Maeve O'Connell
Dublin Rathdown · Fine Gael · Ireland
“I take this opportunity to raise awareness about lipoedema. As Deputy Sherlock said, one in 11 women or girls has it. That is one member of your camogie or football team or two in your leaving certificate class, at least. That is how significant this is. I know the Minister is a huge advocate for women's healthcare.”
“As the Minister of State may be aware, and no doubt he is, the cost and availability of childcare are two of the biggest issues in our society. It is certainly an issue in Deputy Currie's constituency and it is very much an issue in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown as well.”
“I am glad to hear about the nature of the viability of facilities because, unfortunately, one of the issues that is occurring is that as developments are put in place they provide facilities for childcare but it is often an empty shell. It is not necessarily fit for purpose for that particular community.”
“I would like an update on the review of the 2001 planning guidelines for local authorities on early learning and childcare settings. It is 25 years since they were set out and a lot has changed in our society, in our childcare needs and in best practice for childcare.”
“We certainly need to look at it in the short term and, in the long term, we need to build some type of flexibility into the system, an adaptation over time, if perhaps we do not need as many spaces in future. For now, we do need to be moving to a more realistic ratio of childcare places to homes as we increasingly urbanise.”
“The only comparator I have to the impact AI is having on higher education is Covid, which resulted in everybody having to work from home and teaching going online. However, there is one key difference. With Covid, there was always the expectation that eventually we would return to campuses and more familiar operations.”
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“There are also psychological issues associated with chronic disease, in particular one like lipoedema, which is a physically debilitating and visual disease that women and young girls in particular are very sensitive to.”
“I take this opportunity to raise awareness about lipoedema. As Deputy Sherlock said, one in 11 women or girls has it. That is one member of your camogie or football team or two in your leaving certificate class, at least. That is how significant this is. I know the Minister is a huge advocate for women's healthcare. I joined her yesterday in Tallaght hospital for the national women's strategy. We really need to see a strategy and path forward for how we will raise awareness among the public and medical professionals, specifically for early diagnosis, which is so important for early treatment and in preventing this condition from becoming a more severe chronic disease.”
“We certainly need to look at it in the short term and, in the long term, we need to build some type of flexibility into the system, an adaptation over time, if perhaps we do not need as many spaces in future. For now, we do need to be moving to a more realistic ratio of childcare places to homes as we increasingly urbanise.”
“I am glad to hear about the nature of the viability of facilities because, unfortunately, one of the issues that is occurring is that as developments are put in place they provide facilities for childcare but it is often an empty shell. It is not necessarily fit for purpose for that particular community. We also have the issue, particularly in already dense urban areas where apartment developments are going in, of increasing the level of the local population when we do not have the childcare spaces to meet the demand of the existing population. In growing urban areas, in particular, having 20 childcare places per 75 homes is something we need to look at urgently.”
“As the Minister of State may be aware, and no doubt he is, the cost and availability of childcare are two of the biggest issues in our society. It is certainly an issue in Deputy Currie's constituency and it is very much an issue in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown as well. We have lost 64 providers out of core funding and, in Dundrum, the wonderful provider Once Upon A Time has also withdrawn from core funding. This is causing increased pressure on the system and highlights the challenges in the system. These guidelines date back over 25 years. We need to update them and bring them in line with the needs and demands of our local communities. Children have grown, gone to college, graduated and are having children of their own but the same guidelines are still in place.”
“I would like an update on the review of the 2001 planning guidelines for local authorities on early learning and childcare settings. It is 25 years since they were set out and a lot has changed in our society, in our childcare needs and in best practice for childcare. Will the Minister of State provide an update on the review of these guidelines?”
“If we are serious about ensuring AI is well governed, we need to invest in a national approach to AI in education because there are no ivory towers in a post-AI higher education world. We owe that to our third level staff and students and to the future of our higher education system.”
“Meanwhile, our lecturers and researchers are on the front lines, addressing these challenges in real time on a daily basis. They are redesigning curriculum, rethinking assessment methods, responding to the misuse of AI tools and helping their students navigate AI ethically, all the while maintaining high standards of teaching and research. They are expected to do this in a system that was never designed to be this agile. This is an unrecognised and unacknowledged extra workload and responsibility on our academic staff. This adds to the existing workforce issues, where we have one in five academic staff employed in temporary or short-term contracts. We are now expecting those staff to navigate this changing world of AI and engage in all that adaptation, not knowing if they will have a job next semester or year.”
