Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 19 March 2026
Public Accounts Committee
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2023
Chapter 4 - Adapting Flood Risk Management to Climate Change Impacts
2:00 am
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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This morning we engage with the Office of Public Works to consider the Comptroller and Auditor General's report on the accounts of the public services 2023, Chapter 4, adapting flood risk management to climate change impacts. I welcome from the Office of Public Works, Mr. John Conlon, chairperson; Mr. Robert Mooney, head of planning and climate adaptation; Mr. Mark Adamson, assistant chief engineer - risk management and climate adaptation; and Mr. Brian Brogan, principal officer - floods project management. We are joined by officials from Met Éireann, who are attending in a representative capacity: Mr. Eoin Moran, director; Dr. Sarah O'Reilly, assistant director; Ms Josephine Prendergast, assistant director; and Mr. Keith Lambkin, head of climate services. We are also joined by officials from the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, including the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, who is a permanent witness to the committee; and Ms Manon Nouvian-Flynn, auditor. You are all very welcome.
Before we begin, I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references the witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present, or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts, is protected, pursuant to both the Constitution and statute, by absolute privilege. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. Witnesses are, however, expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure that this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.
Witnesses are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity.
I call on the Comptroller and Auditor General to make his opening statement.
Mr. Seamus McCarthy:
In the light of very significant flooding that occurred in multiple locations in January of this year, the committee decided to re-examine a report I published in September 2024 about how Ireland’s system for flood risk management is being adapted to take account of emerging and foreseeable impacts of climate change.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Ireland committed to contribute to the global goal on adaptation to climate change. Climate change adaptation is defined as the process of adjusting to actual or anticipated changes in climate conditions and their impacts and includes a wide range of actions aimed at reducing vulnerabilities, enhancing resilience, and safeguarding communities and ecosystems against the adverse effects of climate change. It should be noted that adaptations will be required in infrastructure planning and delivery in all sectors for Ireland to prepare for and to respond to the impacts of climate change. As a result, while my report assesses the progress made in implementing the climate change sectoral adaptation plan for flood risk management, there may be broader lessons for all sectors to be learned from the experience with the adaptation of flood risk management.
Ireland’s first statutory national adaptation framework covering 12 sectors was published in 2018. The associated sectoral adaptation plan for flood risk management included 21 actions, with 15 groups and organisations responsible for implementing those actions. The Office of Public Works is the designated lead organisation for delivery of the sectoral plan and is responsible, solely or jointly, for implementing the highest number of actions. Members may wish to note that a new national adaptation framework was published in June 2024. Updated sectoral adaptation plans were due to be submitted to Government by September 2025. One of the actions identified in the first sectoral adaptation plan for flood risk management was to "progress the establishment of the national flood forecasting and flood warning service". The agencies identified as being responsible for delivering this service were Met Éireann, the OPW, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the local authorities.
Met Éireann operates as a specialist division of the Department of housing rather than as a separate statutory body. Consequently, it does not produce separate audited financial statements. The Department provides funding to Met Éireann through programme E of Vote 34, and the audited information available about its expenditure, staffing and capital projects is limited to what is required to be presented in the appropriation account of the Vote. Since 2018, programme E has included a subhead focused on the development of a flood forecasting and warning service. Substantial funding for the system has been provided in the Vote each year but this has consistently been underspent. In 2024, funding of just over €6 million was provided for the flood forecasting and warning service but only €1.6 million was used. The substantial underspending was attributed to delay in Met Éireann’s flood forecasting centre becoming operational because of difficulties in recruitment, and similar delays with its coastal modelling review project. No detail is provided in the appropriation account as to the overall budget for the project to develop the full forecasting and warning service, or about the progress on the project as at the reporting date.
More generally, the 2018 national adaptation framework identified the development of appropriate indicators of climate change adaptation as a priority to enable the monitoring and assessment of progress. The report found that definitive national adaptation indicators had not yet been defined for Ireland as at June 2024. Pending the agreement of definitive indicators, the flood risk management adaptation plan identified five interim indicators to be used to measure implementation progress. Two of the selected interim indicators, related to completion of coastal and river flood risk mapping, demonstrate full implementation by 2023. However, the other interim indicators, related to adaptation planning for individual flood risk management projects and flooding impacts, reflected very little or no progress between 2019 and 2023. The report makes recommendations in the areas of formal reporting mechanisms for progress updates on actions, developing process-based indicators to allow meaningful monitoring of progress and consideration of indicators relating to disaster risk reduction and resilience.
Mr. John Conlon:
I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to discuss the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on adapting flood risk management to climate change impacts. I thank his office for its work on the report. I am joined today by senior members of the OPW, as the Cathaoirleach mentioned in his opening remarks.
Flooding is a natural process that can happen at any time in a wide variety of locations. It is a significant risk to people, the economy and our environment and cultural heritage. The Government’s flood risk management policy is centred on three strategic pillars, namely prevention, protection and preparedness, which are underpinned by evidence-based flood risk assessment. I will touch on each of these pillars as I outline the actions under way with respect to climate adaptation.
The committee will be aware that the Government has committed €1.3 billion to flood relief under the NDP to 2030. The OPW has invested some €580 million in 56 completed flood relief schemes. These schemes are protecting 13,580 properties nationwide and provide an economic benefit in damages avoided estimated to be in the region of €2 billion.
There are now some 100 schemes at design, planning or construction which is three times more than the number of schemes at these stages in 2018. This is a key action of the protection pillar of the flood risk management policy. 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. Recent attribution studies have shown that climate change is already impacting flood events. Accelerated sea level rise is being observed and is projected to continue into the future, regardless of action taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, while it is critically important that current flood risk is addressed, Ireland must also be prepared to deal with and manage the increased flood risk arising from climate change.
