Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for making time available to deal with this matter. The seventh anniversary of the flooding of Meadowbrook in Glanmire was on 28 June. More than 60 houses and businesses were flooded. That flooding was 4 ft to 5 ft high in some parts of the estate. Many houses were severely damaged. The situation now is that it is impossible to get insurance for those houses and they have been devalued. The damage cost people much money and brought them a great deal of grief as well. The county council has done much work in preparing a flood relief programme for the Glashaboy river. It carried out an environmental impact study, which was furnished to the Minister of State's Department. I acknowledge that this project has to go through procedures and the environmental impact study has to be reviewed.

When he was here previously, the Minister of State gave his full support to funding being allocated for the remedial work to be carried out. We still have had no sign of that money being assigned. Even if the funding was allocated today, it would be necessary to invite tenders. That will take another three to four months. It will then take another month or two to sign the contracts while the work itself will probably take a year to complete. If we agreed to the funding today, it would probably still be February or March of next year before any work would start. This issue is a priority for the people in the area, for the families living in Meadowbrook in Glanmire, for the immediate Glanmire area and for those businesses that suffered damage as a result of that flooding. I am wondering about the current status of the project.