“It is a core element of the design of system. This is not a system designed for overnight transformation. Covid prompted a rapid shift to promote teaching and assessment and staff very much rose to the challenge. They transformed how they worked to support the students they had. However, it required an enormous amount of staff effort and commitment, which were never really fully recognised. It was the same for many other people who had to change how they did things during that time. After only a few years, we are asking those exact same staff to once again transform how they work. Another key difference is that this time we have no established play book. We have no experts out there who have already solved all of these problems. Research is still emerging and best practice is still evolving.”
“The only comparator I have to the impact AI is having on higher education is Covid, which resulted in everybody having to work from home and teaching going online. However, there is one key difference. With Covid, there was always the expectation that eventually we would return to campuses and more familiar operations. It is not the same with AI. There is no return to the status quo there. This transformation is permanent. The higher education system is not designed to withstand this level of a systematic shock. It is designed for gradual change and structured review. Assessment methods are regularly evaluated but these are informed by industry, research and engagement with stakeholders before any changes are implemented. This protects academic integrity and ensures students are taught what they need to prepare them for their futures.”
“This legislation seeks to ensure that AI transformation is guided by key principles, namely, safety, accountability and trust. We must also ensure that we extend those principles to the transformation AI is having on higher education. AI can, of course, supporting learning but it can also produce essays and other assessments. Now we have AI tools to help us detect AI-generated assessments. This has resulted in a weird arms race, with increasingly sophisticated AI tools to generate assignments and increasingly sophisticated AI tools to try to detect its use. Meanwhile, the impact of AI is threatening the success in widening access to higher education because in many cases, information technology is now being removed from assessments entirely.”
“AI grading is also generating more student queries than forms of traditional assessment. One study found that 88% of students queried their AI generated grade. This is in a context where we are facing an ever increasing arms race with AI technology. There is a race between the detection tools to check whether an assignment submitted used AI and students' evasion tactics. In the short term, I do not see that the extra workload on staff in higher education institutions will reduce. In fact, we could be facing a number of years of constant pressure to try to maintain the standards and integrity. I welcome the Higher Education Authority's new framework on AI. It creates a groundwork around it but we also need to support it more with openness to change. We need to look at ways to support our staff.”
“Why are they facing these additional pressures? They are all being asked to redesign assessments. We are in a post-plagiarism world, as it is called. Our traditional form of assessment, the final written exam, guarantees academic integrity but is also vulnerable to issues around the use of AI. Staff are having to learn new systems and to do things differently through AI. Even if AI is used for assessment purposes, it still needs human verification. One study found that 75% of students were failed by the AI grader so all of those had to be verified. Lecturers are conducting mini viva voces on written assignments to ensure academic integrity is maintained, that the students are learning what they were taught, what it was intended for them to learn and that they have embedded that learning.”
“Today, I will speak about AI in higher education and specifically the impact it is having on staff in higher education. AI is often talked about as a double-edged sword in education. There are benefits for students with personalised learning, continuous feedback and delivery of education through multi-media. Students have different learning styles and now we can deliver education in different ways to suit them. However, this is putting increased pressure on staff. The staff are not getting the same benefits from AI. It is putting increased workloads on them and we are not focused enough on this and do not talk enough about it. These are the very people on whom we depend to deliver all the wonderful things we are hearing about today to upskill our workforce for the future. It is the staff we expect to do that upskilling.”
“This is essential in order to keep the city moving and to enable people to make the journeys they need to make in our city. This Bill is a small but important step in that overall journey, and I ask the Minister to continue that journey and take on board some of the issues I have highlighted.”
“All of this may explain why the NTA's canal cordon survey, which measures the journeys taken by people on a daily basis, shows that the number of cycle journeys since 2019 are 3,000 fewer. In other words, there are fewer people cycling across the canals than six years ago. All other forms of transport increased. So, again, we do not have an understanding of what is actually going on because we are not really doing the in-depth research around that. Trying to make the right decisions and taking the learnings from all of the spending in the past number of years is important if we are going to ensure that we make these transitions. We need real data. We need meaningful engagement, and we need effective co-ordination on transport planning.”
