Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 15 Nov 2000

Vol. 526 No. 1

Adjournment Debate. - Flood Relief.

Mr. Yates

This is not a matter of party politics. I want to plead with the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Cullen, on behalf of the people in my home town, Enniscorthy. RTE gave little or no coverage to the situation there but I want to give the House a sense of the continuing desperate situation and the hardship and misery which people must still endure.

On the Monday night of the flood, one could only see the aerials of the cars on Enniscorthy's Templeshannon Quay, which is on the main N11 route. The cars themselves were completely covered. I have seen buildings which contained 12 feet of water. There have not been such floods since November 1965.

I will outline a couple of housing cases. Just off Scaralwalsh, some £25,000 worth of damage was done to the home of a young couple, who have been living there for only a year. They are still not back in their house. They had to get out in the middle of the night through a window.

One could go through streets in Enniscorthy where there is nothing to be seen except skips outside houses full of furniture, televisions, fridges and carpets, all of which are completely destroyed. The majority of the people do not have insurance.

St. John's Business Park, which houses eight small business, is completely flooded. This is serious devastation. An instant appraisal by the engineering staff of Wexford County Council shows that £493,000 worth of damage was done to roads, bridges, footpaths, walkways beside the River Slaney, etc.

Last Saturday a single man came to my clinic and he was put up in temporary accommodation in a bed and breakfast but he died from a heart attack on Monday. There are elderly people who will not recover.

Two business people on Templeshannon Quay in Enniscorthy vowed they will not be able to re-open their businesses.

I appeal to the Minister to address the problems of householders and small businesses and to provide compensation for the structural damage caused. I appeal to him to speak to his colleague, Deputy Browne, who will give him a first hand account of the devastation. Since I entered public life in 1979, I have not seen anything like the devastation involved.

Today I received the statement of the Minister of State, Deputy Cullen. I ask him to circulate the address and telephone to which I can refer these cases because his statement does not give these. Will he state the total amount of money available and the type of details which people must give in their submissions in terms of photographs, cost of losses incurred, etc.?

Invariably these people do not have insurance. Is the relief available to householders only or will it cover small businesses which can provide records? I know of two small companies facing liquidation. This is no exaggeration.

One farmer had a tank built for a slatted unit. It rose with the level of the water and it will take £25,000 to repair it. I am told there is no agricultural scheme of compensation to cover this.

There is no set profile in these cases. They are individual cases of considerable verifiable loss. What is the maximum sum available to an individual? Will there be a right of appeal? When will the money come on stream and how will it be spent?

I realise the local authorities are not the responsibility of the Minister of State, but has the Government also agreed that the local authorities will be reimbursed for expenditure incurred on repairs? There are entire surfaces of bridges which have been destroyed completely. In addition, how long will the bed and breakfast cover last for people who are still out of their homes?

I pay tribute to all the emergency services, the Civil Defence, Garda, fire brigade and local authority services, who resolved the immediate problem of evacuation but the misery will take months to resolve. I visited houses awash not with water but with sewage and the smell of it will be there for months. The distress is indescribable.

I am making a plea from the heart that these people will be treated with compassion, flexibility and generosity. The reason I raise this is to try and get more information than that contained in the Minister of State's press release today.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Cullen)

I am delighted to be in the House to outline the Government's response to the recent flooding. I commiserate with all those who suffered damage or loss from the recent flooding. I appreciate that in many instances such as those outlined by Deputy Yates here and by my colleague Deputy Browne, to whom the Deputy referred, who has obviously contacted me at first hand, the effects have been devastating. Many people have found themselves in severe financial and mental distress and have nowhere to turn for assistance. The Government quickly recognised that action was needed and decided yesterday that a scheme of humanitarian assistance to relieve the hardship should be put in place.

Officials from my office today met the Irish Red Cross Society and I am delighted to confirm the society has agreed to administer this scheme on behalf of the Government. The Irish Red Cross Society is the independent intermediary body which had the responsibility for the distribution of State and European Commission Aid in 1995 and 1996.

The Society will place advertisements in the national newspapers early next week seeking applications from those who suffered severe hardship as a result of the recent floods. Deputy Yates asked for the address to which people may respond and this will be in the advertisement to which I refer but I will circulate it immediately to the entire membership of the Dáil and Seanad when I get it on Monday.

The criteria to be used by the Irish Red Cross Society in determining eligibility for assistance will be similar to previous schemes, that is, death, serious injury, homelessness, damage to home, loss of income and extreme hardship.

I emphasise that we are talking here tonight about humanitarian assistance to relieve hardship and not compensation for losses. I hope that applications for assistance from those eligible will be forwarded to the Irish Red Cross Society as quickly as possible.

On receipt of the application forms, the Irish Red Cross Society will prepare a preliminary report for the Government who will then decide on the amount of funding necessary. To respond to Deputy Yates on this point, I am not prejudging the applications for assistance. I obviously want to get the assessments done as quickly as possible to see the level of funding which will be required.

Each application will be researched independently as was the case in 1996 and, while I realise this project cannot be completed overnight having regard to the extent and scale of the recent flooding, I hope the assessment can be carried out as soon as possible. Like all Members of the House, I want to see all cases of extreme hardship cleared up without undue delay.

I understand my colleague in the Department of the Environment and Local Government, Deputy Dempsey, received reports from local authorities, including information relating to their emergency response to the flooding. While the Minister, Deputy Dempsey, is generally satisfied with the response, he proposes to convene the Interdepartmental Advisory Committee on Major Emergencies to review the reports received and to identify any improvements which might be made for the future.

In relation to housing, householders would normally be expected to have buildings and contents insured against losses of this nature. Local authorities may assist through the provision of temporary accommodation and I understand from the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Deputy Dempsey, that in this instance such accommodation was and is still being provided. In necessitous cases, it is open to the health board to assist a household, under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme, where an urgent need arises and in at least two areas, this scheme was availed of on this occasion.

In terms of repairing long-term damage to housing, there is a number of targeted options currently available to assist vulnerable groups such as lower income households and elderly persons to secure necessary improvement works to their houses. These include the local authority house improvement loan scheme, the essential repairs grant scheme, improvement works in lieu of local authority housing and the task force on special housing aid for the elderly. The resources available for these schemes have been substantially increased in recent years.

The provision of funding for national roads is a matter for the National Roads Authority which has statutory responsibility for the management of the national road network, including the allocation of grants. It would, therefore, be a matter for the authority to address any works necessary on national roads in consultation with the relevant road authority.

Local authorities are responsible for the maintenance and improvement of non-national roads and bridges in their areas, the cost of which are financed from their own resources supplemented by State grants. I understand that the Department of the Environment and Local Government is in regular contact with local authority engineering staff in relation to all matters affecting the non-national roads network. Such contacts will continue and any structural damage caused to roads or bridges arising from the recent severe weather conditions will be dealt with in this context.