Máire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will probably not take the five minutes. My two colleagues, Senator Conway-Walsh and Senator Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, spoke previously.

The Minister of State is very welcome to the House. It is good to see him. I want to speak from a Dublin perspective about the impact of coastal erosion along the east coast of Dublin. The Office of Public Works has several flood defences mapped out under the eastern regional flood risk and assessment management plan. I will be parochial in saying that some of them have been delayed or postponed, some for years. Will the Minister of State give me an update on the Camac and Poddle rivers? The Camac runs through Kilmainham and Inchicore and the Poddle through Kimmage and parts of Crumlin. In terms of the Camac river, I walked around the area two weeks ago. There is a greenway proposed from the HSE headquarters at Dr. Steevens' Hospital right up to Military Road for pedestrianisation and for cycle lanes but also for a widening of the Camac because there was severe damage from flooding in 2011 at Our Lady's Lane and around that low lying area of Kilmainham. There is a difficulty, which seems to be top secret, with the plan for the new Garda operations centre at Military Road. That seems to be impacting now upon the widening of the Camac river in that area. Will the Minister of State give me an update on whether that greenway, which will prevent flooding in the future, will go ahead? A culvert collapsed there in 2015. All that needs to be managed but it seems a Garda top secret planning application may override that, leaving that area very vulnerable to flooding in the future. I do not have more to say other than to ask the Minister of State to elaborate on that.