New maps to help combat flooding

The Government is in the process of drawing up new maps of all the country’s lower-lying areas as part of an official bid to combat flooding.

The move follows a steep increase in floods in recent years and the consequent spiralling cost of insurance premiums.

The aim is to have completed new charts of all of Ireland’s flood plains by well before the end of next year.

The maps will then be used by planners in local authorities to study and assess ahead of granting planning applications for housing and other building projects.

The operation is being undertaken by the Office of Public Works.

Tom Parlon, the minister with responsibility for that department said today that the “flood hazard maps” being prepared would incorporate the kind of local knowledge and other information that planners might not normally be aware of ahead of their reaching decisions.

Both planning officials and builders have come in for criticism in Ireland in the wake of flooding that has hit the country, often affecting estates and developments built beside rivers and low-lying areas.

Mr Parlon has inspected work being carried out in parts of Co Meath to prevent a repetition of flooding that has left houses wrecked and, in some cases, uninhabitable over the past two years.

The minister cited two developments near the banks of Meath’s Castle River that had been a clear factor in flooding that followed.

He commented: “There is no question about it – if you position a development close to a river, you interfere with the local flood plain.”

Meath County Council discovered after commissioning a flooding report from experts that measures costing as much as €6.7m were required to head off future floods, with the expenditure of €3.8m of that sum considered immediate and urgent.

The same report called flooding that damaged more than 100 homes and business premises last year “the largest ever recorded” in the locality.

The Tolka River, which ends up in Dublin Bay, and is fed by the Castle River tributary, caused some of the problems in last November’s floods, which struck after two days of relentless rain and similar weather conditions just a week earlier.