripped off on insurance. If the floods come up over the mart in Cahir, we will have to lead the animals out on Noah's Ark. It is nonsense.

I also thank the Minister of State for engaging with me in recent months regarding the site for the Garda station in Clonmel and the plaza beside it. I received a map from his officials this morning. I also thank them for contacting me. I would love the Minister of State to come to see this site. We have been looking forward to the new Garda station for a long time. The matter was first raised here 60 years ago by Seán Treacy, God rest him. We have it now. The planning and design are to open the top of the plaza. The front facade will be looking against the plaza. It should be turned around because the building will be there for the next century, and I would love to see it properly placed in a suitable area in Clonmel.

Kevin Moran (Longford-Westmeath, Independent)
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I again thank the House for the opportunity to engage with Members directly on flooding matters. I am aware of the significant impact on communities and of the distress caused by and the continued risk of flooding. I have seen impact of flooding on people and on their homes, businesses and farms at first hand. I fully recognise the hardship experienced by all those who have been affected by flooding.

The OPW is the lead agency for flood management and has a vital role in co-ordinating the delivery of the national flood risk management programme and addressing the flood risk relating to rivers and the sea. As stated earlier, the Government has committed €1.3 billion to delivery of flood relief schemes over the lifetime of the national development plan in order to protect approximately 23,000 properties in communities that are at significant coastal flood risk. Since 2018, as part of the phased approach to delivery, this funding has allowed the OPW to triple the work of flood relief schemes in partnership with local authorities to 100. Those schemes are in the design, planning and construction phases at this time. The OPW and local authorities will continue to progress 11 schemes currently at construction stage. Upon completion, these schemes will provide protection to 2,900 properties at an estimated cost benefit to the State regarding potential damages and loss of €360 million. In addition, the schemes in early delivery stages are being progressed by the OPW and its delivery partners towards planning and construction completion.

Nobody in the House knows more about and has seen more distress caused by flooding than I have in my town and as I visited towns and villages throughout the country when I was last a Member of the Dáil. In 2018, I brought forward the CFRAM programme, to which there was huge opposition but which I felt it was going to be the bible going forward when it came to flooding. The biggest task I faced at that time to get funding, including the €1.3 billion to which I refer, to combat flooding in order that we might move forward.

I recognise that all Members have issues in their constituencies and that we all have to work collectively. This is not about politics; it is about people suffering and about those who get up in the morning and think that there are people in this House who are here to work for them as opposed to knocking one another. I emphasise the €550 million spent on completed schemes to date. The figure for minor works stands at €68.5 million. This is real progress. While I acknowledge that people in the House may say it is slow, the planning period to get from A to B is 11 years. If I had a magic wand, I would not be standing in front of the House today. I would be out there waving it. One thing I can say is that with OPW working alongside the local authorities, I can see where the blockages lie. I intend to tour the country during the summer recess to try to speed up processes for better engagement in places where I think we can deliver on schemes. We have given local authorities up and down the country 50 engineers to drive forward and improve the delivery of schemes. This is not a silver bullet, but it gives local authorities the support they need to deliver on those important schemes.

There has been a lot of talk about insurance. The Minister of State, Deputy Troy, is actively working with my Department on that matter. Again, I have to give him the time to do that. There has also been a great deal of talk about the Shannon. When I was previously a Minister of State, we looked at nine pinch points along the Shannon corridor. We removed seven of these. I have to be honest and say very little has happened since. There is a programme of tree maintenance along the Shannon with Waterways Ireland. While some people have views about the different bodies connected to the Shannon, I can honestly say that I work with every one of them and am very happy with the progress we are making together. The Shannon co-ordinating group does major work along the river. It will continue to do that work.

Every person who contributed to the debate mentioned different areas. I recently visited Midleton and saw the interim work done there. That is something we are moving on with local authorities. Interim solutions are very important. While they are interim in nature, they offer some level of cover to those people. I have seen Whitechurch, about which some Deputies have commented. I met with residents, and they are thrilled to see that work. People ask that the work go faster, but once you start, you say it takes 11 years. One thing people forget when you are building flood defences is that 95% of the work is underground. Only 5% is above ground. Wherever the OPW works collectively with local authorities, it leaves towns or villages an awful lot better off than they were when it arrived. That is very reputable.

I thank my Department and the staff of the OPW, the people on the ground and those on the front line. They have worked tirelessly for me and with me on behalf of the people of Ireland. I know the areas I need to look at going forward. There has been a lot of talk about river cleaning. That is a matter I am looking at. I am also looking at the minor works scheme. There has also been much talk about tranche 2 schemes, and a lot of work can be done on those. I will continue to work with everyone in the House. I thank Members for their contributions.