Ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an Aire, an Teachta Browne, go dtí an Seanad. Anois, we will have statements on Storm Chandra. The Minister will speak for ten minutes, group spokespersons for eight minutes and all other Senators five minutes, and the Minister will be called on to reply no later than 9.20 p.m.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and Senators very much for the invitation to be with them to discuss Storm Chandra and the extended and severe flooding events that followed in many parts of the country and to outline the whole-of-government response to the storm. I will start off by clearly stating on behalf of the Government that I recognise the very significant and very real impacts the latest storm event had on so many families and businesses and the level of distress that was caused. I am particularly attuned to this because people in my own County Wexford are very much seeing the impact first-hand. Many people I know personally were affected, and it has taken a horrendous toll on people. It is very important at the very outset of the discussion that we recognise the human impact these storms have on people.

I want to take time to review the weather event itself and, in particular, the lead-up to the weather event because what was experienced in the towns and villages that were most impacted over the last few weeks comes not just from the storm. Over the month of January 2026, Ireland, and in particular the east of the country, experienced rainfall well over what is considered the expected monthly average. In the week preceding the storm, the east of the country experienced more than four times the average amount of rainfall that would normally be expected. This level of rainfall had serious ramifications before the storm event. The land itself was intensely waterlogged and saturated, with no capacity to contain the excess rain that was continuously falling. I understand that our local authorities and councils, which are our first responders when it comes to severe weather events, were aware and were keeping a watching brief of all rising rivers in the days before the arrival of Storm Chandra and were also monitoring river levels.

The storm was named by the UK Met Office on Monday, 26 January 2026, and it was forecast to bring with it both high winds and heavy rain. The storm in and of itself would have been a manageable event. However, the storm was coupled with the already waterlogged and saturated ground and this brought with it the risk of river flooding along with flooding risk along floodplains, agricultural land and low-lying roads. I experienced first-hand the severe flooding in my home county of Wexford and what this meant not just in the days of the storm but in the aftermath, and it is continuing. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated flooding incident to one community or county. Also impacted were family homes and business in areas such as Aughrim in County Wicklow, south Dublin, Passage East in County Waterford, Graiguenamanagh in County Kilkenny and many other parts of the country. My thoughts are very much with all those families and business who are badly and deeply affected as the clean-up process continues. We in the Government want to do everything we can to help as quickly as possible.

There are two important points I especially want to cover this evening: the preparedness in advance of Storm Chandra and the response to the storm. In terms of preparedness, following Storm Éowyn, my Department, through its national directorate for fire and emergency management, undertook a wide-ranging review of our national response and moved to implement a number of key recommendations.

As part of this work we required all local authorities to submit their severe weather and flood plans. These plans were reviewed and a workshop took place to advise of best practice in relation to the development of these documents. Local authorities were tasked with reviewing and updating all plans as necessary and my Department will review these regularly going forward. This is essential and I will ensure it happens. It is not about how often we have storms or how severe they are; we must ramp up our readiness to respond to storms in the in-between times. That is why discussions like this one are an important use of our time. We have to reflect on our readiness and responses and how we can improve all the time. All local authorities reviewed their individual plans in advance of the 2025-2026 winter season, ensured necessary contracts were in place with contractors, that salt and sand stores were full and that gullies and culverts were cleared.

I met the national emergency co-ordination group in advance of this winter season to ensure that the plans were in place and that all sectors were prepared for the season ahead. I ensured a framework for the establishment of community support centres was put in place, along with a guidance document developed in conjunction with the local authority sector. As a result of these actions, community support centres were established in Donegal in the aftermath of Storm Bert and in Aughrim and Enniscorthy following Storm Chandra. Our community support centres provide a vital focal point in the community. They are aimed at providing safe, secure places where people can gather, charge phones and other devices, get hot drinks and food and receive information and advice. My Department, in conjunction with the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, will be funding the provision of a pool of generators for use by community support centres, as well as funding the costs associated with the installation of changeover switches, in pre-identified sites, for their safe use. This is all preparation carried out before this winter season commenced.

I will speak now about Storm Chandra itself and the key timelines associated with the storm and the response. First of all, a Met Éireann technical briefing was held on Monday, 26 January. The briefing was attended by local authorities, the principal response agencies, Departments, the utilities and other key and essential stakeholders. Those in attendance were updated on soil and river conditions and advised of the incoming weather. All stakeholders were advised to monitor rivers. They were also advised to follow the Met Éireann forecasts closely for updates and any changes to the forecast. Following persistent heavy rain and wind conditions overnight on 26 January, the national emergency co-ordination group was formally convened on 27 January. This role of the NECG is to get key decision-makers in the room and co-ordinate the whole-of-government response to severe weather. In this case, the event was flooding. At this stage the humanitarian response subgroup was activated and it acted rapidly. The Department of Social Protection activated its scheme for householders, with community welfare officers deployed to impacted areas to provide assistance and advice. The Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment's scheme for businesses impacted by flooding, administered by the Irish Red Cross, was activated and the qualifying criteria of the scheme were extended to assist as many small local businesses as possible. The amounts available were increased from €20,000 to €100,000.

The Civil Defence, Irish Red Cross and other voluntary groups provided practical assistance and essential psychosocial support to impacted communities across the country. This is really valuable work. This type of engagement by our committed and excellent voluntary groups ensured those who might be most isolated were checked on and provided with essentials, hospital transport for patients and medical staff and assistance in standing up community support centres, rest centres and other services. I genuinely thank all our community and voluntary groups for working so effectively and so closely with our local authorities during times of serious stress in people's lives, such as during storms like Storm Chandra. As well as this, I recognise An Post also effectively collaborated with local authorities to identify vulnerable persons and contributed actively through the humanitarian subgroup. I want to see this continue.