The climate change sectoral adaptation plans for flood risk management set out how the State will manage this increasing flood risk. The subject matter of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report is on the second climate change sectoral adaptation plan for flood risk management which ran from 2019 to 2025. The follow-on, third climate change sectoral adaptation plan, which runs from 2025 to 2030, was published in October 2025. This plan sets out the actions needed to further adapt flood risk management practices to build resilience to increased flood risk in Ireland. The plan also took account of, and indeed implemented, the recommendations contained in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. All new and ongoing flood relief scheme projects require the preparation of a scheme adaptation plan such that the design and implementation of the scheme takes the potential impacts of climate change into account and the potential for adopting nature-based solutions. This is to ensure that the schemes will provide for, or can be adapted to manage, the likely increases in future flood risk and maintain protection for our communities. For example, it may be that foundations for schemes being built now are designed to accommodate increases in the height of flood defences in the future.
A programme of work is also in-hand and is due for completion in 2029 to prepare scheme adaptation plans for flood relief schemes constructed prior to 2019. The OPW’s flood mapping programme includes the preparation of flood maps for possible future scenarios as well as present-day conditions, taking account of the potential impacts of climate change. In this context the OPW has comprehensive national information of potential future flooding from rivers and the sea. As well as informing where flood relief measures might be required, the flood maps prepared by the OPW are an essential support to sustainable planning and development management and the effective implementation of the statutory guidelines on planning and flood risk management as part of the prevention pillar. The OPW provides support, workshops and seminars to the various planning authorities and reviews all high-level forward planning documents so that flood risk is taken into account in planning decisions and that the guidelines are implemented. The OPW is also working closely with the planners in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to provide further guidance for the planning authorities on the consideration of climate change and the potential impacts on flooding and flood risk.
The third flood policy pillar, the preparedness pillar, includes actions and measures that can be taken to reduce the consequences of flooding, for example, by informing the public about preparing for the risk of flooding and taking appropriate actions during a flood event. The preparations for and the response to major emergencies is a matter for the principal response agencies, including the local authorities, An Garda Síochána and the HSE. Local authorities are the lead agency for preparations for and response to flooding events within their administrative areas. The Department of housing, through its national directorate for fire and emergency management, is designated lead Government Department with responsibility for co-ordinating the national level response to weather emergencies, including flooding. That Department convenes technical weather and flood briefings and meetings of the national emergency coordination group when deemed appropriate.
Flood forecasting and warning is an important aspect of the preparedness pillar. The national flood forecasting and warning service, NFFWS, is being delivered on a staged basis. Stage one focused on national and catchment level fluvial and coastal flood forecasting and was completed in December 2023. A flood forecasting centre is established in Met Éireann with flood forecasts, flood advisory services, hydrometric observations and daily flood guidance statements being provided to local authorities and other state agencies. This information can be utilised by the local authorities and other agencies to manage flood events and to make decisions pertaining to emergency response measures. It should be noted that the development of the warning aspect of the NFFWS was earmarked for stage two. In 2025, following Storm Éowyn, new governance arrangements at Cabinet committee level for emergency management resulted in oversight of the NFFWS moving from the OPW to the Government task force on emergency planning. A subgroup of this task force is tasked with delivering stage two. This subgroup is chaired by the office of emergency planning of the Department of Defence. Stage two encompasses further developing the fluvial and coastal flood forecast systems to provide a greater level of detail and accuracy which will, when combined with local impact assessments, enable local flood warnings to be generated and inform appropriate responses.
Finally, the committee may wish to note that progress on the delivery of all the sectoral adaptation plans is assessed annually by the independent Climate Change Advisory Council, made up of national and international experts in climate action. Progress with regard to the flood risk management sector has been identified by the council as being "good" overall in each of the assessments undertaken since the assessments commenced in 2021. I, along with my colleagues, am happy to expand on these matters. I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee members for their attention.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Conlon. I now invite the director of Met Éireann to deliver his opening statement.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the invitation to attend today. Met Éireann is Ireland’s national meteorological service, as recognised under the UN Convention of the World Meteorological Organization. We appear before the committee at its request to assist in the examination of Chapter 4 of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, Adapting Flood Risk Management to Climate Change Impacts. Met Éireann will outline the climate services it provides that are relevant to flood risk management, together with its delivery of operational flood forecasting services under the NFFWS as delivered under the oversight of the OPW.
Climate change is a present-day reality. It is already reshaping weather patterns, intensifying extreme events and heightening risks for communities globally and here in Ireland. Globally, 2025 was the third warmest year on record, following 2024 and 2023, with average temperatures around 1.4 °C above pre-industrial levels. It was characterised by exceptional ocean heat, continued sea-level rise and a persistent warming trend, alongside widespread extreme rainfall, record temperatures, intensified storms and wildfires. Ireland’s climate is warming in line with these global trends and 2025 was Ireland’s second warmest year on record. The period from 2022 to 2025 represents the warmest four-year period in the national record which extends back to 1900. Seven of Ireland’s warmest years have occurred since 2005. The past year also demonstrated increasing climate variability. The year began with a significant snowfall event, followed by Storm Éowyn, which brought the strongest winds ever recorded in Ireland. This was followed by the warmest summer on record and the fourth wettest autumn. The winter just past was notably wet, with January rainfall reaching 123% of the long-term national average and Dublin Airport recording its wettest February on record, at 255% of its long-term average.
Scientific evidence shows that climate change is influencing rainfall patterns in Ireland. Research demonstrates increases in the intensity of heavy rainfall events and the persistence of prolonged wet periods. Irish climate attribution studies indicate that climate change is contributing to increased winter flood risk. Projections for Ireland point to continued warming, more frequent heavy rainfall events, longer summer dry spells and rising coastal flood risk driven by global sea-level rise and warmer oceans. Warmer oceans and a moister atmosphere are also expected to intensify storms. However, while risks are increasing, climate science is also strengthening society’s capacity to prepare and respond. Climate services, built on long-term monitoring, modelling and research, are now central to informed decision-making on climate risk and adaptation.
