Irish Examiner view: Hard choices in struggle against coastal erosion

Local representatives recalled a €25m plan to fight coastal erosion at a meeting of Cork County Council yesterday. Pictured is Youghal's front strand in Co. Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.

The relentless advance of the sea has become a truth of our time. Once-productive land is now, in so many places, below the highwater mark. 

Homes and roads have been abandoned to waves or coastal erosion.

Local representatives heard details of this relentless advance at a meeting of Cork County Council yesterday. A €25m plan to fight coastal erosion mothballed two decades ago was recalled. 

That scheme, to tackle erosion from Youghal’s Claycastle beach to Pilmore beach, has assumed a new urgency but costs are now estimated at multiples of €25m. This stitch-in-time dilemma applies to many of today’s proposals around sea and flood management.

As so many countries have accepted not all land can be defended from rising seas in the longer-term. As an island nation maybe we should accept that and devise ways to best use resources rather than take on unwinnable challenges. 

Maybe we might also learn the lesson too about how imprudent it can be to respond to known knowns in a piecemeal way, a way that does not reflect the scale of the threat identified.