Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West Much of the country is inundated with floodwater at the moment. The Government cannot control the weather, but it can control the delivery of flood defences and the forecasting systems that can protect people in this country. In those two areas, the Government has been a disaster. Two years ago, I asked the Minister for public expenditure the timeframes for the delivery of flood defence schemes in the country. He did not give an answer. Government Ministers are allergic to measurables in case they can be held to account. The Minister told me there were 46 schemes at the design stage at that time. Let us look at a couple of those. In Midleton in 2023, during Storm Babet, 600 homes and 300 businesses were flooded. The damage was estimated at €200 million, which is incredible. People came within a hair's breadth of losing their lives in Midleton. The damage was unprecedented but was not unforeseen because Storm Frank had devastated the exact same area in 2015. In 2015, flood defences were promised, with a completion date of 2020. Today the planning application for those flood defences has still not even been submitted to Cork County Council. It is an incredible situation. When it rains in Midleton, an elderly gentleman often stays awake at night to watch the height of the river in order to be able to warn families of impending danger. Eleven years after Storm Frank, Midleton is dependent on a human water gauge for the protection of lives under the Tánaiste's Government. Enniscorthy has been waiting 25 years for protection. In 2014, €55 million was allocated to flood relief schemes in Enniscorthy. This week Enniscorthy is a lake. There have been 12 floods in 25 years and planning permission for these flood defences has still not been granted. Practically every single piece of infrastructure development in this country is grinding to a halt. Housing is in reverse. It will be 2050 before Uisce Éireann has the gaps in the infrastructure filled. The grid cannot take the renewable energy that is created at the moment. Commuters are sitting on motorways that look like car parks. Tens of thousands of families are currently at risk due to flooding because those defences are not in place. Why? It is because the Tánaiste's Government has the slowest planning, licensing, permitting, tendering and judicial reviews in the whole of the European Union. Flood forecasting too has been incredibly slow. Met Éireann does not provide flood forecasts to the public. It provides rainfall forecasts that do not give a full picture in terms of ground saturation. There are no real-time weather stations recording rainfall in mountain areas and in the catchment areas of the major rivers. The national flood forecast and warning service was announced in 2016, yet ten years later none of these flood forecasts are being made available to the public. Councils know this information and people will get it but only if they ask the councils what is happening. I believe that the glacial pace of infrastructural delivery in this country is costing lives and is costing people dearly. Will the Tánaiste detail today when the outstanding flood defences that are promised will be delivered? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-29