What we have seen over the past few weeks shows how desperately unprepared the State was for the extreme weather we have experienced. This was not unpredicted. It was predicted 20 years ago that the impact of climate change was precisely going to be much wetter weather. The latter expresses itself in extreme events. Unfortunately, this is the music of the future. This is what climate change looks like in Ireland, and it is going to get worse and worse. All over my constituency, people have told me about the damage done to their homes. They have told me that this is not the first time this has happened. There is an overwhelming sense that we were not prepared or assisted properly. A constituent from Rathfarnham told me: There were ten children across six houses blocked in by the water for several hours on our cul-de-sac. Residents contacted emergency services. However, no emergency services attended the estate. We contacted South Dublin County Council, who stated they had no resources available and advised us to contact emergency services instead. This was predictable, but the State was not prepared. What we have seen since is an attempt by politicians to scapegoat anybody or anything that could be found that could possibly be scapegoated. Met Éireann got blamed. The same people who gave out about too many yellow, orange and red warnings then, all of a sudden, decided that Met Éireann was to blame because it should have had more serious warnings. The habitats directive got the blame. Civil society groups that try to defend our biodiversity and nature and the kinds of measures that would cut across this flooding get the blame. The freshwater pearl mussel gets the blame. All of this is to avoid the question of who rezoned the floodplains, as John Sweeney has noted, who allowed housing closer to riverbanks than was wise and who has drastically underfunded climate adaptation measures for the past 20 years. We need real climate action and real flood adaptation measures.

Sentiment score: -0.30