The local authority sector, as principal response agency, was to the forefront of the response in affected counties. Before the arrival of Storm Chandra, local authorities were monitoring river levels, activating severe weather teams and crews and standing up flood mitigation measures. As the event became more protracted, mutual aid from local authorities from across the country was made available in the form of demountable flood defences, equipment and staff. As we moved into the extended flood event, local authorities had crews on the ground, pumping water to protect property, filling and distributing sandbags, managing traffic, assisting homeowners and cleaning up once the flood waters receded. Given the water levels in the reservoir at Poulaphuca it was also deemed necessary to bring together stakeholders on a Liffey catchment subgroup. This group co-ordinated a managed release of water from the reservoir down into the Liffey catchment to ensure the integrity of the reservoir and to mitigate against flooding downstream. This has been managed successfully, with further releases continuing until water levels are deemed to be within acceptable parameters.

Learnings from the Storm Éowyn review and the associated review of Departmental and agency capabilities, combined with the enhanced operational readiness of local authorities and other stakeholders ahead of winter 2025-2026, ensured what I believe to be an effective local response to this event, supported by the NECG and all relevant public sector bodies. The national emergency co-ordination group and its associated subgroups met daily until Monday, 9 February and the Government is still working closely with relevant Departments to ensure those who have been impacted are assisted. The humanitarian schemes are still operational and payments are ongoing to those who have been affected. As mentioned previously, a decision was made to extend the qualifying criteria for the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment's scheme for small business to ensure as many as possible could qualify and this has been critical for so many. Our local authorities continue to work on the ground to assist the impacted, carry on the clean-up and begin the review of infrastructural damage to estimate the resources required for remediation. My Department will continue to work on the ground to assist the impacted.

I will finish by thanking all those who worked so tirelessly during this event, including our local authority crews, who have been and continue to be on the ground throughout this period, the Civil Defence teams and Irish Red Cross volunteers for their continual support of communities as well as our principal response agencies and staff from our Departments who have also been working on the ground and through the NECG to manage and co-ordinate operations and assistance. I want to continue to review how we handle storms and how we can improve our responses. I welcome the contributions of Members on that.

I thank the Minister. The first Senator to speak will be Senator Flaherty.

I thank the Minister for coming into the House to address a hugely important issue across the country. I have a degree of sympathy for him as when he was appointed to his Ministry last year we had Storm Éowyn and he has just had another major storm event. It had major ramifications in his area and I congratulate him for the way he spoke so openly and candidly about that and about having first-hand experience. If we compare Storm Chandra and Storm Éowyn the one consolation - though there is no consolation for the people who saw their properties and businesses destroyed by flooding - was we did not have the severe high winds and the multiple power cuts and loss of water supply we had due to Storm Éowyn. If we had had those same high winds again this time I do not think we would have been in a much better state or readiness for that. We are going to have another storm of this magnitude next year. They are going to be an annual issue and we need to ramp up our response to them.

As the Minister said, the national emergency co-ordination group was activated on 27 January. If you listen to Kieran Cuddihy, his show really came alive. He probably had a low-key start but he gave outstanding coverage of Storm Chandra and brought home to the nation the impact these storms had. Businesses were destroyed and family life was upturned. A grandmother had to help her newborn grandchild into a boat in the Minister's county. A man who owned a garage business built up by his father saw it flooded for, I think, the third time. Your heart really goes out to all those people. Listening to them, they knew it was coming. There must be such a sense of foreboding when you see that coming. You are effectively standing on a psychological shoreline with water coming at you and you know that water is going to reach you tonight. There is no accounting for the fear, the depression and the mental health anguish those people are going to go through. Nothing short of a complete and sustained response from us as legislators will do in this instance. The Minister mentioned some issues with gullies. There are several local authorities that have not plans for clearing gullies. They did not clear gullies in anticipation of this. It is a very easy fix and should be done. It should be mandatory for every local authority to clear its gullies.

On the ESB and Uisce Éireann, everyone in this room will say there has been no improvement from either of those service providers since Storm Éowyn and if it happened again we would have the same problems. We should have active and ongoing engagement. I mentioned at the time of Storm Éowyn we should have a dedicated committee within this House looking at how our utilities are responding, because we are very much in a changing climate landscape.

As a country and as a society, we are not prepared for it. I acknowledge the vast sums of money that are being spent on it but in many cases that spending is also dependent on the work of outside agencies such as the ESB and Uisce Éireann. I ask the Minister to outline the level of engagement with Uisce Éireann and the ESB following on from Storm Eowyn. One would expect that they would have identified the weaknesses in their infrastructure and put in place a plan to address them. They have had 12 months to do so. They are going to get another 12 months to do it now and if it is the case that they need additional funding, I am sure that will not be too big a request and will be supported by everybody in this and the other House.

The OPW is doing fantastic work on flood relief schemes. We know the challenges that present in relation to planning and trying to get these schemes through the planning system. Many of the people objecting to these schemes are the same people whose properties have been flooded and who have benefited from support and relief when it comes from the Government. By the Minister's own reckoning, it now takes 11 years to complete a flood relief scheme which, for those who faced floods over a ten-day period, is agonising to hear. The OPW has completed 56 flood relief schemes which have provided security and certainty to 13,000 properties and avoided further damages in the region of €2 billion, which is significant. There are ten schemes under construction nationwide in Athlone, Crossmolina, Glashaboy, King's Island, Morrison's Island, and the River Mall at Templemore, among others. All of those schemes are very welcome and cannot come soon enough.

A big issue for many people is insurance. People who have been flooded now are never going to get insurance again. I welcome the fact that the Department of Finance is engaging with multiple stakeholders, including the Central Bank and the OPW, on this. We have a ready-made, white-label solution for the insurance issue. The people who cannot get flood insurance should be allowed to access the Irish Public Bodies for insurance. That does not need any discussion. It is there already and is basically our insurance company. Cover should be offered to all of those people who have no cover until we come up with a proper solution. It is the least we can do for these people. It is a very easy, quick, short-term fix and would demonstrate proactiveness on our part. I urge the Minister to give that suggestion serious consideration.

