The floods in December destroyed homes and businesses across the country, including farmlands and farm buildings. More than 260 families had to leave their homes. Many others were unable to access their homes, which was not a direct result of homes being floods but was due to roads being flooded. The floods are still receding in many areas and the true cost of the damage is still unknown. Local authorities are assessing the damage to public infrastructure, roads and bridges and they will reach a conclusion on it. The rain may have subsided and politicians and the media have returned to other concerns and issues.

The votes are on dry land.

Unfortunately, the reality is that there are still many families in total and absolute despair as they try to deal with the damage caused by the deluge. Many do not have insurance and are facing a huge burden as a result of additional costs. The families had the cost of renting or purchasing pumps during the peak of the storms. Electricity use increased as heat was kept on in flooded homes and additional fuel was required for pumps and boilers that were kept going around the clock. It was an unimaginable burden for many families. The water has done insidious damage to family homes. Carpets are destroyed and wooden floors and tiles have had to be thrown out and replaced. Families have faced increased heating bills as a result of their efforts to tackle damp. In many cases, septic tanks have overflowed. There is the additional burden, from a health and safety point of view, of making safe people's lawns and the areas surrounding their homes as a result of leakage and leaching of toxicity from septic tanks.

The Minister, Deputy Coveney, said the Government would be generous and fair with applications for assistance to help people deal with the damage, while all claims will be means tested. The Irish Red Cross managed the applications for assistance for small businesses which were not insured and I understand this has had a drawdown of approximately 75%. Families who suffered damage to their property and need assistance have had to apply to the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection's Department. This seems to be a far more detailed process and people are anxious that it is taking too long. My personal experience is that the community welfare officers are doing the best they can but families are saying the waiting times are extensive and the criteria set do not seem to match the costs incurred and the burden placed on them.

I have a number of simple questions for the Tánaiste. Has she assigned any additional staff to assist the community welfare officers in the processing of these claims? Will she issue new guidelines to the community welfare officers to cover all the reasonable costs of those who were uninsured? Will she provide money upfront to people who are insured but who are waiting for insurance companies to process their claims so they can pay their bills? If she has to put a lien on a claim at a later stage, that is fine, but she should take the burden from people who are facing bills for oil, electricity, pumps, replacement carpets and getting their homes back to some kind of normal state. The Tánaiste's Department has a responsibility to meet the basic and obvious costs associated with the trauma these people have suffered. Will she tell us what it has been doing?

That is exactly what the Department has been doing. In particular, the officer in charge of the Limerick region personally went house to house to find out if there are elderly or retired people there who might not have many family members around. We did that on all of the worst nights of the flooding.

Did you use the boat?

People are very conscious of that fact because numerous people have contacted us to congratulate and thank those particular staff. The communities, families and individuals who have gone in to help, including many local public representatives, have been acting in partnership and I thank and compliment all of them. I see it is forecast that the weather will be slightly rainier next week but I hope the worst is over.

Postpone the election.

We deal with this every year there are instances of flooding. As a matter of interest, we initiated our emergency plans in Clare and in Tralee in County Kerry on 6 December. In both instances, there were small-scale levels of flooding during the week of 4, 5 and 6 December. If Deputy Dooley wishes to draw individual cases to my attention, where he would like to see families getting more, he might give me the details. Certainly, the cost of pumps has been supplied.

I have attended a number of the community welfare service clinics in rural areas and I have met and spoken to the community welfare officers who were on the ground during the floods right around the country. Our staff and the senior staff in charge have also been around the country. They have gone to all the co-ordination meetings of the Government group and agency groups dealing with the flooding. As we speak, a significant number of payments have been made and, at this point in time, there have been payments to approximately 250 families to 300 families.

We are expecting more claims to come in. Our experience is that in the initial stages, many people do not make a claim or, if they do, it is for small-scale stuff such as bed clothing or clothing that has been destroyed. If contaminated water has passed through a property, the claim is to replace foodstuffs and so on that have been contaminated. There is then the second stage. White goods, for instance, fridges and freezers on a ground floor, may have been destroyed.

