OPW 'behind schedule’ in implementing flood action plans

Oireachtas committee will hear of delays despite Ireland already being impacted by climate-change-induced flooding

The Office of Public Works (OPW) is currently ‘behind schedule’ in implementing action plans for existing flood-hit areas, despite Ireland already being impacted by climate-change-induced flooding, an Oireachtas committee will hear on Thursday.

The OPW — the State’s property manager, which also holds responsibility for flood mitigation schemes across the country — will appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday, together with Met Éireann, to discuss the adaptation of ongoing flood management schemes to the impacts of climate change.

Both bodies are set to acknowledge that the impacts of climate change are already here, with OPW chairman John Conlon set to tell the committee that “it is projected that climate change will have a significant impact on flooding and flood risk in Ireland due to rising sea levels, increased rainfall in winter, more heavy rain days, and more intense storms”.

Ireland’s extreme weather infrastructure has come in for harsh criticism in recent years, not least as a result of the impacts of Storm Éowyn on the country in January of last year, the worst storm the country had seen in six decades.

“Recent attribution studies have shown that climate change is already impacting flood events,” Mr Conlon will tell the committee, adding that Ireland must “be prepared to deal with and manage the increased flood risk arising from climate change”.

The effectiveness of Ireland’s flood defence systems in particular have been a subject of heightened social and political debate, with events like the mass flooding of Midleton in October 2023 serving to shine a spotlight on the issue.

Last year, the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC) informed the Government that it could not afford to “procrastinate any longer” in terms of addressing the vulnerabilities of Ireland’s critical infrastructure to the increasing proliferation of extreme weather events.

Despite this, the OPW has informed the PAC that the CCAC’s evaluation of the progress being made in terms of the delivery of the flood risk management sector is “’good’ overall in all of the assessments undertaken”.

Mr Conlon will tell the committee that progress has been made with flood maps having been prepared for the entire coastline and all rivers over a certain catchment area, with those maps providing “comprehensive information on areas potentially at risk from flooding due to climate change”.

However, the agency has acknowledged that it is currently “behind schedule” on four of the 67 actions it is required to perform under the Climate Change Sectoral Adaptation Plan, one of which is the instigation of ‘community climate action programmes’ for all 56 existing flood relief schemes.

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