Flood relief programme 'in limbo' due to lack of engineering expertise

Over 50% of schemes stuck at design stage, despite €2bn in funding

Cork East Social Democrats TD Liam Quaide has been repeatedly told in responses to parliamentary questions that areas of Cork hit by Storm Babet in 2023 cannot get their schemes completed because the Government cannot get enough skilled staff. File picture: Cathal Noonan

The Government has been asked to explain what it has done to recruit from abroad to complete Ireland’s flood relief programme, as schemes in the likes of Cork languish because of a lack of expertise domestically.

Social Democrat TD for East Cork Liam Quaide has been repeatedly told in responses to parliamentary questions that areas of Cork hit by Storm Babet in 2023 cannot get their schemes completed because the Government cannot get enough skilled staff.

It means more than half of the 100 schemes in Cork and around the country, for which the Government has budgeted just over €2bn to complete by 2030, have yet to get beyond the design stage.

Mr Quaide said: “The Government has yet to provide any evidence that it is trying to get in skilled engineers from abroad to do the work. They haven’t been able to provide any evidence about what they are doing. I think people deserve to know why.”

Mr Quaide said he has been chasing the progress of 'tranche two' flood relief schemes, which the Office of Public Works (OPW) labels as schemes that have not yet progressed to the same stage as larger, more advanced ones.

He said that while the Midleton scheme is “moving painfully slowly”, he said it is at least “edging towards a planning process”.

However, he is concerned about towns and villages surrounding Midleton that also suffered flood devastation during Storm Babet. Mogeely, Castlemartyr, Killeagh, Rathcormac, Ladysbridge, and Whitegate “are effectively in limbo”, he said.

“Storm Babet hit East Cork more than two and a half years ago. Residents and businesses in these communities have been waiting since then for clear timelines for when they can expect to get permanent flood protection,” he said. “The official explanation is constantly that tranche two schemes cannot all be advanced with urgency because of constraints on specialist engineering capacity in the OPW, local authorities and the consultancy market.

This just isn’t good enough, and the Government needs to tell people what exactly it is doing to address the skills shortages.

Since it launched its 18-month pilot project of a new “delivery model for relief schemes” in Kilkenny and Donegal on May 2, 2023, the Government has repeatedly said it can’t get skilled staff.

OPW junior minister Kevin “Boxer” Moran told Mr Quaide in March 2025, in answer to a parliamentary question, that “it is not feasible to deliver all flood relief schemes concurrently due to limited capacity in OPW, local authorities, and in the specialised consultancy market”.

Mr Moran said that, as a result, the flood-relief delivery programme has been divided into two tranches, focusing initially on around 50 tranche one schemes already in the “delivery pipeline” around Ireland.

He said that under the national programme, work had yet to commence on the design of some 54 tranche two flood relief schemes.

In February, Mr Quaide asked public expenditure minister Jack Chambers for details of the efforts his department has undertaken to source expertise from abroad to direct tranche two flood relief projects for 2023, 2024, and 2025.

He was told: “Cork County Council have advertised for engineering consultancy services for interim flood mitigation measures in respect of Mogeely and Castlemartyr.”