The development of the national flood forecasting and warning service, NFFWS, is obviously very welcome, as is the Government's task force on emergency planning. However, there is a sense in communities that these bodies only meet on the cusp of a crisis or when something serious is looming. These organisations need to be meeting on a regular basis. We heard many academics on radio and we read articles by them in newspapers saying that there is so much information out there on water levels. There is a whole pool of knowledge that could be shared and that needs to be collated. We need to be much more proactive on this. If these two storms have taught us anything, it is that mother nature can be horrific when she turns against us. We need to make better preparations.

We must consider the sheer scale of this. The Graiguenamanagh flood relief scheme in Kilkenny is costing €22 million and will protect 84 properties. While no amount of money is enough, we should bear in mind that this amounts to €95,000 per property. It is a significant cost but one would not begrudge it to those people. If it costs €200,000 to protect each of their homes, they should get it.

The Minister has responded very well to what has been a huge crisis. He has a very busy desk with a lot of crises on it but he has dealt very well with this. That said, I would emphasise to him that there is a sense out there that we are reacting too late. We need to make it a raison d'être of this Government that we are better prepared for these crises of mother nature - these natural disasters - because they are going to be coming on an annual basis. We really need to be better prepared for them.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I wish to raise a number of issues related to the recent weather problems that we had, particularly in the south east. The Minister has already adverted to that and God knows, the people of Wexford have been well scourged with the weather events of late. In Waterford we also had some notable difficulties. I was out in the community last Sunday morning meeting with the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, who visited. It was very good of him to come down. He spent his time on the road over last Friday, Saturday and Sunday going around to afflicted areas. It was as much a morale-boosting exercise as a delineation of the plan of action that he hopes to effect. I was encouraged by what he said. The tenor of what he said was that money is not a big problem at this stage. Funding has been promised and is there to be used. For people in distress after suffering flood damage, that is a very good message to hear.

Obviously, the solutions do not come quickly enough. Most of us in this room are fortunate enough to be householders but any householder who has had water coming up through the floor or down through the ceiling knows, as per the truism, that water in the wrong place is an absolute persecution. It is a nightmare when that is writ large in a town or a village, as it was in Passage East when the brook overtopped at around 2.30 a.m., coinciding with high tide. People found themselves out on the street and the place flooded very badly. This is a very settled coastal community with a lot of old people living on Post Office Square and in Brookside. The venting and slushing waters came down the hill from the brook, overtopping and running down into the streets. I was there on Sunday morning and I saw skips full of detritus, including mattresses, suites of furniture and so on. I saw older people out talking to the Minister of State, Deputy Moran. They were near to tears and were trying to extract a promise from him that he really could not give. He cannot wave a magic wand over these things and correct them straightaway. It is a longish process. Water has to dry out and all of those things.

I will not rattle on here unduly, telling the local authorities how they should do their job. As the expression goes, I would not be one to tell a grandmother how to suck eggs. The local authorities have been doing this work le fada an lá and by and large, they do it very well. After autumn there is a lot of leaf litter around. Maybe, as Senator O'Flaherty said, there were errors made in terms of not cleaning gullies and so on but I do not want to concentrate on that.

As far as I can see from a layman's standpoint, all of the agencies are trying to work together with the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Moran. The latter's background is in the Shannon floodplains and Senator Flaherty and myself, who come from that neck of the woods, know what Shannon flooding is like and the desecration it causes. The Minister of State, Deputy Moran, more than most, will know what is involved in addressing these issues and I wish him well.

When I was a child growing up, we had the weather forecast which was a very generic, broad sweep of the pen. The forecast would tell us that there will be showers down along the west coast, winds will be picking up on the Irish Sea and the temperatures will be X. It was a fairly bland thing. Now we have access to a much more exact prediction of the weather on our phones. Met Éireann does a damn good job in forecasting the weather. In our county it is normally west Waterford that gets the flooding, overtopping and bad problems with estuaries but this time, it was the east of the county. In fact, it was the entire eastern coastline, which is not famed for getting rainfall at all. It just shows the unpredictability of these unprecedented weather events. When I was the principal of a small school in Waterford I used to say, in relation to staff, that everybody likes to be told when they are doing a good job. The work that Met Éireann does in preparing us for significant and unprecedented weather events should be endorsed and staff there should be told that they are doing a good job, by and large.

I do not think there is much to be gained by the Minister throwing them under the bus at a time like that. Their work should be endorsed and we should thank them in the same way that we thank him and his Department for the enlightened and very proactive way they are addressing the threats that are coming down the line.

We have things to learn from this. There is an old Irish expression with which I am sure many Members are familiar - Ní hé lá na gaoithe lá na scolb. It goes back to the time of thatching. For those who are not overly versed in the Gaeilge, it means the windy day is not the day for thatching. It is all about preparedness and trying to get our sense of preparedness up to the best we can be. None of us are ever going to be perfectly able to address these unprecedented weather events. There is going to be flooding and grief coming down the line but if we work together co-operatively, realise what our strengths are and encourage one another to respond to these events then we are far more likely to address them in a satisfactory and provident way.

I am sharing time with my colleague, Senator Kennelly. He will join us later. I thank the Minister for his presence here today. Two weeks on from the devastation that was caused by Storm Chandra in the south and east of the country, our thoughts and concern must remain with the people of affected towns like the Minister's own town of Enniscorthy, and indeed many other parts of the country and also Dublin.

Do Senators Murphy and Kennelly wish to share time?

Yes, five minutes for me and Senator Kennelly has three minutes.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Today and for weeks to come they will be living with the mess and smell caused by floodwaters coming into their homes and businesses. I come from the west. On this occasion my area was not affected, but in south Galway we are no strangers to the devastating effects of flooding on family homes, farms and businesses, and day-to-day life in our area when the roads and railway line remained closed due to floodwater for days and weeks on end. This has happened on a number of occasions in our area over the last 30 years.

