Martin Conway (Fine Gael)

I want to follow up on a very good contribution made by my colleague, Senator Cathal Byrne, regarding the situation he experienced in Wexford in 2021. I can recall similar experiences on Christmas Day in 2009 and 2010, which other colleagues will remember. One was a flood and the other was a freeze. We have an orange weather warning and orange and red warnings are becoming more prevalent than ever before. I ask the Leader if the Minster, Deputy Browne, who is the lead Minister for emergency planning, could come in for a debate on that specific issue.We have improved hugely when it comes to planning for emergencies but there is always work that can be done to improve it further. We need a real-time instantaneous response, which happens most of the time, because we have phenomenal people in all of our emergency services and local authorities who all end up working together when these situations present themselves. The co-ordination unit in the Department of agriculture does a superb job. It is worthy of further examination and discussion in this House. Would it be possible at some stage in the not-too-distant future to have the Minister in for statements and a discussion on emergency planning to share with us the more inner details on our readiness and what needs to be done to be even more ready? Met Éireann has done great work in improving its forecasting and facilitating more localised forecasting, which is even more important. I recall hosting an event here when there was a red weather warning in 2023. We managed to go ahead with the event because people flew in the day before. There is a huge amount of further work that can be done to ensure we are weather-ready and ready for such emergencies. A debate like that would be very useful for Members.