“Funding for these schemes is provided to local authorities to implement them but this is resulting in what is effectively a patchwork of cycle improvements with few, if any, connected journeys and a lack of a comprehensive cycling infrastructure within a geographic or townland locality. This results in frustrations being felt by everybody. The cyclists who continue to have broken journeys, with a mixture of safe and unsafe routes, and other road users who can visibly see underutilised cycle lanes while they sit in traffic. The congestion is increasing and, of course, from an emissions point of view, the longer a motorist sits in traffic, the greater the emissions which, again, might explain why we are not seeing a difference in those outcomes.”
“We have had a role out of closed roads, the removal of filter lanes, changed traffic lights sequences and the removal of motor vehicle lanes but never any real consideration what these changes will have on the wider transport network because the traffic does not just disappear. It is diverted, and where is it diverted to is one of the key issues. Throughout the roll out of these schemes, there has been limited if any engagement with transport providers about how they are going to manage this additional transport. There has been limited, if any, attempt to measure the outcomes on traffic movements and patterns - the actual change in cycle, pedestrian and motor vehicle journeys.”
“While these challenges can be overcome, and we can certainly encourage our girls and women to enjoy the benefits that cycling provides, as other countries that have a more equal balance between the genders have proven, it is certainly a generational change that will be required, and this will require changes in many areas of society. A recently published paper on why young girls in Ireland do not cycle is titled, It is a Boy's Thing, so we have a significant challenge from a very young age among our young women. The second reason the active travel scheme has not been as successful as hoped is relevant to this legislation. There has not been an overall strategic and co-ordinated approach to the implementation of these routes.”
“The lack of co-ordination may be part of the reason because these schemes were designed to encourage a modal shift that would encourage people to leave the car at home and instead cycle to work, school, shops, friends and family. This would result in two benefits: to reduce the use of motor vehicles to free up the road; and to reduce emissions. However, there is a distinct lack of evidence that after six years of investment this spend has resulted in either of these objectives being achieved. There are two key reasons for this. I have spoken previously in the Chamber about the complex social and economic barriers to many taking up cycling and making the shift to cycling, and in particular the barriers for women. Women account for just one in four cyclists in Ireland. Only one in five people cycling to work are women.”
“Thus, with so many bodies, co-ordinating and planning becomes harder, and I fear it ultimately risks a poor return for the taxpayer. Other European cities, for example, operate a single or two-authority approach. In Amsterdam, which is similar-sized city to Dublin in terms of population, the GBB runs the trams, the metros, the ferry and the bus services with cycle paths and open spaces under the authority of a single city local authority. In Dublin, we have four local authorities through which investment in the development of the cycle network via active travel funding is delegated. Since 2022, nearly €600 million has been invested in these active travel schemes across the four Dublin local authorities and this could reach €1 billion by 2030. However, these schemes have not had the impact that was hoped.”
“I ask the Minister to look at how greater administrative and organisational clarity can be provided across the various State agencies. I hope that by expanding the remit of the NTA in this Bill, it will be a first step in providing that level of clarity because it recognises that we need that greater level of co-ordination. I ask that the Minister looks at reviewing the various transport bodies operating in the greater Dublin area. They have overlapping responsibilities, and they have challenges around co-ordination. Would the Minister consider a single authority for the greater Dublin area? The NTA certainly partly fulfils its function but many aspects that I have encountered continue to be retained or delegated to various transport providers, oversight bodies and the local authorities.”
“We are on the right track, forgive the pun, but more needs to be done. For example, we need faster delivery. I appreciate that the Government's Critical Infrastructure Bill will make a real difference to these delivery times but we also need to look at other areas of transport to see how we can make a difference. For example, one of the most common issues my constituents contact me about is who they should approach when a transport problem has arisen. When I follow up with them, I also get a similar response from the various State agencies and local authorities, saying that it is not their area of responsibility. While this Bill is trying to address a key issue of connectivity, responsibility and accountability, we also have existing issues.”
“I welcome this Bill. While it is a short and technical Bill which we are talking about today, it is also quite significant because it indicates the seriousness with which this Government is treating the need to overhaul our transport infrastructure. I represent Dublin Rathdown and from Stepaside to Stillorgan and all the various townlands throughout my constituency, including Ballinteer, Cabinteely and Dundrum, I regularly hear from commuters struggling with cramped Luas carriages, ghost buses, disappearing cycle lanes and congested roads. I acknowledge, however, that public transport is improving. For example, more than 55 million passenger journeys were taken on Luas services alone in 2025. I also welcome the consideration of extending the green Luas line along the eastern bypass route and I look forward to seeing how that is developed.”