We can all see that there is a change in weather patterns, and in particular in rainfall patterns in recent years but river channels through many of our towns and cities remain exactly as they were built over two centuries ago. In my local area in south Galway, in the town of Gort and the local village of Craughwell, we have seen at first hand how successful in-stream channel improvement works can be. They have made a massive difference in preventing flooding of the towns and villages concerned. We have the engineering expertise in this country. We have the necessary experts and we have the people who can carry out the work that is needed. Unfortunately, progress is being made at a painfully slow pace. After nine years of designing and planning, and €4.3 million later, the south Galway flood relief scheme remains trapped in an environmental purgatory. It has been calculated by the competent professional bodies that in a one-in-100-year high water flood, 50 to 75 homes in my area of south Galway will flood, 175 homes and 46 businesses will be cut off for prolonged periods, and 19 rural south Galway communities will be isolated. The M18 motorway will close due to being under water. The Galway to Limerick railway line will also close due to it being under water. Crowe Street in the town of Gort will be underwater for a prolonged period. This is not something that might or might not happen. This is something that we know will happen if the south Galway flood relief scheme is not progressed.

We know that all of this is inevitable yet we continue to lose valuable time ticking environmental boxes and carrying out reports instead of getting on with this project that we know will inevitably need to be done, one way or another. When it comes to the delivery of the flood mitigation project, a major change in pace is needed. As a matter of urgency, we need to find a means of bypassing the environmental bureaucracy that is getting in the way and preventing this work from going ahead. It is work that is inevitably going to have to happen. I urge the Minister to find a way that we can move around the planning bureaucracy so that we can get the machines on the ground to progress the work that will inevitably have to happen over the course of the next generation.

I welcome the Minister to the Seanad. Storm Chandra has once again highlighted how exposed our communities are in relation to serious flood events. We see the disruption and the havoc that it caused, even in areas that were coded yellow. I do not know which level of warning we need to take more seriously: yellow, orange or red.

Storm Chandra caused significant damage. These flood events happened in areas other than my area, on which I have been beating the drum on the floor of the Seanad since I came here. Localised flooding incidents can happen anywhere in the country. If we can learn anything, it is from the areas that have been flooded in recent years. I will reflect on my area when Storm Bert hit Listowel in November 2024. It was a code yellow. No one gets out of their chairs for a code yellow. Some 40 hours before the storm there was a snowfall. On the night of the flood event, 40 hours or whatever later, the snow started to thaw as the temperatures rose. The code yellow was issued for the same time. Two hours' notice upstream of Listowel would have saved a lot of houses from being destroyed. It would possibly have prevented human casualties further upstream in the Killocrim area. At that time, I cried out for an early flood detection system, an alarm system that would notify people, including first responders and the local authorities so they could get their emergency crews out because the banks are high and there is going to be an incident or episode further downstream. Abbeyfeale got hit and two hours later, we were like, "Oh my God". We were not ready. I have been crying out for it. Even at that time we were looking for protection for individual people in their own homes. That was in November 2024. We are now crying here because Enniscorthy and the east coast got destroyed.

Could the Minister take on board what happened down there? If we do not detect flood events early, then a code yellow becomes a code red. It was raining continuously in the Enniscorthy area for days. The place was saturated. We know that was the case because we had a lot of wet weather. When the ground is saturated and there is a code yellow, then alarm bells should be ringing downstream or wherever. We must ensure that some measure is put in place. I have been crying out for a detection alert system. It is simple and it does not need planning. We are on about biodiversity and everything else, but it does not need planning. It is about gauging the bank of the river and if there is danger then we are alerted. The council is alerted and the first responders. A 75-year old man should not have to be taken out by a tractor and loader at 2 p.m. Whatever recommendations are taken by the Minister from tonight's debate, could he ensure the early detection warning system is made a priority? It will save time and time saves lives.

This debate is about Storm Chandra but the discussion should not be limited to one storm. Storm Chandra was not particularly remarkable as an isolated weather event. The flooding was devastating but inevitable because of the amount of rainfall preceding the storm and the lack of preparation due to the frustratingly slow progress of flood relief schemes and flood defence measures, which have been promised for far too long. This is not about just one storm, this is about years of failure and neglect. I do not say this lightly in regard to the promises and the slow progress for people in Laois but there is no hiding from the fact that this Government has failed people in Laois for far too long in terms of getting flood defences built so that storms like Chandra and the rainfall warnings from last week do not have such catastrophic consequences for people's lives, their homes and their businesses.

We also learned last week from the public accounts committee that millions of euro allocated for the national flood forecasting warning service went unspent. Only €5.9 million out of an allocation of €19.3 million was spent on this service between 2020 and 2024. We need to know why. I hope the Minister will address that.

Storm Chandra and the recent persistent rainfall have again laid bare the failure to implement services and schemes to prevent damage from flooding, not just last week or during the storm. In County Laois, there are three towns constantly at risk of flooding. I talk about them all the time in this Chamber. Last November, Storm Claudia caused flooding once again in Mountmellick and Portarlington. Historical reports of flooding have shown these areas to be prone to flooding for decades. Flood relief schemes in Mountmellick, Portarlington and Clonaslee were promised after the devastation of the 2017 floods. As Senator Murphy said about a scheme in his local area, nine years later these schemes are still in the planning stages.

Schemes on paper are worth nothing to the people who fear yellow rain advisory or storm warnings. Across the country, communities have waited and waited. They are frustrated by the slow progress in these schemes, especially the people in County Laois. On behalf of those who have had their homes and businesses destroyed already, who cannot get insurance now to cover any future damage, and who live in constant fear of the destruction of what will happen once again, I ask the Minister to do more to stop talking about this and to get some action. These schemes cannot stay in the planning stage for nearly a decade. I cannot understand why they are taking so long to complete.