Met Éireann plays a key role in this space. We monitor, analyse and project national climate trends, providing the scientific evidence base that supports national climate policy, climate risk assessment and adaptation planning. A central initiative is the Met Éireann-funded TRANSLATE programme, which delivers standardised, high-resolution climate projections for Ireland across multiple emissions scenarios. These projections underpin the national climate change risk assessment, the national adaptation framework and sectoral adaptation planning across transport, energy, water and the built environment, and are increasingly used by the private sector. Met Éireann leads Ireland’s national framework for climate services, which was established in 2022 to ensure climate information was accessible and aligned with user needs. We also support research examining the links between climate change and flooding, as outlined in the briefing paper provided to the committee.
Ireland has made significant progress in developing operational flood forecasting capability. Under the oversight of the OPW, Met Éireann successfully delivered the task assigned under stage 1 of the national flood forecasting and warning service, with its new flood forecasting centre commencing operations in January 2024. The centre provides a year-round, seven-day service, delivering national and catchment-scale forecasts for river and coastal flooding. It issues daily guidance and targeted advisories to the national directorate for fire and emergency management, local authorities and emergency responders, supporting preparedness, planning, resource allocation and flood risk management.
Met Éireann is also investing in the observational infrastructure that underpins weather and flood forecasting. We are continuing to increase the number of real-time rainfall gauges in targeted areas. The national weather radar network continues to expand, with a new radar commissioned at Shannon, an upgraded Dublin radar due by the end of this year, and five additional radars planned over the coming five years. These improvements will provide high-resolution, real-time coverage at a national scale.
Together, these advances in climate research, monitoring, modelling and forecasting are strengthening Ireland’s resilience to flooding in a changing climate. We are building the capability needed not only to understand the climate, but to adapt and respond effectively.
I thank the committee members for their attention. My colleagues and I look forward to their questions.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Moran. Please note that we will suspend our meeting at about 12.15 p.m. for a short 15-minute break and resume afterwards.
I will now open the floor to members. The lead speaker today is Deputy McGrath, who has 15 minutes. All other members will have ten minutes each. If time permits after that, we will allow members back in for a second round of supplementary questions. I call Deputy McGrath.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. I thank the representatives from Met Éireann and the OPW for being here to discuss the issue of flooding in general.
Starting with the OPW, the first and obvious question I see concerns the underspend in 2024 of €9.5 million. This was at a time when we had a record number of flood schemes in the system, many of which were progressing at a snail’s pace. How come we have not spent our full budget in relation to flood projects?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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It was 2024, as identified in the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Mr. John Conlon:
We have been ramping up expenditure on that over a number of years. I think there was a slight underspend. I forget the total budget in 2024 and do not have the figures to hand, but we exceeded our budget in 2025. We have an increased budget this year. While there was a slight underspend in 2024, the important point to make in terms of the delivery of flood relief schemes is that the expenditure is ramping up year by year. Last year, and as I believe I mentioned during a previous committee meeting in terms of our Supplementary Estimate, we procured further funding to increase expenditure in 2025. This year, we have a budget allocation that has again increased on the previous year.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Effectively, the OPW overspent on its budget in 2025 and there is an increased budget in 2026. However, there was an underspend in 2024. There is not a clear explanation for that underspend at this point.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Okay.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I just want to get a sense of the scale of the challenge before the OPW as an organisation in terms of flood schemes. It was said in the opening statement that there were about 100 projects at the design, planning and construction phase. That aligns with a reply I received to a parliamentary question recently, which said there were 94 projects at design, planning and construction stage, with an additional 54 projects in tranche 2 that, effectively, had not entered stage 1. Of those approximately 150 schemes, ten were under construction, five were at detailed design and ten were moving towards planning. I put it to Mr. Conlon that the scale of the challenge is enormous in terms of there potentially being approximately 150 schemes, yet only ten of those are under construction. That seems like an extraordinarily low number of projects actually under construction at present.
Mr. John Conlon:
In terms of the way the Deputy is presenting it, I think he is making a fair point. These are, though, fairly large-scale civil engineering projects and delivering that number at any one time is a fairly big challenge for any organisation, including ourselves and the local authorities. I think the key issue here is that we are ramping up our activity and project delivery in this space. That will continue to ramp up. More is coming through the planning system now that will be going into construction over the next 18 to 24 months because of the quicker delivery of planning decisions from An Coimisiún Pleanála, in particular. As I said, the ramping up is-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Is the OPW ramping up its capacity? I ask because there are 69 schemes at the preliminary design stage. Obviously, a lot of schemes are coming down the tracks and the OPW is only able to construct ten at any time. Perhaps this is not the case. Will Mr. Conlon explain if the OPW can do more than ten projects at a time?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Is the capacity issue for the OPW a budgetary capacity issue or does it concern actually getting the job done in terms of labour and contractor constraints? Is it budgetary or is it actually-----
Mr. John Conlon:
It is more of the latter in terms of getting stuff through the system, into construction, tendered and all of that. We are increasing graduate intakes and trying to work more closely with our contracting partners so that they are ready to tender for projects as we put them through the system. However, and as the Deputy knows, the construction sector in general has overall capacity constraints.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Are we going to be in a position to speed up the delivery of these projects in respect of the four stages, going from pre-stage 1 to construction? I want to give Mr. Conlon one example of a situation in my constituency. Taking the Ballinhassig flood relief scheme, eight properties were flooded on two occasions in 2009, were flooded again in 2015 and then again in 2023. That scheme has still not got through planning. It is 17 years later and those householders have been flooded on four occasions. A response to a recent parliamentary question indicated that the scheme will, hopefully, start construction next year. I am just making the point, though, that it has taken 17 years to go from pre-stage 1 to not even commencing planning. It is painstakingly slow. Much of the time, projects are stalled and just inching forward, if they are moving at all. Is the OPW as an organisation able to deliver faster and better in terms of flood schemes?