“I refer him to my earlier comments about the percentage of people working from home in my constituency and the percentage of businesses there that are not online. Thus, there are opportunities that we are missing simply because we do not have sufficient urban broadband throughout Dublin Rathdown.”
“Is there a plan? The Minister of State said that the NBP was going to come in under budget. Will that budget be transferred to address the remaining black spots or will we be looking for a new plan, working with the commercial operators, or a sort of mini-national broadband plan or national broadband plan phase 2 to try to address these gaps? These things are very important. The timeline is important to my residents. They have been listening to this story about roll-outs and the success stories, with towns and villages across the country being celebrated as great successes, yet they continue to have no service and they have no timeline as to when they are going to get a service. The Minister of State works in the Department of enterprise.”
“Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit for his reply. He mentioned a couple of things in his response about market failures, which is what the national broadband plan sought to address. I would argue that what we are dealing with here in all of the areas I highlighted in Stillorgan, Foxrock and Cabinteely are market failures. They are, to use the Minister of State's own terminology, "gigabit service-challenged areas". People cannot work from home in these areas. The current service is completely insufficient. I welcome that the Department is working very closely with the commercial operators. I would be interested to know what information is being gathered in that regard. Are all of these areas being identified and listed? Are they being measured and assessed? On identifying all of those black spots, what is the plan around that?”
“Could the Minister of State please consider the issues my constituents and those in multiple other constituencies in Dublin are facing, and how will he work with the various Departments to try to address these broadband islands or black spots in our urban areas?”
“I wonder how much of that is due to the fact they do not have the connectivity where their businesses or homes are to keep an eye on their websites or online presence. We have an issue here and I want to see how it is going to be addressed. We understand that there are legacy issues. For example, one of the issues is direct buried leads, which are difficult to get at and are not attractive for the commercial operators to prioritise right now. They will eventually get around to them. Just as we have committed to fibre to the home for people around the country as part of the national broadband plan, the residents in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown are also entitled to that, and they should not just be expected to settle for fibre to the cabinet.”
“I have had residents say to me repeatedly that they have jobs where they can work from home but they cannot do so because they do not have the broadband connectivity to enable it. A report published recently by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Chamber of Commerce, developed by Sunstone, found that almost 20% of workers in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown worked from home - one of the highest percentages. However, it would probably be higher if more people had connectivity. This does not just affect workers. It also affects our students, who cannot connect to their online resources when they go home, and businesses. That same report from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown chamber also found that about 20% of businesses in the county did not even have an online presence.”
“These have been bypassed by the traditional commercial providers, yet it was quite reasonable to expect that, as part of the national broadband plan, they would somehow be picked up. My Fine Gael colleague, Councillor John Kennedy, and I have been repeatedly raising this issue in recent years on behalf of our residents in Kerrymount Rise, the Thicket, Stillorgan Wood, Torquay Wood, Westminster Lawns and other areas throughout my constituency of Dublin Rathdown. It is not just my constituency, but also other areas of Dublin. Deputy Grace Boland of Dublin Fingal West, one of the fastest growing constituencies in Dublin, has also had similar issues in her area, with her residents in Skerries, Lusk and Balbriggan also reporting connectivity and poor broadband issues. This is not a trivial issue.”
“I wish to raise with the Minister of State today the issue of urban broadband. The national broadband plan has been hugely successful. It committed to connecting more than 1 million people to fibre broadband. When it was being proposed and introduced, it received a lot of criticism for its level of ambition and cost. Several years later, though, we can see how successful it has actually been, with more than 450,000 premises connected and another 492,000 premises available for preorder already on order. However, it has not covered all of the country, as the name "national broadband" implies. We have pockets of gaps. We have black spots or, as I prefer to call them, broadband islands. These are in our urban areas where you are surrounded by wonderful connectivity but your road or area has very limited connectivity.”