My thoughts are with the people across the country who are living through this destruction of their homes, their businesses and their belongings. The financial impact of it all must be mentioned alongside the sheer stress and frustration they must be feeling. They know these floods were both predictable and preventable. The extent of the flooding damage would not have been as severe if long-term flood defence plans had been fulfilled by this Government. There are excellent plans - I have seen the super flood plans for Mountmellick, Portarlington and Clonaslee - but they are no good sitting in someone's office gathering dust. The long-term flood defence plans and flood relief schemes have been drawn up and ready to go for years, and now are really only lacking political will and funding. It is not the fault of Laois County Council, which is doing everything in its power. It is a question of the funding coming down to it.

Right now, words and statements on this are not enough. People in County Laois are really angry when it comes to flood defences. Delivery of these flood defences must happen now, not in four years time, which I am told is the projected timeframe for when the Laois schemes will get under way. How many more storms and heavy rainfall events will destroy properties and communities while we wait for these schemes to be completed? The Minister can hear that there is serious frustration here. It does not matter whether it is code yellow, red, orange, blue or pink - the progress here is too slow and it is not good enough.

I thank Senator McCormack. Next, I call Senator Noonan. Is the Senator sharing time?

Yes. Like others, I want to commend the emergency services and local authorities in Kilkenny County Council, as well as other local authorities, on their response in support of communities during Storm Chandra.

Prior to the Kilkenny scheme, I had family members who were caught in the flooding cycle there. Local knowledge was hugely important then. Bernadette Kiely, an artist who is based in Thomastown, spoke about that local knowledge when the floods were coming in there. We certainly knew when the floods were coming up. We were ready to put the couches and the sofas up and wait for the floodwaters to go out. It is no longer acceptable for communities to have to put up with this. Unfortunately, the frequency of these events is making the chance of it all the more prevalent.

The one thing I want to speak about in the few minutes I have relates to the use of nature-based solutions. I was a member of the local authority when we were considering the Thomastown and Graiguenamanagh schemes. At that time, I mentioned the idea of using and working with nature, because nature is our first and best line of defence against climate chaos. There are projects right across the UK, such as in Pickering in Yorkshire, that we can consider. Here in Ireland, the Inishowen Rivers Trust is using what they call "leaky dams". In Gissing in Norfolk, they are actively using and working with nature to attenuate the water and slow the flow for a period. Similar projects could be up and running while we are waiting for these schemes to be deployed. Not every community is going to be able to get the hard engineering OPW solutions. It is critically important that the Government looks at this. As we look towards the nature restoration plan and the land use review - I am not sure where that is - we should incorporate works under the nature restoration plan in with the next CAP strategic plan so that we have flood defences working with nature. We could also look at the planning code, through the Planning and Development Act, to adopt nature-based solutions in our urban areas, to install permeable paving in our car parks and to put in rain gardens. All of these proven measures could be deployed now while we are waiting for schemes to be implemented.

I thank the Minister, Deputy Browne, and I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan.

My heartfelt sympathies go to those whose livelihoods and businesses were affected by Storm Chandra. As Senator Murphy said, we were not affected in the north west. I grew up in Bandon and the Minister of State is from Clonakilty, so we know that flood defences actually work.

It is very welcome that the OPW is putting emergency measures in place in the area where I live, Strandhill, but unfortunately there is no sense of urgency to it. We can go around in circles saying we will put in and look at engineering solutions. I agree with my colleague about having natural water retention measures put in place. We have seen and proven they work. We are planting Sitka spruce even though we saw the devastating impacts of such plantations during Storm Éowyn. This is still happening on shallow soil. At the same time, we are talking about building LNG infrastructure even though we know this is contributing to climate change.

I am always going on about it, but a good start for us would be to look at having a moratorium on the building of data centres and LNG infrastructure, or any fossil fuel infrastructure. We should also look at fully resourcing local authorities. It has come up over and over again that local authority staff are the first people in the line of defence. I accept that work is done by voluntary and community workers, An Post, our emergency services and the Defence Forces. We need to resource local authority staff. The under-resourcing of local authorities has been raised in this House on numerous occasions. The OPW must be accountable and responsible as well. They all play a part together. We must ensure that Uisce Éireann, the ESB, the OPW and, most importantly, the local authorities, are resourced to deal with these emergencies.

The Senator is so diligently sharing time so that we all get more.

The kind of flooding we have seen in recent weeks is not a once-off event. We cannot say we are having once-off extreme weather events. They are ordinary and are no longer extraordinary. Rain continues to fall. This has laid bare the extent to which governments have failed to take flood risk management seriously. One of the clearest failures in that regard is the absence of a modern and effective flood warning system, which other jurisdictions have and have been effective elsewhere. They have proven that such systems work. A system here could include targeted push alerts to mobile phones in high-risk areas; real-time monitoring of river and groundwater levels; and clear localised warnings to give people time to protect their homes and their livestock and to make informed decisions.

These are standard practices in many European countries, yet communities in Ireland are still left relying on informal updates and word of mouth. Beyond warnings, we must also address how we manage water itself. Increasingly, European countries are moving towards natural flood management, an approach that works with nature rather than against it. We have heard Senator Noonan make interventions around this area. These natural flood management measures include restoring wetlands and flood plains; re-meandering straightened rivers; planting trees in catchments; and creating upstream water storage areas that slow the flow of water before it reaches towns and villages.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel when we see what works in other countries. In the Netherlands, the "room for the river" programme has reduced flood risk by giving rivers space to expand safely. In the UK, the Pickering "slowing the flow" project combines woodland planting, leaky dams and restored wetlands to significantly reduce flooding in towns.

Similar schemes in Belgium and Germany have shown that these measures are cost-effective. They improve biodiversity, enhance water quality and regenerate rural landscapes.

