North Louth flooding
Senator McGahon pressed the Government on flooding in north Louth and the Cooley Peninsula, especially the need for support for private roads as well as public infrastructure.
On different occasions over the past two weeks, I have raised the issue of all the flooding that happened in north Louth and the Cooley Peninsula. Last night, Louth County Council had its annual budget meeting. It was told that the council has applied for €2 million from the Government to deal with many of the issues that have incurred in respect of roads, infrastructure and stuff like that. That €2 million will be provided by the Government.
However, the issue I have is that the €2 million will just cover public roads. There is a huge number of private roads throughout north Louth that are not maintained by the council that have been completely washed away and are impassible. They are not physically capable of being used and that €2 million will not go towards those. It has been said that we may need to look at asking for more money for a local improvement scheme, LIS, or a community involvement scheme, CIS, later in the year. I do not think we can take this bit-by-bit approach to something like this. When something like this happens in any part or area of this country, the Government is clear in its commitment that we are willing to put money back into those communities to get them straight back up to the standard they were prior to any sort of flooding, whether it is through the humanitarian scheme, business schemes or providing money to a local authority to get the infrastructure back up and running. It should not be the case that the local authority turns around and states it will only ask for money for X number of projects. This has to be a wide-scale financial package that goes into north Louth to get it back to where it was. It cannot be the case that we pick some roads and not others.
There has been talk as well about a scheme for farmers or people affected with agriculture for much of the damage caused to their land. I would appreciate it if we got clarification from the Minister for agriculture on whether and when a scheme will be opened. That would provide much reassurance for many people in the Cooley Peninsula.