At leaders questions in the Dail on Thursday I appealed to the government to take a more sensible approach to the flooding problems that are being experienced in the country at the moment. The number of outdoor staff being employed by councils throughout the country is down 50 % in the past number of years and that was shown last weekend as there were nowhere near enough people to go out and carry out remedial works like opening water cuts on roads which would have helped alleviate some of the problems
I also said that the cleaning of rivers and drains was a thing of the past and a programme of dredging and cleaning should be set up by the government. We have to stop taking orders from Europe and clean our river and drains and that would help in a lot of cases. There are far too many bodies who are issuing instructions on matters like these and a lot of problems could be solved if we carry out such works on our own initiative and not be answering to the EU and others all the time. Too much money is being wasted on consultants and people writing reports.The Government must act on this problem now. The authorities in the UK embarked on a programme of river cleaning and dredging after severe flooding a number of years ago and it has worked. We can so the same here