Mr. John Conlon:
To address the Deputy’s point in general terms first, and before I ask Mr. Brogan to talk about the Ballinhassig scheme, we are bringing a memorandum to the Government shortly to show how we can hopefully increase the throughput and capacity of the delivery of schemes by taking measures. We are now getting planning decisions more quickly. We are also doing some of our work in parallel rather than sequentially, so we can speed up some of the design processes to be done in parallel with the planning system rather than following planning-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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At what stage is that parallel rather than sequential activity done?
Mr. John Conlon:
I can give one example. Previously, if a scheme required a Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, licence, we would have waited to receive that before we started the planning process. We now hope to do both of those actions in parallel. That could take up to a year out of the timeframe.
In terms of the delivery, we also hope to augment our own capacity internally, but we are continuously talking to the sector in general to make it more interested in bidding for these schemes and to broaden the number of bidders we have. That is something on which I keep in touch with the sector, the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, and other actors because more competition and more people interested in delivering these schemes will allow us to up our capacity as well.
May I ask Mr. Brogan to talk about the Ballinhassig scheme?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, please.
Mr. Brian Brogan:
As regards the Ballinhassig scheme, the Deputy is right that there is a long history of flooding there. The scheme was identified in the 2018 flood risk management plans as one of the schemes to progress. As regards Cork County Council and that delivery model, part of ramping up is to refund approximately 50 staff in local authorities taking on the day-to-day project management of the delivery of these schemes. Ballinhassig came in yesterday to us from Cork County Council with the approval gateway to go to planning. That will go internally to the management board over the coming weeks. It is hoped to go to planning this year through a Part 8 process but it is also hoped to start construction this year, with completion some months thereafter.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. Brogan for that update.
May I go back to Mr. Conlon and the OPW as an organisation? Is it being asked to do too much in relation to the flood challenge? As an organisation, it is responsible for managing property portfolios, heritage sites and project delivery. Is it time for a dedicated flood management agency in this country?
Mr. John Conlon:
No, I think we have the capacity and capabilities to do what we were asked to do. It should be remembered that we do this work in conjunction with local authorities, which in many cases deliver the schemes, and we oversee those deliveries. As Mr. Brogan has pointed out, we fund up to 50 engineers across the local authority sector to ensure they are at capacity and have the capability to deliver on our behalf. As the Deputy knows, we fund all of those schemes. I think the capacity and capabilities are there. As every Department does every number of years, we fight for additional capital allocations to ensure we have the budget to deliver, and we continuously work on our capacity and capability to deliver, so-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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There is €1.3 billion set aside in the national development plan in relation to flooding. Is there not a strong case to be made for a dedicated agency to oversee and manage the flood projects in this country?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Within the OPW.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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The C and AG has identified under the adaptation framework that 15 different groups are involved in the sectoral plans. It is a wide range of agencies and organisations. I just wonder whether the OPW is being asked to do too much, given the other priorities the office has. Mr. Conlon does not think so.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. Conlon for his answers.
May I turn to Met Éireann for my final few minutes? There was an underspend of €4.4 million in relation to Met Éireann in 2024. Will Met Éireann explain that underspend?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I will ask Ms Prendergast to address this question in a minute, but, first of all, it is important to understand this financial situation in the context of two strands. The first relates to the successful delivery of the stage 1 objective, that is, the delivery of the flood forecasting centre, which was delivered by January 2024 and has been operational for the past two years.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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That is the forecasting centre.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I do want to ask about stage 2, but specifically on the underspend in 2024, may we have an explanation for that,-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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-----given that we are still trying to progress with the forecasting and early warning system?
Ms Josephine Prendergast:
I thank the Deputy for his question. In relation to the underspend in 2024, this is a phased project that takes place over a number of years, and the Estimates are submitted on an annual basis. Where the full allocation is not utilised in a calendar year, the unspent funds are returned to the Department and either used within the Vote for surrender or capital carryover into the following year or vired for other projects within the Department, as is the agreed practice. The funding is then re-requested in the subsequent years.
Specifically for 2024, we had an allocation of €6 million, €1.7 million of which was utilised for the development of the flood forecasting centre operations and for the continuation of the coastal observation pilot and feasibility studies. The remainder of the allocation was for the further development of coastal and flood modelling projects, but this was contingent on the wider national flood forecasting programme being in place. That breaks down into staffing requirements and hydrometric upgrades with our partners - the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and so on - and studies for the flood forecasting and coastal flooding. When that funding was not required, it was returned - surrendered back - to the Department and utilised and deferred into 2025. It is not therefore an accumulating amount; it is deferred into the following year, if the Deputy knows what I mean. Does that answer his question?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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In simple terms, Ms Prendergast is saying Me Éireann was not able to spend it because it was waiting on other things to happen.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Stage 1 is welcome, and the forecasting centre has been in place since 2024. Will Met Éireann give us some idea as to what is to come in terms of further forecasting capabilities, warning systems and so on? Obviously, we are seeing extreme weather and a higher frequency of it. Met Éireann has a difficult job. I acknowledge that. It will be criticised if it is overcautious; it will be criticised if it is not cautious enough. What is to come in terms of our forecasting capability?
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Flood forecasting.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
At the moment, as we were saying, we have had a fully operational flood forecasting centre since 2024. As Ms Prendergast said, we have delivered that with cost savings. We managed the cost savings by allocating additional internal resources to ensure that the project could be delivered in a timely fashion. For the past two years, we have been developing observational capacity. We have had some funding challenges in terms of recruiting staff and so on, but nevertheless we have found ways to work around these challenges by kicking off and starting feasibility and pilot studies. These specifically focus on the observations infrastructure. That is enabling wave buoy measurements, which are needed for near-shore wave modelling and wave monitoring.
