Professor Michael McMahon:

I do not believe we have to have a dedicated fund for flood damage. However, we must make sure that there are contingencies. While flood damage has been the most pertinent climate event we have had in Ireland recently, it is not just about flood damage.

However, others could manifest that are not flood related, such as other kinds of storm damage from extreme weather events coming off the Atlantic Ocean or other such things. It is therefore useful to plan for funds. Setting them aside for that in particular is not necessary, but we do have to plan for these costs and be ready to face them.

I will return to the Senator's first question on thinking carefully about planning for this to try to avoid it. For example, in the note we mentioned the risks of costs from flooding in Dublin city and getting flood protections in place, which is technology that exists. Countries such as the Netherlands have been leading on this for 50 years at least. Getting on top of infrastructure investment to mitigate the potential costs is a sensible approach at this point in time.