Crucially, natural flood management avoids the problem of simply pushing water downstream and transferring risk from one community to another, which we have seen play out in Kilkenny. Kilkenny got concrete flood protection but that has simply pushed the problem downstream. It has increased higher water flow and pushed it into Graiguenamanagh, Thomastown and Inistioge, the places that were really badly affected over the past few weeks. By storing and slowing water across entire catchments, natural flood management delivers fairer and more resilient outcomes. I would really like us to consider this.

Climate change is here. Flooding is not inevitable and inaction is choice. We need early warnings that work. We need nature-based solutions that are proven economically and sustainable.

I acknowledge all of the work of local authorities across the country, in particular, in the south east, and community services and fire services. They have done incredible work over the past few weeks.

We are a year on from Storm Éowyn and I have a question on whether the households have received the information booklets that were promised to them on what to do when a storm hits. That was a promise during Storm Éowyn. We are a year on and this is this at the very least is some tangible action we could see from the Department, ensuring that people know exactly what to do and how to react in these instances.

Senators Scahill and Byrne want to share time.

I will have two minutes and Senator Byrne will have three, if that is okay.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

I welcome the Minister. As previous speakers have said, these are no longer one-off events. This is becoming an annual occurrence for us all. My sympathies go out to the people of the south east and the south, and in the north, in Donegal, who were affected by the floods last week.

We are less than a year on from 760,000 people being without power and water across the west after Storm Éowyn affected homes, businesses and farms. While great strides have been made and a lot of initiatives have been brought on in relation to empowering communities in terms of setting up the community response networks, the communications facilities, etc., we still come to these one-off events on an annual basis and we find ourselves in a position where we ask could more have been done and should more have been done.

Senator McCormack mentioned temporary solutions and how permanent solutions are needed. My own experience of this is the temporary solutions are put in place but then a lot of work has to go in to ensuring that the planning applications are robust enough to get the permanent solutions across the line. That is something that we cannot take for granted. We have to go through that process to be able to deliver that.

Senator Noonan spoke about sustainable solutions and the solutions that are available but, because these are happening so often now, maybe need to look at something different. Maybe we need to empower local authorities and special emergency response units to be able to tackle these situations to protect human habitats as well. While the habitats directive is probably one of these issues that is holding up a lot of the infrastructure developments that we need to get communities supported in this way, maybe we need to start looking at protecting our own habitats and our own business communities and giving the people who are living in and developing these communities a little support on that as well.

I thank the Minister of State for coming in for this important discussion.

My home county of Wexford was devastated by flooding in the past two weeks and I have to highlight a number of issues. I spoke about the Enniscorthy flood relief project previously, but we saw the impact of heavy rainfall in counties Carlow and Wicklow making its way down the River Slaney, first, with the devastation that was caused on the Ryland Road in Bunclody upstream and then making its way down to a major flooding event in my home town, Enniscorthy, where we, yet again, witnessed absolute devastation for residents on the Island Road, Shannon Quay in Templeshannon and Abbey Quay. Down further, Wexford town was on high alert.

The reality is that we have not seen action on the Enniscorthy flood relief scheme. We have been flooded 16 times since 2000. I appreciate that the Taoiseach was down with us and I appreciate that we have had the Minister of State, Deputy Boxer Moran. There is a series of interim measures. I met with the CEO of Wexford County Council last Friday and he proposed several measures that the OPW has, to its credit, committed to fund, including the installation of non-return valves and barriers put up on slipways, providing adequate protection through permanent sandbags and aquadams. These are important measures, but the reality is that these measures came to late for the people in Enniscorthy. We have to see progress on legislative change to rebalance the legislative priorities in this country between protecting protected species, such as the freshwater pearl mussel living under the old bridge in Enniscorthy, and the businesses and the residents right across the country.

Let us not forget that it was not only Bunclody, Enniscorthy and Wexford town that saw and experienced serious flood risk. It was also further south. The Minister of State visited Our Lady's Island in the summertime. They saw an absolutely catastrophic flooding event once again. Bridgetown, in south Wexford, only a few miles away, saw devastation due to flooding. We have to examine our legislative priorities.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan is the Minister of State with responsible for heritage but I am also aware that he comes from an area that has experienced flooding and that he understands the need and the importance of reprioritising between protected species and human beings.

I will conclude by applaud the work of Slaney Search and Rescue, a voluntary organisation that carried out rescues yet again in Enniscorthy. Currently, it does not have a designated premises. It is locked out of Government grant schemes owing to the nature of the work it does. We have to have change in this area so that the resources that the organisation needs can be provided in a timely manner.

Weather events are happening, whether as predicted by Met Éireann or not, and whether it is a named storm or not. They are not a once-in-a-lifetime event. Flooding is happening regularly, especially where I live.

Every time it starts raining heavily in Cavan, a family who live near me keep watch 24-7. Water starts encircling the steps of their house, front and back. There is no consolation from the Government for these people, who are living in a flood zone and cannot escape the weather or the rising waters. There is a river at the back of their house. The farmer cannot clean out the river, where there is a build-up of silt, because he will be prosecuted if he did so.

The level of flooding we saw across the country during Storm Chandra was shocking. In counties Cavan and Monaghan, some of the roads were so badly affected that in some cases, they collapsed and in others, they were closed for days. It caused unbelievable chaos, particularly in Ballybay, County Monaghan and outside Cootehill, County Cavan.

People were upset by how the Government seemed to put the blame on everyone else instead of engaging in a bit of self-reflection. It was Met Éireann's fault for not updating people in time and it was the weather's fault for the heavy downpour. The reality is that flood forecasting has been available in this country for the past ten years but it has not been available to the public. Who can we blame for that? We have communities that are waiting decades for flood defences and protection measures to be built. Who can we blame for that? We have a tendency in this country to protect fish life over families. Who can we blame for that? The reality is we cannot blame the weather forecasters when the State has flood defence schemes that have been in the pipeline for a decade with no sign of planning or completion. Where does the responsibility lie for that?

In 2015, people in Midleton were promised flood protection. The Minister of State should know that. Over ten years later, a planning application has not been submitted.