“Who will be sitting in traffic because they have picked up the kids, are dropping them to school activities and are hoping to pop in and do a welfare check on their elderly parents? It will be women. At whose expense are we building all of this cycling infrastructure that causes these longer car journeys? It is at the expense of the women who will be sitting in those cars. I will be advocating in favour of the need to address these issues across government. If we want to hit our climate targets and if we want to make Dublin more cycle friendly, we need to do so in a way that effectively accounts for these unique challenges faced by women in Ireland.”
“If the Government is serious about a transition to sustainable transport, we need to ensure that it is fair. To do that, we must recognise that these gender gaps exist in transport and that, for very complex reasons, women are less likely to cycle. We must also acknowledge that women are far more likely to see the car as a necessity. We need to reshape our cities to facilitate sustainable transport but as we are doing so we are also increasing congestion. We are removing filter lanes. For example, it is proposed that all the filter lanes on the N11 be removed. We are closing roads. Multiple roads have been closed in Kilmacud, for example, and we are changing traffic light sequences in order that fewer cars get through junctions. This is inevitably increasing congestion across Dublin.”
“As can be seen from everything I have outlined, however, that is only one factor that is going to help address this issue. In fact, safety concerns are regarded as fairly equal between men and women. The most recent walking, wheeling and cycling survey found that most women think it is perfectly safe to cycle in their own neighbourhoods. The real barriers to cycling are social and cultural, and these can be much harder to change. Census data shows that one in five of those who cycle to work are women. The majority of people cycling to work are men. Perhaps all of these dynamics explain why the NTA's canal cordon survey data found there are 3,000 fewer cycling journeys than there were in 2019 while all other forms of transportation have gone up.”
“We think that is down to the presentation penalty. If you are on a higher income, you are also probably at supervisory or managerial level and there are certain expectations of how you should present at work, which may not be compatible with the cycling journey. On the plus side, our levels of cycling to school are going up according to census data, so that is good. However, these gendered effects kick in at a very early age, namely school age. Further research has been done to try to understand this. It found that uniforms, traffic concerns, physical effort, the impact of personal appearance and peer influence all discourage young girls from cycling to and from school. We are spending €600 million on active travel schemes which make cycling more pleasant and safer.”
“This is something that is repeatedly reported to me by parents and grandparents in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown where people find they have to drop off and collect their children from up to three different schools that are all in different locations. Enterprise Ireland funded research to try to understand some of the complexities around women's transport choices. It found that for cycling there were distinct barriers for women. The further she is away from the city centre, the less likely a woman is to cycle. If a woman is living in an apartment, she is two times less likely to cycle than a man. This is known as the hassle effect as a result of the hassle of having to manage a bike when you are in an apartment. Interestingly, if you are on a higher income, as a woman, you are twice as unlikely to cycle than a man.”
“Let us look at why women are saying a car is an absolute necessity. The type of journeys women do are very different from those men do. Men take journeys from point A to point B whereas women's journey choices are very much driven by their caring responsibilities. They are often more complex journeys or what are called trip-change journeys. For example, a woman might collect the kids after school and drop them off to their after-school activities before popping in to see her parents. That all happens in the course of a single trip. In addition, our very education system is adding to the complexity of it. Unlike most European counties, we have a highly gendered education system, that is, a high percentage of single-sex schools.”
“Many speakers have highlighted various gender gaps across Ireland. However, there is another gender gap I wish to highlight, namely that relating to transport. We are investing heavily in sustainable transport - nearly €600 million across the four local authorities in Dublin - to build various active travel schemes. This figure could reach €1 billion by 2030. Of course, we absolutely need to invest in sustainable transport. This is essential in order to hit our climate targets for public health and also to make sure that the city continues to keep moving as the population increases and the number of journeys people take increase. However, we also need to make sure this transition is fair; right now it is not. According to TII research, four out of five women in Dublin consider having a car to be a necessity.”
“One policy is encouraging people, particularly in urban areas, to live, work, socialise and avail of services in the local community, while another arm of the Government is removing the very services we need to keep us in our local communities. I ask the Minister of State and An Post what we are doing to maintain our urban postal networks, so we can continue to work, live and socialise in local communities.”