We have also conducted a pilot study in Galway with the Marine Institute. That has been quite a successful pilot study. It has now moved on to the feasibility stage. The wave buoy work was conducted by the Commissioners of Irish Lights. We always operate in a collaborative way to avoid duplication with other institutions and to leverage the capability of their expertise in order to deliver efficiently.
We have worked with local authorities and the EPA to try to activate the existing hydrometric network to build up the business continuity capability of these stations. We operate on a 24-7 basis, which means everything needs to be always on. Therefore, we have to look at these sites and upgrade the infrastructure to ensure that it is capable of operating in real time and it can maintain those business continuity standards. Those pilots have commenced in counties Wicklow, Wexford, Cork and Limerick and are progressing.
In parallel to that, we have also been looking at the modelling side, that is, the prediction side. We have 36 river catchment models. That is the scale at which we forecast at the moment. Over the past two years, we have been continuously improving and upgrading those models.
On the coastal side, we worked with the OPW during stage 1 to move what is called the tide and storm surge forecasting system over to Met Éireann. We are continually expanding and improving the scientific underpinning and the technology associated with that.
That is what we have been doing for-----
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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So, specifically, our flood forecasting ability will get better.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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Yes, more granular and more specific detail.
Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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When will we be in a position to do that? For example, Enniscorthy flooded recently. When will we be in a position to give an early warning to the local authority in Wexford to say we believe Enniscorthy will flood in two days or whatever the case may be?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
We fully appreciate the urgency. At the moment we are working with our partners. We do not represent the full NFFWS here today; we are just one constituent part of a multi-party end-to-end system. We have been given responsibility to develop the forecasting part.
The question relates to forecasting so I will answer it. We are working with all partners to put together the planning, which is a complex organisational process, for stage 2. We have been developing capability for stage 2 and working on a coherent, consistent, system-wide plan contributing to that. That plan, we expect, will be available this year. The Government task force for emergency planning established a subgroup focusing purely on the NFFWS and on this particular issue, to put in place a plan that sets out responsibility, timelines and milestones. We have contributed to that to focus on the development of this key next stage.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Can Mr. Conlon confirm that the OPW has a holistic view of all the flood schemes needed in the country, even if it is not dealing with them because it has deemed them too small?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Including ones under the remit of local authorities.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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That does exist and we can be confident the small schemes that are needed are on that list.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Is that all of them, even the ones under the remit of local authorities that the OPW is refusing to take on?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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My understanding from my local authority is that some flood schemes are too small and the OPW will not take them on but it will not provide funding to the local authority. For example, Skerries Mills-the Maltings persistently floods. The OPW is saying it is too small a relief scheme for it to fund but it will not provide the local authority with any funding.
Mr. Brian Brogan:
The delivery model in 2018 was that the schemes in the first tranche for delivery got into two routes. There were schemes deemed to cost roughly €1 million or less, of which there were about 30. The local authorities, working with the CCMA, agreed to deliver those directly and the OPW's technical people would provide necessary-----
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Has the OPW followed up on these 30 schemes? Has the work been done? No work is being done on the scheme I am speaking about.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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My understanding from Fingal County Council is it does not have funding to do these schemes. For the past seven years, the OPW has persistently underspent, in some cases, quite substantially. I do not understand why the OPW is not providing support and funding to the local authorities for such schemes.
Mr. Brian Brogan:
I assure the Deputy there is no issue in relation to funding local authorities for delivery of those schemes. We work with local authorities on resources and specialties that might be needed within the local authority sector to advance the complexities associated with some schemes. Our engineers engage with the local authorities on those areas. They have worked on some schemes in relation to further studies, map reviews, etc. Work is ongoing.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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I can confirm to Fingal County Council that Mr. Brogan has said there is funding there for the relief schemes.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Brogan. I will do that.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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The last time Mr. Conlon was here, he said no Department had put its hand up for the national children's science museum and that if funding could not be found for the museum, it would have to come from the flood risk management programme. Did his comments that day prompt any interactions with his parent Department?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Has he had no follow-up conversation with the Department on how the State's obligation to the national children's science museum will be funded?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Has there been any progress? We are talking about flooding and Mr. Conlon said the last day it would have to come from the flooding management programme.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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We are all concerned here if that is to be the case.
Mr. John Conlon:
I do not think I used the precise words the Deputy quoted there. I gave it as an example we may need to consider. In terms of the project the Deputy is talking about, there have been further conversations with the Department of public expenditure. I do not want to say much more about how those conversations are developing at this stage. There is no threat to the flood relief budget.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Conlon; I appreciate that.
I will move to the national flood forecasting and warning service. Currently it is tailored towards flood forecasting for local authorities and State emergency responders. It is welcome news that flood forecasting will improve. I am really interested in notifications to the public. What is the status of that project? Who is the owner? Who is driving it and who will be the operational owner of public notifications?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I will hand over to Dr. O'Reilly to address this question but there are a few dimensions to it. First is the level of public communication of flood risk through existing platforms, TV forecasts, radio warnings, etc., and then there are the future plans associated with that. There are two dimensions to that.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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I am very conscious of time so will Dr. O'Reilly focus on the public notification system, please?
Dr. Sarah O'Reilly:
In Met Éireann we put a lot of effort into ensuring the useful information we have is passed on to the public. When warnings are in operations, such as yellow rainfall warnings during recent flood events, we include the risk of river flooding specifically in that. We include it in our general weather forecast information, media engagements and social media. We try to communicate that so the public is aware. We have yet to develop a public system as part of the NFFWS and we envisage-----
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Would that be a text-based system, as in, if people are in the area, they will receive a text?
