Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I express my appreciation of the energy he has brought to dealing with problem by visiting as many places as possible. There were unnatural expectations that Ministers could act the part of King Canute by appearing wherever there were floods to wave them back. However, the problem has much deeper roots. There is a case detailed in the Irish Examinertoday of a supermarket in Cork where the claimants for the planning permission had contradictory advice as to whether the area where it is to be built is located on a flood plain. This happens all the time. Regarding turloughs in south Galway, it has been known for many decades that water goes underground and one does not know where it is going to rise again. That must be something people note when they plan their buildings.

We have to examine the question of hydroelectric power. There were statements that the Shannon meets only 2% of our electricity needs at this stage. If there are environmental consequences of the kind we have seen, should it be switched off during the winter? Is it a piece of industrial archaeology? What do current energy prices tell us about the viability of hydroelectricity? If we add in the social costs we have seen, it might change the balance. There are other ways to generate electricity which do not involve the flooding of people's houses. There was an irony when the Minister of State was addressing how we would cope with these problems. When there were ESB announcements of how much water it intended to release downstream, RTE was then going straight to people downstream who said they might get by that night. There has to be some co-ordination there. The legal case is the one between UCC and the ESB where the ESB was judged to be 70% responsible for the flooding in Cork city in 2009. What is the future of hydro? Should the reservoirs be emptied to cater for the winter floods rather than to wait for the crisis where a dam might burst and water has to be let through following which a phone call is made to people who are downstream to see how they cope?

The leading economic research on this matter, which has stood the test of time, was carried out by the US Army Corps of Engineers, at the invitation of the Government of the day, following the flooding caused by the Shannon in the 1950s. I think the project was led by a Lt. Colonel Rydell. He said the case then was to move people's residences to higher ground. At that stage in the 1950s, not much happened in agriculture in the winter in any event and there was no great economic loss. While the pattern of agriculture may have changed, the report is still authoritative.

Like the Minister of State and the Taoiseach, I am disappointed at the response of the insurance industry. As the Minister of State said, we have put money into Kilkenny, Fermoy and Clonmel. Is the insurance industry seriously saying that there was no statistical reduction in the probability of flooding? Insurance is about risk. We had discussions with the Minister of State's ministerial colleague on safety on the roads yesterday. The insurance industry must bring itself up to date in the context of the assessment of risk.It has not been particularly good at doing that. It discounted the portable defences against flooding, even though the Minister of State has shown they have been extremely effective where they have been tried. The UK evidence is that they are better than sandbags because the latter leak and these portable defences against flooding do not. Let us have the insurance industry carry out proper actuarial work and reward the OPW, other agencies and, indeed, the taxpayer, who has put a great deal of investment into flood prevention programmes which, apparently, are not resulting in any reduction in people's insurance liabilities in the case of flooding. In some cases, they are not preventing companies from refusing to insure properties. It seems strange in view of recent events but there are places where the investment programmes relating to flood defences are highly unpopular. I am thinking of the Clontarf and the James Larkin causeway in this regard. It appears a level of construction was taking place to prevent floods that are impossible to predict. Perhaps more resources should be allocated where they are needed.

A final point that arose in our recent debates on climate change relates to the advisory committee. The committee's chairman, Professor John Fitzgerald, said earlier today that it will be independent. However, the criticism in this House was that the climate change advisory committee is overloaded with economists and short on experts who have studied climate change. It also needs to be independent of the Environmental Protection Agency. We want independent advice. One of the issues that arose during the banking inquiry was that when the Department of Finance did not like the advice from the ESRI, it's officials phoned the latter to complain. We do not want that. We want all views, including contrarian ones, to be brought to bear on this problem.

I compliment the Minister of State on placing on record the two schemes that are up and running, with €344,000 made available to the 360 households and €530,000 for small business. In the period of despair people experienced, they did not think that money was going to arrive and they felt almost alone in coping with the problem. I am glad those numbers are now on the record and that those facilities are still open to compensate people. It is an area in which we will have to do a great deal of planning regarding where we build and how we protect against floods. Even though it was, as the Minister of State said, an exceptional December in terms of rain, lessons have been learned. The legal judgment in the ESB v.UCC case, which was the biggest case of flooding, will be extremely important to explore. I gather it runs to over 300 pages. The university was judged to be 30% responsible and the ESB 70% responsible for that flood. If we do not do work like that, the moral hazard problem will assert itself. We will have these emergencies and everyone will want to know why the Minister is not there. We have to take measures to anticipate flooding and deal with it and to apportion the blame appropriately when that is necessary.