Following Storm Chandra in the past few days, many homes around the country have been destroyed. I have stood in this Chamber previously asking about flood alleviation and what will be done in terms of planning. As I told the House on those occasions, I have personal experience, with my German family, of the effects of flooding. Four years later, things are not great from a building perspective but also from an emotional and psychological perspective. Things are very difficult and that is echoed in any society where a flood has come and caused damaged.

In Dublin South-Central, Dublin City Council homes cannot be maintained because there are just not enough maintenance crews and this brings so many issues. With regard to what the Government is saying about flood planning in the future, can anything be done for councils around the country that are dealing not only with fixing the problems from the floods but also with preventing them in the future? It is about funding for councils to deal with the effect of flooding and rainfall on council housing.

We have allocated funding to councils. They might say otherwise but there has never been more funding allocated to councils than in the past number of years. We will continue to work with them in regard to prevention. Yes, there is an issue in terms of co-ordination and around local forecasting as opposed to the national forecast. There are issues there. To be fair, a lot of councils have improved an awful lot in terms of providing sandbags and various measures. A lot of interim prevention measures are happening now in advance of a full-scale flood relief scheme going through planning, being built and so on.

These are very serious issues. It is soul-destroying when flooding happens to people's houses or businesses. I have been in flood-affected areas and in the homes. It is utterly soul-destroying psychologically and we have to do everything we can to prevent it. That is why the planning and the progress of flood relief schemes have to happen much faster.