Dr. Sarah O'Reilly:
It is envisioned there will be two strands. A shorter term strand will build on the existing forecasting capability. We are coming up on two years of operation of the system and we are looking to develop more formalised public communication in conjunction with the other partners in the national flood forecasting and warning service.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Is Dr. O'Reilly responsible for this service?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Exactly, so who is responsible?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Who is driving that?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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That is very vague. Who do we follow up with to make sure this project is progressing? I am not saying Dr. O'Reilly is being vague but that task force is vague.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Is the project on time? Are there timelines? Can Dr. O'Reilly follow up and share the timelines and project milestones with us?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Who will be drafting the texts that go out? Who is going to be responsible for the operational maintenance of the text alert service?
Dr. Sarah O'Reilly:
At the moment we are developing that system in conjunction with our colleagues. We expect it will be locally tailored so there would be a role for the national flood forecasting warning service, a role for the OPW in understanding the local risks and a role for the local authorities.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Who will be the owner?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Who is going to make that decision? Who is going to drive the finalisation of the plan?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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So the Chairman is responsible, is that it?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Just to help me out here, who does the office of emergency planning report to?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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All right.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
It is the same multiparty collaborative partnership which is the NFFWS. Everybody is contributing to the stage 2 plan which will set out all the issues the Deputy is addressing, including timelines, responsibilities, governance structures, the move to the much higher resolution granularity we need to get to and the warnings phase, as the Deputy was talking about. In the very short term it is-----
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Who is making sure that plan gets delivered and that everyone - because we clearly have a number of different parties - is in agreement so disagreement does not delay the progress of this project?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
At the moment the office of emergency planning is providing that leadership in drafting that proposal which will set out those parameters of the next phase. All the different parties are contributing to that planning process at the moment. I stress we have for the last two years been progressing stage 2 and developing the observational infrastructure in preparation for the new modelling phase.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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I thank the witnesses for coming before us. I will start with Met Éireann. Does it guard information that is relevant to the risk of flooding?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I thank the Deputy. First of all, Met Éireann's mission is to protect life and property. That is what we are here for in the context of extreme weather and its impacts. That is our core mission and what we always do. Second, Met Éireann is a very prolific public sector organisation in delivery of open data in a transparent fashion. We are hugely motivated to ensure as much of our data as possible is available, is usable, is accessible and is understood so people can make decisions themselves. That is our core motivation. I think the Deputy's question relates to flood forecasting specifically.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Yes.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
In the completion of stage 1, the focus was on supporting emergency management so they can take this additional hazard information - the hazard being flooding - and combine that with local knowledge, their expertise and any other resources they might have to be able to respond and take their preparation decisions. As such, we focus on that as a matter of priority and that made sense. We packaged that information into a technical service we provide to all local authorities daily and if there is an extreme weather event we go through that particular document blow by blow explaining the catchment forecasts, the various parameters and which counties, for example, might be affected most. That is what we have been doing for the last two years. Since 2005 in Met Éireann - we are still just one party in the whole NFFWS - we have been looking at that information and how we can facilitate additional information being available to the public. We are currently working on that process. We expect to make a proposal to the NFFWS group so we can provide public-relevant and less-technical reference material as best as possible.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Can I take it then that the answer to the question is effectively "No" and that Met Éireann does not guard this information? Guarding information would imply the organisation has it and is choosing not to make it available for some particular reason. I understand from the answer that Met Éireann is working on making more information available, but it is not guarding information as things currently happen.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
No, but we are a scientific and technical organisation and often what we do can seem unclear, so these types of questions need to be addressed regularly. For various sequencing and prioritisation reasons we focused through NFFWS on providing the technical information we provide to the local authorities and we are now moving along that sequence to provide the best information we can to the public. Our priority is to get as much information as possible out to the public.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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I thank Mr. Moran. To return to Deputy Boland's line of questioning, when do we expect to have the first phase of the public alert system in operation?
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Yes.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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But when?
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Okay, so we do not even have a timeline currently. The NFFWS is working on a timeline.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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I will turn to the OPW in a second but it has certainly been reported in the media that a problem here is the lack of a lead agency that has clear responsibilities to drive this public alert system forward. The officials from Met Éireann are saying to us that for the moment stage 2 is under the guidance of a subgroup in the Department of Defence. Will it have the responsibility for pressing the button to activate the alert system? Is that what is envisaged? It is not clear. Has the lack of a clear agency with responsibility been a problem with the delivery of the public alert system?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
Perhaps the OPW officials might want to comment here because they have provided the oversight since the start of this particular project. The leadership has not hindered the technical progress on an operational system. It has progressed in a timely fashion and is delivering all the objectives with savings to the Exchequer so far. What is being worked on at the moment is putting in place the new governance structure to scale up the existing capability to focus on higher resolution capability to be able to reach citizens and neighbourhoods as quickly as possible. There will be a different governance structure and layers of responsibility. Having said that, in the short term of course we are engaging again as part of a partnership with the local authorities, the OPW and the office of emergency management and NDFEM to maximise the flood risk information we can provide today. We are working on that as well. In the short term there will be accrued benefits associated with the continuous development of this particular system. It is important to stress this is not like baking a cake where you put in all the ingredients, shove it in the oven and wait for the cake to be produced. This is a gradual build-up process. This is a scaling-up of capability. That scaling-up process will translate those benefits to the overall risk and flood resilience we need at a local level. We are also in the short term focusing on that co-ordination of agencies to maximise the information we have.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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I want to give the OPW a chance on this. Is the lack of a clear lead agency on the public warning system an issue?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
No, absolutely not. There is a piece about understanding what the trajectory is here and what was planned. As colleagues from Met Éireann have said, a staged approach was agreed with respect to delivery of the national flood forecast and warning service and it does involve a number of agencies. That is just a fact. There was a requirement for input from a range of people. Stage 1, which was to deliver catchment forecasts, has been delivered. As they have outlined, colleagues from Met Éireann are providing a range of projects which feed into that emergency management space, including daily flood guidance statements, high tide advisories, river flood advisories and hydrometric observations. They have put in place an extensive platform which has all this information on it, and which can be accessed by all of those people. As they have mentioned, at this point Met Éireann is looking at the possibility of making some of that information available to the public as a first step.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Could I have some detail on the alert system because I am running out of time?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
Stage 2 is to develop the forecasting methodology to the point where local forecasts can be delivered. In this world, a warning is considered to be specific information about a hazard at a specific location at a specific time. The models have to be able to do that in order for what is called a warning to be issued. That very much sits in the emergency management space. There has to be an end-to-end alignment between forecasting, impact assessment warnings and emergency response and that is effectively the space we are in at the moment. The move across to the Government task force reflects that.