Enniscorthy was totally underwater during the storm. There have been 12 floods there in 25 years and still there is no planning permission for flood defences in place. Why is that?

The Cavan flood relief scheme was introduced in 2018 and eight years later, there has been no action at all. There have been workshops, plans and surveys but nothing that will protect our roads, our homes and our businesses.

It is easy to blame the weather instead of focusing on solutions the Government can actually control. Can the Minister of State commit to much needed flood defence schemes and back delivery with a timeline and funding? If he cannot, is it not all just talk?

Senator Joe Conway raised the issue of cleaning out gullies and local authorities. I support what Senator Cosgrove said. She is 100% right. Local authorities are totally underfunded. They actually get the work done. Local government is brilliant for getting jobs done, but it is totally underfunded. In 2021, Cavan County Council was getting €45,000 more for ordinary maintenance than it is this year. Monaghan County Council was getting €81,000 more. The maintenance budget has been cut.

Another thing I want to highlight is that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has not, that I know of, set foot in this Chamber. He has been in it three times, but I have yet to meet him. There are serious problems with roads and roads funding. There have been promises for the past six months about additional funding and it still has not come to light. It is not right, and we deserve to have that Minister in front of us. I call on him to come before us.

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, to the House. The Minister, Deputy Browne, was also welcome to the House. I know Storm Chandra has had a significant effect in the Minister's constituency. I raise an issue on which I called for a debate ahead of the most recent flooding. I have been looking for a debate on this issue for a long time because I believe the protocols need to be re-examined and I am glad that is happening. I do not believe the necessary joined-up thinking exists between Met Éireann, the local authorities, the emergency response group and Government in general. When an emergency happens, they all click into place and they do a good job, by and large. Given what we have experienced in recent years, that needs to be homed in on and fine-tuned. Clear and understandable protocols need to exist. As Members of the Oireachtas, we should be aware of those protocols because clearly we are leaders in our communities. When natural disasters like the most recent one happen, the people called in to comment and to act as liaisons and advocates for communities are Members of the Oireachtas and councillors. We need to be on top of these issues ahead of it happening, so we have a clear understanding of what happens and what is expected of us.

In scenarios like this everyone clubs together. I experienced that in a direct way on 4 January 2014 when Lahinch, County Clare, along with much of the coast of the west of Ireland was hammered with massive waves. The damage done to the streetscape, the promenade, homes and facilities along the west coast, particularly in Lahinch and other parts of County Clare, was immense. It was a time when there were not resources in the country in the way there are today, but they were found. I am glad to say that the end result in terms of the facilities now available in Lahinch in the context of the streetscape, promenade, sporting facilities and playgrounds and rock armouring is way ahead of what was there before 2014. There was €12 million spent on rock armouring at the time and between €8 million and €10 million was spent on the streetscape, promenade, railings and lifeguard facilities. Another €7 million or €8 million was spent between the playground and the leisure centre. It is wonderful now to see it, particularly last weekend with people using it on a nice, calm Sunday.

The point I will make is that coastal protection is not at the level it really needs to be at. We have been talking about river flooding and overtopping and so on. They are extremely important. The protocols and understanding of major incidents like these need to be understood, but the investment needs to happen. I absolutely support the flood relief scheme in Enniscorthy and in the other areas because I have seen the benefit in Ennis of the investment in recent years. It has really worked. There are many parts of our coastline that are vulnerable, and they need hundreds of millions of euro of investment. I believe we need to substantially increase investment in coastal protection. I am sure there are many projects in the Minister of State's constituency. We are an island nation, and we need to protect our coastal communities. They are an important tourism product. We do not have huge amounts of natural resources in this country, but the resources we have are our céad míle fáilte, our tourism industry, our beautiful landscape and so on. We need to protect it.

I thank the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Browne, for coming to the House this evening. It has been a difficult period. I know some local authorities are excellent and others are not so good. Some local authorities are well funded, and others could do with more funding. We need to synchronise all of that. We need to have a standard approach and ensure that resources are not an issue. To be fair to the Government, over the past week or two I think resources were made available when resources were needed. Caps were lifted and increased when that was necessary too. I again thank the Minister of State, and I suggest we resume a further discussion on this, maybe in three months' time when the new processes and procedures are worked out.

I thank all of the Senators for their contributions today. I have listened carefully. The Minister, Deputy Browne, and I are no strangers to the impacts of flooding, especially the Minister in the past couple of weeks in his home town. He is living it. He knows the constituents there and he knows how they have been impacted. For me, in west Cork we have had many towns subject to repeated flooding. Thankfully most have their flood relief schemes in place, like my home town of Clonakilty, as well as Skibbereen and Bandon. As has been rightly pointed out here, we have seen the incredibly positive impact of a flood relief scheme that works. We need them. Enniscorthy needs a flood relief scheme. The Government, the local authorities and everybody that can deliver this needs to come together to deliver that. The Senators are right. In many instances the statutory processes take too long, the regulations can be too stringent, and it is causing delays. We need to deliver this as quickly as possible. While flood defence does not come within our Department, it is absolutely worth talking about.

At the same time, I am kind of getting sick of the finger being pointed at nature and biodiversity when it comes to delays with schemes. I have constantly heard the freshwater pearl mussel being alluded to and pointed out as a contributing factor for the Enniscorthy flood relief scheme not being delivered. The freshwater pearl mussel had absolutely nothing to do with the Enniscorthy flood relief scheme not being delivered. That is a fact. Neither did the NPWS have anything to do with it. I often see the finger being pointed at the National Parks and Wildlife Service and this Department. They were absolutely not a contributing factor in terms of the Enniscorthy flood relief scheme not being delivered. The local authority needs to put in a good quality and robust application that will withstand any of these policies or restraints. That needs to be where the focus is.

