To put it lightly, it would be fair to say we had serious rains and serious flooding. There are issues that need to be dealt with in north Louth. In fairness to the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, he was in Blackrock recently. We need to make sure that catchment-based flood risk assessment and management, CFRAM, is driven ahead. For Dundalk and Blackrock south we are only talking about the application going in probably around June 2027. However, we need to make sure there are no hold-ups and that any short-term mitigations can be introduced. The Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, Deputy McGreehan, will well know the issues that have happened and constantly happen in north County Louth, particularly out by the Cooley Peninsula out to the Border. There is a considerable amount of works that should and can be done. Councillor Antóin Watters is one of many who brought up these issues with me and others. When I talk about Dundalk, I can talk about the Ardee Road and the fact we have issues that are caused by the River Blackwater. We have finally received promises to clean the River Blackwater and The Ramparts. We have seen the introduction of pumps. We need to ensure that Louth County Council has access to them always, uses tankers and that we do the best we can in the disaster scenario. I am talking about Bay Estate, where I live, Cluan Enda, Greeenwood Drive, Blackwater Court, Ashbrook or basically anywhere around Red Barns Road and St. Alphonsus Road. We have those issues of high tides and huge rains. However, at this point in time the reason we have flooding there is that the Uisce Éireann infrastructure is not up to scratch. I refer to the issue with CFRAM and the issue with the Coes Road pumping station, where everything from WuXi Biologics comes right through. It is a joint sewage and storm water facility. The fact is it is not going to upgraded completely. Works will start in about 2027 but will not finish until 2029 or 2030, according to the council. Even worse, the wastewater treatment plant is not due to be upgraded until 2033. There is no capacity and we are lucky we did not have hundreds of houses flooded.

Sentiment score: 0.07