Climate is changing faster than our planning policies, and our homes can't wait

After witnessing the wreckage of once-in-a-lifetime flood events that killed hundreds in Europe this year, Minister Patrick O'Donovan came away with one thought; could it happen here?

A view of destroyed houses in Erftstadt-Blessem, Germany in July 2021. 

This never happened here before. The familiar words I hear when I visit a community that is trying to pick up the pieces following a flood somewhere in Ireland. The exact same was said to me last week when I visited communities in Western Germany and Eastern Belgium, which were hit by devastating floods in the summer of 2021. What on the face of it was a short-lived burst of torrential rain, left long-term and heart-breaking consequences for the areas that were ripped apart by the so-called ‘extreme weather event’.

More than 200 people tragically lost their lives between Germany and Belgium. What I was told was that in some cases, they literally had no chance. The water came so fast, and with such ferocity, they couldn’t escape. The Wallonia Region around Liege in Belgium was particularly badly hit. Meeting the city officials in Liege and the regional administration in Namur, it was clear to me that the scale of this tragedy was like nothing that any comparable region in Europe had experienced recently.