While I am talking about nature, I firmly believe that while we need flood defences in towns like Enniscorthy to protect homes, lives and people, we need to start looking at nature as a way to provide the solutions. We need to look upstream. We need to look in the upland areas. We need to see what is happening there. What I mean is that climate change is happening. We are having more rainfall and getting storms more frequently. We are getting higher levels of rainfall. That is absolutely a contributing factor and there is no doubt about that. However, something else has happened in recent decades that we need to have a mature conversation about, and that is land use. What is happening upstream? What is happening to the land upstream that we are seeing more frequent floods? It was mentioned that Enniscorthy has flooded 16 times since 2000. That is an alarming rate, and part of that is climate change but there is something happening with the land. We have become obsessed with trying to get water off the land as quickly as we can. We need to start rethinking that strategy. Obviously, if we get the water off the land as quickly as we can, the river becomes overwhelmed and towns like Enniscorthy flood.

That is a fact. That is basic physics. We need to see how we can go back to making sure land does what it was intended to do: absorb water, act as a sponge and slowly release water into rivers, streams and other water bodies so that downstream is not overwhelmed and we do not have these flooding events anymore.

I am hearing a lot about joined-up thinking, which we need. When it comes to the delivery of flood schemes, we need joined-up thinking and we need it fast. We also need joined-up thinking in terms of what is happening upstream. There is too much of this activity happening. We need to work with landowners and farmers and we need to work with foresters on a voluntary basis so that where appropriate, we can look again at how we use land upstream. Only then can we ensure that towns downstream are protected. I am more than willing to work with any other Department or agency, be it the OPW or the Department of agriculture, to ensure we come up with a scheme that is voluntary - not compulsory - whereby landowners are incentivised to keep back a bit of water on their land. A flood plain is called a flood plain for a reason so we need to ensure they act as flood plains to protect lives and protect properties, as has been the theme throughout the debate across the House, because they must come first.

I understand there is anger out there and there is certainly a need to do more when it comes to the response. As the Minister said, we learn from every event. The Department carried out a review following Storm Éowyn. As we do after each major severe weather event, we manage it through the NECG. We used this review to enhance our response mechanisms and our preparedness. We endeavour to improve our co-ordination based on previous experiences. The review highlighted the value of community support centres as a vital focal point in communities. We developed a guide to community support centres in conjunction with the local authority sector and have put processes in place to provide for a pool of generators and the necessary electrical work to ensure they can be used at pre-identified sites. This is a valuable example of learning from experiences. Going forward, these centres will provide not only warmth, community access to charging facilities and hot drinks and food, but they will become centres to provide vital updates and information regarding humanitarian schemes and a means to obtain psychosocial and other supports.

We took the opportunity of the review to also examine local authorities' severe weather and flood plans and advised on how to strengthen them. We will continue to work with local authorities and principal response agency colleagues in regularly reviewing and exercising these plans. The response to Storm Éowyn also demonstrated the invaluable contribution of the Civil Defence, Irish Red Cross, An Post, rural bus transport and voluntary and community groups. They were instrumental in making and keeping contact with those who were isolated, vulnerable and alone, those who could easily have been missed.

Both my colleague and I are extremely grateful for all of the work they do and much of it is unacknowledged. Our Department, through its NDFEM, continues to maintain and build on relationships with all of these organisations. They are now central to our response operations and sit at the table. Communication is something we have also improved and clear, concise messaging is now channelled directly through our colleagues in the Government Information Service, GIS. This ensures that we have, in effect, a one-stop shop where all pertinent information relating to an event can be found in one trusted place. We have also worked on ensuring that information around humanitarian schemes, assistance being provided by local authorities, community support centres and other assistance is made available to the public as quickly as possible, through the use of social media, the local press, websites and mapping systems.

Local authorities play a key role. My Department continues to support local authorities. Over the past ten years, the Department has provided over €120 million to local authorities to support them with the unbudgeted expenditure associated with storm response activity. While operational issues are a matter for the local government sector, the NDFEM continues to work with local authority fire services to ensure policies and guidance in place support an increase in resilience of fire stations, regional communication centres, mobilising and alerting equipment and radio systems to ensure they are best placed to respond and assist in all emergencies, including those associated with severe weather.

In relation to Storm Chandra, as already outlined, there was a confluence of a number of different factors, resulting in a prolonged flooding event. Saturated land, combined with persistent heavy rain and wind of the storm, meeting a high astronomical tide, led to river flooding, coastal flooding, road and surface water flooding. The impacts of this were felt all along the east of the country, most acutely in south Dublin, Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford and Kilkenny. River levels were being monitored in the days before the arrival of Storm Chandra, with a Met Éireann technical briefing called on Monday 26 January and the NECG activated on 27 January to manage the unfolding flooding event.

Our local authorities were prepared, having crews in place and ready to deploy. They undertook pumping to protect homes and properties where possible, and pumped to relieve flooding also. Sandbags and other measures were deployed and they were on the ground through the entire event. The local authorities were assisted by Civil Defence, who evacuated homes, provided drone footage to support local authority activities, filled sandbags and called to those who had been cut off by flooded roads. They also provided transport for life critical hospital appointments and to hospital staff who were cut off. The Civil Defence support is integral to our response. The same can be said for other voluntary organisations we engage with, particularly the Irish Red Cross. Years of working in the severe weather space has ensured that the NDFEM has built relationships with other Departments, utility providers, principal response agencies, voluntary sector and other stakeholders. These relationships have ensured that issues are picked up early and solved quickly.

I have spoken about our preparedness and response. I also thank everyone who has been involved. However, despite our best efforts, communities have experienced flooding and people have experienced awful damage to their homes, impacts on their businesses and loss of income. I acknowledge all of this, and commit, on behalf of the Minister and myself, that our Department will continue to strive to improve our response, continue to learn from past events and incorporate those learnings into our response plans going forward and that we will continue to support local authorities in their preparation and response to severe weather events, including flooding.

I thank the Minister of State.

When is it proposed to sit again?

Tomorrow morning, at 10.30 a.m.

Is that agreed? Agreed.