Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)

My colleague Deputy Paul Daly and I are glad of the opportunity to speak to the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2025.

I want to start far away from Acts and Schedules. I want to start in a kitchen along the Shannon on a wet night when the rain is hammering on the roof and the phone pings with another yellow or orange warning. The first thing people do is check the OPW app and the Waterways Ireland app and then ring a neighbour to ask what it is like at the bridge in Portumna. They might look out across the field and find the waters are well up and wonder if a flood is coming this time. That is the reality for so many families that live near Lough Allen, Lough Ree and Lough Derg, and right down to the Shannon. It is not just about water levels, it is about the fear and uncertainty year in and year out, living beside a river that is unpredictable.

In 2009 and again in 2015 and 2016, the Shannon rose into people's lives in a way they will never forget. We can measure those events in metres on a gauge or in cubic metres per second as the water passed out at Parteen. We have all those numbers, but the people who lived through those events measure them differently. They measure them by the number of nights they did not sleep, the number of times they checked the back door at 3 a.m., the number of days that they could not get to work or school and the photos of the furniture that they did not get upstairs in time. I have spoken to families who still describe the sound a flood makes - the dull quiet sound when water first seeps in and onto the concrete floor. They talk about living upstairs for weeks, using makeshift paths made out of pallets and blocks in order to move around outside their homes.

The farmers with land on the callows tell us about watching the cattle standing on the last bit of high ground in their fields and about moving stock in the dark and rain, with water already lapping around their yards. They also talk about the sick feeling when they realised that the land was gone for the year and that every bale of silage would now have to be bought. Then, as if the winters were not enough, came the summer flood of 2023. For people who live along the Shannon, that felt like a turning point - flooding in July when the fields should have been at their best. Hay and silage that had been planned and budgeted for was wiped out. The ground habitat of the curlew, which is a nesting bird, was destroyed in the middle of the breeding season. Children asked why the fields were covered by lakes in the summer.

I have spoken to farmers who say that they can manage a winter flood - that they were used to that - but that they cannot rely on the summer any more. They ask what kind of life is that and how they are supposed to plan anything. That is not just an inconvenience; it is deep, grinding stress. It leaves them wondering if they should keep farming at all. It is all about if they are able to insure or sell their homes. There is a constant question mark over their whole way of life.

We also speak honestly about the financial cost and how it feeds into people's fears. Insurance can be impossible or only available with massive excesses. Every new flood or near miss undermines the value of property, which is perhaps people's only asset. Those thinking about renovating or improving a house wonder if they should spend the money if the river is going to flood again. Repeated closures mean that businesses lose a lot of customers. Staff cannot get to work and deliveries cannot get in or out. Banks look nervously at premises in known flood areas and tighten credit.

A summer like 2023 is not just an annoyance, it can throw into chaos the whole year's cash flow and feed plans for farmers. It is not just that extra fodder is expensive; sometimes it is scarce. There is a cost to moving stock, replacing damaged fences and water troughs, repairing lanes and paying for contractors at short notice in bad conditions. All of that is before we even get to the cost of the State emergency services, road repairs, relief schemes and ad hoc compensation.

When communities ask who is actually responsible, what the rules are and what the plan is, they are not just asking an academic question, they are asking about the future of their homes, their businesses and their farms. There is an emotional toll, not just of one event but of a lifetime of events. We often talk about resilience as if it is endless, and people can absorb shock after shock. What I see along the Shannon is that the reservoir of resilience is running low. All the people who remember the 1950s and 1960s tell us they have never seen the patterns of water they see now. Middle-aged couples show brick lines on the gable ends of walls. If we are in Portumna where they keep the boats, they can show us where the water came up to in 2009 and again in 2015 and 2016. Young families trying to raise children wonder if they are being fair to those children by staying living where they are.

The mental health impact is real. People flinch at the alerts from Met Éireann or the alert tone on the radio. They check river levels more than they check their own blood pressure. Even heavy rainfall is accompanied by a knot in the stomach, even if at the end the water stays just below the top of the bank. It is not only the big headline floods that cause damage; there is a constant attrition when the waters in rivers and tributaries are sitting level with the banks week after week. Drains and ditches cannot empty. Septic tanks back up. Lovely riverside gardens are now too risky to invest in. Farm entrances need to be raised again and again. People are living with permanent low-level anxiety because they know how little slack there is in the system. Once the river is full, the next downpour has nowhere to go but sideways. I am beginning to lose my place.