I thank the Minister of State for being very hands-on and for coming to Kerry again recently. Back in 2018, he gave us funding to clear the Flesk river. For ten years before that, we were constantly being told that it would make no difference to clear the river, that it would only make 10 mm of a difference. The highest flood that has been there in the last eight years did not come within 8 ft of the road level and it used to be 3 ft on top of the road before that. They wanted to raise the road and do everything else but the fact is, as Deputy McGrath said, we need to clean the river. That was what always happened until 2002, until some genius decided that farmers could not touch the river any more, clean it out or do what they had been doing for centuries. If they did, they would lose their farm payments. That is why the thing is getting worse and worse. Many of our rivers are still in desperate need of being cleaned. Like Deputy McGrath says, everything comes down from the hills - silt, sand, gravel and every other kind of muck - and lands in the river. If the river is not cleaned out, where is it going to go only spill out over the banks onto roads and into houses? That is the trouble we are having. The Minister of State saw the courthouse bridge and the pipe that was crossing the eye of the bridge. That is what has been flooding the town of Kenmare for many years. I am appealing to the Minister of State to see again if there is any quick way of removing that. Whatever other work needs to be done can wait. Removing that would alleviate the serious problem in Kenmare at the present time. There are other ideas in other towns and places about holding back the water and creating flood plains. The Minister of State must get himself stuck into them and tell them that the easy way of sorting it out is to clear the rivers. There are no two ways about it.

Sentiment score: 0.03