Flooding is causing hardship nationwide, and that has to be recognised in any compensation package. I wish to make a point about the lack of maintenance and cleaning of our rivers. I was in three houses in my constituency which suffered flooding over the weekend. The only reason they have been flooded is the lack of maintenance of nearby rivers and streams. The policy at the moment is not to maintain or clean streams. We will have increasing frequency of flooding of residences and businesses if we do not reverse that decision. I also urge the Government to grant aid floodgates for residential and business premises, which would help to alleviate the danger of flooding for those premises.

On the issue of maintenance, which I think Deputy McGrath raised as well, it is important that consent processes have to be gone through. As regards the broader issue of the increased number of rainfall events we are having at the moment, we need to look at and are looking at this through the land use plan, which is critical. There are some good agriculture schemes in place, such as the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, that support landowners to look at a catchment management approach. We will have out shortly a new river basin plan, which will look at catchment management approaches. Critically, we need to look to nature for solutions in trying to address these problems. The point the Deputy raised about trying to put flood defences into individual properties is a very good one. It can certainly prevent inundation on small scales in some properties and it is worth looking at.