Building houses on flood plains is destroying natural defences, says expert

THE practice of building houses and other concrete structures on flood plains is destroying Ireland’s natural flood defences, according to one of the country’s leading experts on coastal engineering.

“If you look at the rainfall patterns over the last 20 years, you will find that there has been a marked change. We are now getting severe bursts of rain rather than precipitation being spread out,” said Dr Jimmy Murphy, coastal engineering manager with the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre, University College Cork (UCC).

Dr Murphy attributed much of this change to global warming which has lead to great uncertainty in predicting climate change.