I thank Aontú for tabling this motion. It is well put together, well thought out and well planned. I have mentioned these issues in the House on a number of occasions and brought them up when I was a member of Cork City Council regularly. Speaking of Cork City Council, 2009, the Minister of State may recall, is when Cork nearly drowned after the rivers burst their banks, waters in the dam had to be released and there was absolute destruction in the city. That was 17 years ago. We still have not seen flood defences built in the city. In Midleton, as my colleague just said, there has been no planning application made and we know the town floods regularly. Blackpool is in my constituency. Last month, I stood in a house on the Commons Road in Blackpool, which has been flooded on three separate occasions. The family, a son and his elderly mother, were just back in their property after a year, with the entire property done up and all restored, when the river burst its banks again due to heavy flooding. It was going to happen anyway and they are out of the house again for another two years. That is the reality people are living. People tell me that when it rains, they check their gardens and cannot sleep at night because they are worried about what is going to happen. That is just in Blackpool. For businesses in Blackpool, an empty unit cannot be rented out at the moment because it is not possible to get insurance. No insurance company will cover that. Ballyvolane is higher up the hill. It flooded in 2009 and people there still cannot get insurance on their homes because there is no flood defence system there 17 years on. Imagine having the worry that either your house will go on fire, flood or something else will happen but you cannot get any insurance. That is the reality in my constituency in Cork and what people are going through day in, day out. There seems to be no let-up. We have all spoken about planning and the need to change it but what has the Government done? Government Deputies talk the talk and wring their hands. They say lessons must be learned, we need to move faster, build houses and do this, that and the other but the Government is not doing it. It is talking about it but there is no legislation coming through this House. We are here day in, day out, hearing all these marvellous things we should be doing but they are not being done. For God's sake, would the rest of you all wake up and do your bloody job. I do not understand how it takes so long to get one thing done while people are suffering, lying awake at night wondering if they are going to be out of their home for another 12 months. That is what they are being put through. Part of this motion is very fitting. Cork City Council passed a motion unanimously last Monday night, tabled by Councillor Noel O'Flynn of Independent Ireland, asking for a system similar to the one in the Kingdom of Spain which provides a strong model, the ES-Alert system, to be put in place. I have witnessed the system myself. It is a fantastic model that works well, alerting people of the risk in their vicinity. It is very well managed and protects personal data as well. It is not a text alert but an entire system that alerts people by telephone. That needs to be done as well. The comments made by certain Ministers about flood plains have left a lot of questions unanswered. That needs to be addressed in the House today. Local authorities, builders and people building houses on flood plains need to get information and have a proper structure of what the Minister is actually saying about building on flood plains. We need a timeline.

Sentiment score: -0.02

You have to allow a point of order, Chair.

Sentiment score: 0.23