Feargal Quinn (Independent)

The Minister of State, Deputy Brady, is very welcome to the House to hear this debate. I listened very carefully to the two previous speakers. It was very interesting to hear the contrast of the two. Senator Boyle talked about the long-term effect on the environment of what is happening with the change in our climate and the threat to the entire future world ecology. It was very interesting to hear and was a reminder to us of what is important. I listened very carefully to Senator Prendergast. I have had a business in Clonmel for some 15 years and every time there is a flood we get telephone calls saying Clonmel is affected badly.

However, Senator Prendergast was not necessarily talking about the physical repairs. She spoke of the wonderful spirit of neighbourliness that occurred in Clonmel. She spoke of all those others who came to help, such as the neighbours who came next door and all the social workers and volunteers who decided to help their neighbours. We need this sort of spirit. It was good to hear that in at least three areas in the south and west, local authority employees decided not to go ahead with their protest and strike yesterday because of the huge threat to their local communities. Yet, I saw on television last night that the workers in Athlone went ahead with it although the devastation in that area was evident.

This is a reminder that to solve our economic problems, we will need such a spirit of friendship, neighbourliness and what I term economic patriotism. I refer to what was evident in so many areas yesterday. People in Dublin have been protected in this regard and have been watching the floods on television, reading about them in newspapers or hearing about them on radio. We both heard and saw the devastation that has occurred. I do not refer to property but to people such as those who had given their lives to their homesteads, families and whose personal effects have been destroyed but whose neighbours came to help them with their tractors, cars, trucks and bicycles. This represents the spirit of what one can do when one is put to the pin of one's collar or when one realises one has a crisis on one's hands and that one must help one's neighbours and one another to get out of trouble. People have done this so well in these areas.

However, this is exactly what we must do as a nation with the threat that is facing us on an economic basis. While I am talking about the two Ps, namely, property and people, I am really talking about the effect on people and their willingness to work. It has been proven repeatedly both in Ireland and elsewhere that whenever a threat emerges, people are willing to help their neighbours. We must do this as a nation because of both floods of water and the economic flood that assails us. We must make sure that we get together and decide that it is up to us to do something about it. Let us not think of mé féin, but of ourselves as a nation. We should establish what we can do to ensure that all the threats facing us will enable us to act like those who acted so well in the last couple of days in the face of those flood threats, which I gather will not recede as quickly as one otherwise would wish.