I welcome this opportunity to address the subject of flooding. I want to express my absolute gratitude to the Minister of State. He was everywhere in all parts of the country. We look forward to imminently welcoming him to County Meath. I express my sincere gratitude to the engineers and outdoor crew of Meath County Council, particularly in the municipal districts of Ashbourne, Laytown, Bettystown, Kells and Ratoath. I also express my gratitude to the farming community. I do not know of one farmer in our area who was not involved in pulling cars, vans and God knows what types of vehicles out of ditches or through floods at a time when the weather was playing havoc with the farming calendar. I also thank the ESB crew members and the fire and rescue services, who were extremely busy pumping out and then dealing with ad hoc repairs that were required where different parts of the electrical infrastructure short-circuited, etc. Listening to all of the contributions today, I am getting a fantastic lesson in geography from all parts of the country as represented by colleagues. Two things stand out in my mind. The first is that we really cannot cheat nature. We have to work with nature. We have to farm with nature, and we have to plan with nature and the climate. Another issue of high importance, which was referenced most recently by my colleague, is the huge wisdom and knowledge bank of our older people, our older residents, who know the way things were in the past, such as the course of the river, where the sluice was, where the mill of old was and how that impacted the topography of the area we now look to develop, particularly at a time of crisis in housing. This also highlights an important area, namely, that we measure twice and cut once and that when we are dealing with planning and housing, the importance of having the land use review published as soon as possible. It is also very important that we stick to the CFRAM maps. That was not the case in the past and we are now dealing with legacy issues where there has been flooding of developments in the past 20 to 25 years. It is so important that we adhere to those flood area maps. Other considerations include section 50 concerning the design of bridges and culverts, the placement and capacity of storm water attenuation tanks, the co-location of wastewater outflow and those attenuation tanks. We have had a couple of episodes in Ratoath, County Meath where the two collided and the outcome was not favourable. Thankfully, a public health emergency was averted. Rather than labour those points, I will raise them as flags. Regarding possible actions we could take, colleagues have spoken about storm notification systems, delays to that and money that was previously allocated but I remind people of the local authority and the MapAlerter apps that are very effective. As public representatives, we need to work with different WhatsApp groups and community groups to encourage as many residents as possible about the alerter maps. There have been calls for additional funding for road repairs and all of us would welcome that constituency by constituency. As part of our circular economy efforts, we are using different percentages of recycled asphalt for road repairs. This needs to be looked at. Prior to flooding in Meath, I noticed that the longevity of those products may not be quite what we would like it to be - then add flood waters to it. There are opportunities in the area of rainwater harvesting, particularly in urban areas where run off can be redirected to supply water to tree plantations and shrubs. It could be beneficial to Tidy Towns groups and ease the burden on them so they do not have to go to and fro with watering cans but we have water stations and an adequate supply of water butts. These are simple, low-cost interventions that involve working with nature. I wish to raise the issue of coastal erosion, although I know it is not specifically flood-related. County Meath has a very precious and short 13 km coastline. There is one particular area at Laytown where a substantial portion of the pitch and putt facility has fallen away on to the foreshore. The pitch and putt club there has been in existence for over 50 years. The volunteers have worked at a Trojan rate over the past couple of weekends to clear up the damage. I emphasise that there is a plan for the area but, again, it involves that overall piece of what was there historically, what was part of the heritage of the area and how is that interwoven with new developments. The Laytown-Bettystown district has seen massive housing development over the probably the past 27 to 30 years. It is about how it goes forward when there will be a sense of, pardon the phrase, "Build, baby, build". That will be what we need to do but we need to learn the lessons of the past, take on board the wisdom of our older residents and their memory bank and factor that into the actions we take. I thank the Minister of State for the work he has been doing. I hope he will not need his dinghy or canoe when he comes to County Meath in the near future.

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