Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak about a flood relief project that was planned for Ballinasloe. Of course, the Office of Public Works, OPW, recognised high levels of existing flood risk and conducted a catchment flood risk assessment and management, CFRAM, study as part of the CFRAM Programme. That was finalised in May 2018. This was due to incredible flooding twice in Ballinasloe town involving millions of euro worth of damage. It brought expert teams together - OPW, Arup group engineers, Ryan Handley environmental engineers and Galway County Council - but all of these consultation processes are taking time. Our last public consultation was in March 2022. The next public consultation will be at the end of February. I suppose what I want to say here is that we need to see action. We are seeing all of these consultations, but where are we seeing the action on this? This next consultation day will be on Tuesday, 27 February. I encourage people in my own local area to go to this meeting. It is from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. We need to show the project team that this project is urgent and we need to see it happen now. I deal with families and people in the likes of Ballinsloe, in Portnick and all along Sarsfield Road and Station Road, where they have had to deal with this flooding. People look out the window - one will hear it about many areas that are flooded - and look to see the water rising, particularly at this time of the year, in February and March. I want to highlight that the investment in flood-relief projects across the country is crucial. We can see everything with climate change but we need to put the measures in place that we agreed years ago are a priority; we still have not seen action, we have the consultation now and we next need to see action and construction.