Flooding is a fairly complicated scenario. It might look simple to address and devastating for families but there are a lot of different parts to this. The first thing people need to understand relates to towns especially. When Dublin was being developed, a certain number of pipes were put in, maybe 12 in., 14 in. or 18 in. in diameter. Then it was decided to build more houses and buildings, which was good, but the pipes had to take more and more water from the new estates. This went on and on. No more than with what you put into your mouth, sooner or later it does not all fit in. You have to do things in proportion. That is one aspect. Another aspect is cleaning out gullies. A lot of flooding is caused by simple things like gullies not being cleaned out. I thank the Minister of State for liaising with me in the past few weeks on the River Suck and the Shannon. The next aspect is drains. I remember when you could make, clean and do everything else with a drain. Now a farmer is afraid to make one because someone from the fisheries authorities or Department might say it is not allowed. Councils used to deal with a certain number of drains but now it is the case that if there is a bush, they will go every side of it rather than remove it. That bush might be growing for only 15 or 20 years and might be what we call a sucker. It is in the line of a small tree. If you do not keep a drain or river maintained, you will cause problems because there is a build-up. Let us be clear: built-up material has to be removed but this is not being done. There is a problem because nearly everyone wants to stop you from doing everything. If this continues and we do not put a system in place, things will get worse in the currently affected areas. Everyone looks to the OPW. It is but one part. The councils have to do their bit and Irish Water needs to look at the pipes put in years ago to take the storm-water. Joined-up thinking needs to take place. On bigger rivers, you have Inland Fisheries Ireland, the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland, the fisheries and the National Parks and Wildlife Service. In some cases, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing because everyone is trying to stop things. We need collaborative thinking, as argued for by Deputy Aird, and we also need to ask how we can speed things up. I have referred before to rules and regulations and to the reports and, to be blunt about it, what I would call “rubbish” required because of European legislation. We have left the door open to people who want to see nothing happening in a country and who want to shoot down to the Four Courts to try to block projects. That is not acceptable because if a Minister is trying to get works done, it is a cruel thing to see the likes of a job being blocked. Go out to Connemara at the moment and look at Rossaveal, where we are trying to deepen a port. That has been blocked. Why? Because it has gone to the courts. Go around the country and look at that. That is not tolerable. I have said it time and again: we have played into the hands of these people who do not want to see progress. Until we change some of this, we will be in trouble. I remember we were down in Crossmolina years ago. I think that job has been done now, has it not? Was it in 2016 or something we were down there? It has taken seven or eight years to get all the paperwork right and to get that job rolling. It will be great for those people when it is done. You see the relief on people's faces. You will hear some people say the properties are built on a floodplain. If they were built 100, 200 or 300 years ago on a floodplain, we are hardly going to tell the people to move on to another place. We have to put in the measures to try to resolve the issue for the people at hand, Athlone being a perfect example, and go to different parts of the country. When those measures are put in, they are successful. We have to just think. I look at Lough Funshinagh, in Roscommon, and I saw what really good people in that area had to go through. I looked out a window one day, and to the top of my head the water was up higher on the far side of the road. That is frightening for anyone, and those good people live an ordinary life. They do not want to be saying anything or shouting or roaring, but the reality is that if that bank had pushed to the far side, they would have been in trouble. In fairness, pumps have been put in and an interim measure has been done, but we need to get long-term solutions, and not alone there. I am not talking about "If you do not do my back door" stuff. We need to get it in all the different parts, but it needs a myriad of joined-up thinking and speeding up. To be quite blunt, sometimes councils could be offered the money but they do not put in the gee-up into trying to get it done. That needs to be done as well. There is no point in saying it does not. There is no one-fit solution or one thing that will solve it all, but we need to work collaboratively together. To be frank, in most cases it is not money that is the problem, which is an unusual thing to say in here. It is the paperwork, the bureaucracy and the blocking by outside interests. I say to those people, have a think to yourself. Would you like your mother, your father, your brother or your sister to be looking out at what I am after talking about - and I am over 6 ft - and to be looking out a window and seeing the water higher than the house you were born, bred and reared in or the house you built. Is that what Irish people who want to go down to the Four Courts and go blocking jobs are about? We should have respect for everyone in this country and for those people who are in situations where the State is willing to help them but where someone comes along in their own interest and goes blocking.

Sentiment score: 0.01