What we do there is ask people to get estimates of what has to replaced and we work with those estimates as flexibly as we can. That really depends on people bringing the estimates forward, although often people are not in a position to do so for several weeks, until the house has dried out. In extreme cases, it could be longer and where there is very significant damage to a home, it could be months as it might be necessary to get engineering opinions and the OPW's opinion. We have done that, for instance, in counties Clare and Galway, particularly south Galway, on previous occasions. As Minister, I dealt with the aftermath of the disastrous floods that took place in the west in 2009 and the subsequent flooding in 2010. In approximately 20 cases, families were given sanction to move home on the advice of the OPW, local authority engineers and their own engineers. To date - I am talking about 2012 - approximately 14 families have moved and rebuilt homes on ground safer from flooding.

Is the Tánaiste confident that her Department has issued the appropriate guidelines to community welfare officers to the effect that all reasonable costs associated with the damage done to homes can now be claimed from her Department? It is a simple question. She seemed to indicate that there may be a delay in some of the claims coming forward. Will she pay on account, so that as people receive bills and have to pay the costs associated with the damage to their homes, her Department will pay an element of the cost at that time, while more moneys will be forwarded to families as and when they have a better understanding of what all the costs are?

In simple terms, I want to know that the community welfare officers have a very clear understanding that the Department will cover all reasonable costs for those who are uninsured and that it will provide upfront payments for those who are insured, notwithstanding the potential for the home owner to make an insurance claim at a later stage, which does take time. How that would work between the insurance companies and the Department is a matter which I am sure she can address.

My greatest concern is for the people at the coalface who have suffered the trauma and pain associated with this. More particularly, I am concerned about the additional costs associated with trying to get back into their homes. They should not be placed in an intolerable situation of trying to borrow the money, being unable to borrow it and perhaps in some cases having to look to moneylenders or whatever to assist them. We do not want that to happen.

I need assurance from the Tánaiste that the community welfare officers have available to them the resources to deal with all reasonable costs. In some cases, the costs will go beyond bedclothes or foodstuffs that are contaminated as a result of the waters. They will include floor coverings, damage done to doors and the cost of cleaning up the toxic substances that have been leached around lawns and driveways from septic tanks. Some of those costs are additional and they are real. There are also the costs associated with running pumps 24/7 for three or four weeks. There are the additional electricity costs, all of which need to be factored into the Department's ready reckoner, as it were, to provide the community welfare officers with a very clear understanding of what the Tánaiste's is talking about when she says all costs will be covered.

As I said earlier, it is essentially a three-phase process. First is the immediate emergency, for which payments tend to be small, covering things like foodstuffs and essentials that may have been destroyed or contaminated as a consequence of the flood. In the second phase, it is up to people and it depends on how quickly the floodwaters recede. Often people may stay elsewhere while leaving one person in the house. It may be some weeks before they then claim for material damage to items in the house. Such items can range from floorboards to white goods and electrical goods and furniture. The third phase is when more substantial work may be required to the property. In that case, there will almost always be some engineering or technical building advice required. If the severity and the repetition of the floods are such in the particular location that there is a need to look at wider solutions, then in conjunction with the local authority and the OPW, the Department can do that.

Deputy Dooley spoke about the issue of septic tanks. Certainly, that issue has been raised on a number of occasions in the co-ordination meetings, both by representatives of the City and County Management Association and by Irish Water. Obviously, there are broader contamination issues in respect of water. If the Deputy is specifically referencing people who have problems with a septic tank, I would say that they would probably need some expertise from the local council or from an engineer, construction firm or construction expert of their own choice. If the Deputy is saying that the septic tank structure may need to be replaced because of flooding-----

Just for clarity and to be helpful, I am not talking about the architecture or the structure at all; I am talking about the leaching of the toxic material in the septic tank, which is spread around the site. That has to be cleaned up and it requires expertise to come in and take away that sludge from the lawns and driveways of homes.

In that particular case, again, they will go to a company and maybe with their own help, they can do some of that. There is a level of expertise generally required for some of that work.

There is no issue with the expertise; it is the cost.

If they go to the community welfare service and look-----

Where is the money?

We have actually provided for pumps and all kinds of assistance to people.

There is no clarity.

If the Deputy has a particular case in mind, it would be helpful if he gave me the details of the case or cases. We are talking a little bit in the abstract. I have been in so many flooded properties over the past five years, since I became Minister.

In the boat.

All I can say is it is a horrific experience for a family. I have gone to flood properties months after they have dried out. There is still the smell and stink and the problems Deputy Dooley spoke about with the septic tanks. Our officials will help people with all of that. For people who are farming, we are obviously talking here about the family home in the context of the farm. Wider issues in respect of farming would be dealt with by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which has a number of specific schemes in that regard.

Bring in David Begg.

Give Boxer a ring.