I, too, welcome the school community from the convent in Listowel. It is entirely appropriate that there is a school delegation here from the town of Listowel because anyone in this House will remember the flooding that took place two or three weeks before the election of November 2024. Unfortunately, while work has been done in Listowel, which the Minister visited recently, where banks have put in, we remember what happened in Killacrim and off the Bridge Road. However, the long-term plan, which we recently met with Kerry County Council about, has not been put in place to address the issue of flooding and forestry upriver. The forestry is not only causing a biodiversity crisis and cleaning out the rivers literally and metaphorically with the absence of brown trout in the rivers up around the Knocknagoshel area, the Lyracrumpane area, the River Awbeg and other tributaries of the River Feale. The water that is going in there has not been addressed and there is no long-term plan in place. Over the past few weeks other communities around the country have been devastated and homes have been destroyed, but the fallout have not been unforeseeable or unavoidable. It exposes how unprepared this Government has been. Flooding is not simply a matter of heavy rain; it is years of underinvestment, inadequate infrastructure and lack of long-term planning. Has river restoration been taken into account? No. Nature-based solution like they have in the Netherlands and Germany or what they have done in Yorkshire have not been taken into account. Has there been much investment in wetlands, afforestation plans or peatland restoration? No. We await the long-term plan for the Listowel area. Kerry County Council has told us that it has not been dealt with yet. No consideration has been given to upland tributaries and rivers. We still do not have a national flood warning system in place. This is an outrageous oversight in the face of worsening storms because they are going to continue. Our policy seems to have been more payments and then blaming judicial reviews and the pearl mussels. That is not good enough.

Sentiment score: -0.20