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Is Mr. Mooney therefore saying it makes sense that the Department of Defence fundamentally will be the people who are making the call?
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Are members of the task force happy that it is the lead agency on this?
Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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Does Mr. Mooney think it makes sense for them to be in this position? The OPW is the main agency with responsibility for flooding in general, but given the emergency element here does Mr. Mooney think it makes sense for the task force to take responsibility?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
The issues in stage 2 lend themselves to that. The committee has recently endorsed a range of actions which are designed to develop the emergency management aspect of the national flood forecast and warning chain - that is how I would put it - so it absolutely makes sense.
Regarding the alerting piece which the Deputy referred to, there is probably a conflation of two issues here. The broader alerting system for all emergencies which is being developed does not sit under the remit of the national flood forecast and warning service, but obviously it would have to dovetail with that. Once again, that is the sense of having it in under the Government task force on emergency planning.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I thank all the witnesses for being with us today. I want to stick on this topic if I may. We will start with the underspend. We are looking at only €5.9 million being spent over a four-year period from 2020 to 2024 from an allocation of over €19 million. We questioned the Department on this as well, and the explanation it provided for the underspend in the appropriation account was that it was due to the establishment of a flood forecast and warning service not progressing as quickly as anticipated. When appearing at the Committee of Public Accounts last month, representatives of the Department claimed that the result of these decisions regarding internal resource management was that the work was completed at a lower cost than originally forecast. Today, we are hearing different messages. Mr. Mooney is very strong on the fact that this was always a staged approach, and inevitably I take from this that it was always going to take time. There are conflicting answers and messages, but the key message that the people affected by this are hearing is that it has been over ten years since the Government agreed to the establishment of a national flood forecast and warning service. In that ten years, only one stage of it has been delivered. Meanwhile, regardless of what is happening now and what the trajectory is, we are stuck with an outdated and inaccurate warning system that does not even take ground conditions into account. Millions of euro are not being spent. The money is there and communities are quite literally being ripped apart in severe weather conditions. I propose this as an open question. What do the witnesses say to those communities today? They have an opportunity to address the people on this. I am hearing rumblings about stage 2 moving forward but I am not hearing definitive timelines as to when this will be complete, when it will be delivered, what the metrics are to monitor the progression of it, what the monitoring is on the completion of it, and overall concrete timelines. I am not hearing any hope for the people in Enniscorthy. I am not hearing hope for people who have repeatedly been affected in the same areas because of the lack of the completion of this project. I will pose that question first of all to both witnesses.
Mr. Robert Mooney:
I will take it first. Obviously, the focus of this is to provide a service to the citizens of the State in the communities that are affected. That is very much to the front of everybody's mind in this. The initial timeline for delivering stage 1 was five years, but it ran over to seven years. That is a fact. Why did it take longer than it should have? Firstly, it is to do with the nature of the specialism. Standing up a new service in the State with specialist people took longer than anticipated because it took time to get those people in the market. A considerable amount of time was spent trialling different hydrological models and the technical system for running flood forecasting, which had to be done in order to ensure that the State got the best possible model. I would disagree, as I am sure colleagues from Met Éireann would, with the Deputy's comment about an outdated model. The HYPE model, which was chosen, is a world standard model. The Delft-FEWS integrator, which was chosen as well, is well renowned worldwide. A lot of careful due diligence was performed. During that period, we also had the Covid pandemic which did indeed delay some things but - hats off to everybody involved - it had a minimal impact. It did impact on things like the infrastructure which was being developed in Met Éireann. As we know, all infrastructure development was affected by Covid. It did impact on some of the training which was being provided. However, I assure the Deputy that the group is very conscious of the importance of this project for communities that are impacted by flooding. This is very much at the forefront of everyone's mind.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that but I am still not hearing a target date for completion. Are we looking another three, five or ten years? What is the target and how will it be monitored for delivery?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
At the outset of the project, it was understood that establishing a flood forecast and warning service was simply going to take time. That is what the international experience has been. It takes time to stand up something like this from scratch in the State. As I have said, some timelines took longer than anticipated. We are now into the stage 2 piece. As colleagues from Met Éireann have outlined, a lot of work is ongoing on stage 2 in terms of developing the necessary data sets and data inputs required for the service.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Surely Mr. Mooney has some idea of how long it will take.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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From the beginning-----
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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So we are effectively looking at another five to ten years.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Do the representatives of Met Éireann have any further comments on that?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I thank the Deputy for her question. I think she is getting to the core of an issue. I will address the underspend part of the question and then I will talk about the other issues in relation to modelling if that is okay. As I said when the question was asked earlier, we need to understand there are two different strands, or two different pathways for funding. First, there was the funding of the stage 1 development, which was the establishment of this flood forecasting centre. That had been going on for years and the costs associated with it involved savings for the Exchequer. With the flood forecasting centre, all the objectives and additional objectives were delivered in a timely fashion. However, they were not delivered within the five-year timeframe. That was an ambitious timeframe, which is fair enough, because ambition is needed on projects like this. The timeframe was contingent on the impacts of Covid, as Mr. Mooney mentioned, and the impacts this would have had on fit-out costs for works associated with the project and also some training activities.