“They looked at this as having increased the price of a cup of coffee or litre of milk if they drive to Stillorgan village. People have started to avoid it and trade is down by up to 40% by some measures. My concern is whether that will end up affecting the post office. Could we end up losing that post office? Is it economically viable? After that, we do not have a local post office serving a community of over 10,000 people. The nearest are a 40-minute or 60-minute walk, which is not realistic for most people. We are looking at people driving out of the community to avail of a basic service. We seem to have Government policies that are at odds.”
“In 2021, the postmaster in Mount Merrion in the Stillorgan local area closed. It is a familiar story. The postmaster was moving on, An Post advertised and nobody stepped up to take on the role. We were lucky in the community to have two other local post offices a 25- or 30-minute walk away. Last month, one of those closed. It was the same story. The postmaster moved on, it was advertised but nobody took on the role. We are still quite lucky as we have one local post office. This one is in Stillorgan village. The village introduced paid parking before Christmas for the first time and from the first hour. One local said to me that has effectively increased the cost of your first stamp by 25% year on year. We know that is not how pricing works but it shows how people look at pricing.”
“There is a lack of connectivity between the fast-growing area of Kilternan with Dún Laoghaire and also to the Luas. I appreciate the pressures on the system.”
“I listened to the Minister talk about the constraints in the system. It would be remiss of me not to refer to some of the communications I have received this week about our wider transportation service. Hannah was in touch with me about the No. 11 bus route in Clonskeagh. Three full buses went past her on one day, and this has happened repeatedly. She has spent hundreds of euro on taxis. Three buses went past Catherine from Leopardstown, going down the N11. In Kilternan, which is one of the fastest growing residential areas in the country, particularly in my constituency, there was a protest last Saturday, led by my colleague, Councillor Pearse Dargan, about the poor bus service there, including the L26, which should be going every 15 minutes and is actually going every 30 minutes, and the 44 service.”
“Again, that is not suitable for every person at all times, particularly in our climate. I also represent a constituency with UCD's students, and there is huge potential for them to support the night-time economy.”
“I thank the Minister. I appreciate the feedback on that and that the Minister is engaging with the rail operators, Transdev and Irish Rail, about trying to extend rail services. I represent Dublin Rathdown, which is a constituency adjacent to the city centre constituencies. An awful lot of my constituents raise the point with me all the time that they would go into town more often if they knew that they could get home. We are within a distance from the city centre that it should be easily accessible and affordable. We have taxi services, but like every form of transportation, they do not suit everybody all the time. Many areas in Dublin Rathdown are quite close, and I have personally done the walk from the city centre to Stillorgan many times due to the lack of public transport. I always make sure I wear comfortable shoes.”
“I want to ask the Minister about how we can support the night time economy by seeing if he is engaging with both public and private transport providers to try to extend operating hours later into the night.”
“We need to put in these safeguards now, as we are doing this building, so we can stop these new communities from becoming the next Cookstown Lane over the next few months. As I said, I have no desire to be standing here in a year's time talking the same talk about flooded homes, damaged businesses and communities brought to a standstill by heavy rains. Likewise, I am sure the Minister of State has no desire to listen to me do so. The Government has rightly placed a very high priority on our infrastructure. Robust flood defence systems are an integral part of our national infrastructure. As we saw all too well in the past few weeks, if our flood mitigation systems fail, so too does much of our vital infrastructure. That includes our housing and transport systems.”
“We need to look at our parks, parklands and playing pitches for water attenuation schemes because these areas are becoming quite built up. My constituency of Dublin Rathdown is an area of high house building, which is what we need, but we are losing many potential water absorption areas. In conjunction with installing these flood mitigation projects, our local authorities must be increasingly conscious of the disruption that construction works cause to our natural water tables and water run-off areas. As I have said, some areas are already vulnerable to flooding but with these new developments under way, we should take a thorough look at how we can protect our new developments and prevent them from becoming vulnerable to more flooding in extreme weather conditions.”
“I know other colleagues have spoken about the unacceptable amounts of wastewater flowing into the Irish Sea after periods of heavy rain. These are localised issues, but they are feeding into the wider issue as well. Are the eligibility criteria for the minor works scheme too restrictive, given that Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has had just six successful project applications in ten years? I ask the Minister of State to review the details of the scheme. Maybe he could engage with the various authorities and relevant State agencies, which are now reviewing what they can do over the next year to try to alleviate some of these things, and see if some funding could be made available to do that. We need to develop, support and implement local flood mitigation systems. We need to look at creative solutions.”