Debate contribution: Flooding: Financial Support
Debate contribution by Mr Gordon Lyons on .
- MLA
- Mr Gordon Lyons
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 12 March 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Flooding: Financial Support
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4266789
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I hope that the Member, too, will make his constituents aware of the Flood Re scheme, which can be of benefit to them in the situation in which they find themselves.
Any change to that scheme is likely to incur additional costs, for which no budget is available at the moment. Any change to widen the application of the scheme is likely to impact on its value-for-money assessment and to be repercussive. It would therefore need to be fully tested via an appropriate business case, and no further work has been done on that.
The Member raises important points about how often these flooding events happen and about how they are now happening in places where they did not happen before. The Assembly and the Executive have a responsibility to make sure that there is investment where it can make a difference, such as through flood defences and preventative work. I will support the Department for Infrastructure in doing that. I would be quite happy if my Department were not to pay anything out from the fund owing to its not being needed, but, if it is the case that it is needed, we will need an awful lot of investment.
201 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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