So, the flood forecasting centre was delivered - all objectives were delivered and more, with savings - in a timely fashion.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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How will that impact on the overall cost of the completed project? Will there be savings or does Met Éireann expect to see cost overruns in the second stage?
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Is the plan not in place?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
Of course, we are not representing the full NFFWS, but what is happening is that we have completed stage 1 and we have established the flood forecasting centre. It has been operating since January 2024. In the meantime, we have been developing the infrastructural and observational capabilities to allow us to move to a higher resolution modelling set-up to be able to achieve our end goal of localised flood warnings. Apologies, what was the Deputy’s question?
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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How will that underspend impact on the overall cost of the completed project? Does Met Éireann see savings on the overall cost initially outlaid or, because of the time taken – and there is now another conflict in the Middle East and other dynamics going on globally – is it expected that not only will the project go over time, without a definitive timeline for the people affected, but we are also facing cost overruns on the project, despite the savings in stage 1?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
The stage 1 savings to the Exchequer were due to efficiencies where we deployed internal resources in Met Éireann to keep the project going so we could deliver it in a timely fashion, which is what we have done. The Deputy’s question is whether it will have knock-on consequences for the overall budgetary profile of the project. I will hand over to Ms Prendergast, who might help clarify that.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I am just trying to get to the root of how long it will take for this project to be completed. We potentially have another five to ten years. What are the forecast costs? Have they changed from ten years ago, when the project was started? Where are they at now? What does Met Éireann see the potential completion figure running in at?
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Come in under cost, yes.
Ms Josephine Prendergast:
Yes, we were able to make savings. Again, this is a phased project. It takes place over a number of years but the Estimates are done on an annual basis. In years when the allocation is not fully utilised, it is surrendered back to the Department, where it can be utilised for other capital projects but most likely deferred into the following year. It will not result in an increase in cost because where we are not spending the funds, they get deferred into the following year. Estimates for stage 2 are under development at the moment in conjunction with the overall plan. We have funding within Met Éireann and the Department of housing available to us so we can draw down and commence immediately to ensure there is no lag or delay. In the instance where there is a delay or the plan is not in place, the allocation gets surrendered back and deferred into the following year. We do not expect any underspend because of the way the annual Estimates system allows us to do that.
Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Is Met Éireann projecting any overspends considering the length of the delay of the timeline?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Chair and the witnesses. I want to acknowledge there is a huge amount of trust in Met Éireann. It is important that the public continues to have trust in Met Éireann. Many institutions in this State that have lost a lot of trust and I think that is important. Nevertheless, Met Éireann is before the public accounts committee and we are here to ask questions.
I did not understand Mr. Moran’s phraseology. He said the flood forecasting centre had been delivered and that all objectives had been delivered in a timely fashion but that they had not been delivered in the five years. What does he mean by that? What was the exact period in which it was delivered?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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What was the total time? It was supposed to be five years. How long was it?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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So, Met Éireann was delayed by two years.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
Yes. Apologies for the confusion, but I was trying to convey that the delivery of that five-year plan was affected by, influenced by and impacted by the disruption due to Covid-19 on the fit-out activities we were engaging in – that the OPW was engaging in – in our forecasting offices and it also impacted other aspects associated with procurement, the training of staff-----
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Okay. Did I understand Ms Prendergast correctly there? Was she saying any underspend that took place in stage 1 would effectively be carried over to meet any potential overspend that might befall the project as Met Éireann carried through the Estimates process it is undertaking with stage 2 right now?
Ms Josephine Prendergast:
Yes. Even though it is a multi-annual project, the Estimates process is done on an annual basis in the Department. If we have an underspend in our Estimates, we return it to the Department and it is either utilised for other capital projects within the Department or surrended and deferred into the following year. For example, in 2024, when we knew there was going to be a delay and we would not fully expend the money we had requested in the Estimates process, we surrendered it back to the Department-----
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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And then the money will come back.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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If there is an overspend, Met Éireann will use the underspend to fund the overspend.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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When Mr. Mooney says that internationally a period of 15 to 20 years is not unusual to stand up a flood-warning system and that another five to ten years is what we are talking about, is this the project we are talking about here?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Could the development of technology such as AI impact on the timeline he is speaking of?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Rightly or wrongly, there was a brief narrative – it is the first time I can recall it happening – that somehow the failure of Met Éireann to share information via the OPW with the public contributed to or exacerbated the conditions of people’s flooding. What was Mr. Moran’s feeling when he heard that narrative emerge?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Was Mr. Moran surprised by that narrative emerging? Did it come as a surprise to him? Was it just someone wrongly informed putting it out there into the public domain and it getting discussed? Was he surprised that this narrative emerged in the media and public discourse?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Yes. Was Mr. Moran surprised that somehow, even if it was for a brief period, Met Éireann came into the headlights over potentially a failure to share information or not enough information with the public, or that persons or outside entities were somehow trying to attribute some degree of blame to how Met Éireann shares information? Did that kind of narrative come as a surprise to Mr. Moran?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
As I mentioned to another Deputy earlier, we have to understand that the primary purpose, motivation and mission of Met Éireann is in serving the Irish public is to protect life and property through its warnings and information, employing the very best available scientific knowledge, expertise, research and resources. That is one aspect of how we approach our services to the public. We are a public-facing organisation. The second aspect-----
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Was Mr. Moran annoyed? Was he angry when Met Éireann was coming under the spotlight to the extent it was for that brief period? Did it frustrate Mr. Moran and colleagues in Met Éireann?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Is there any truth, even a grain of truth, to the notion that somehow interagency wrangling is to blame for there not being enough information out among the public or that it has some relevance to how Ireland as a country is responding to and dealing with floods when they happen?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Does Met Éireann organisationally have a good relationship with the OPW, for example?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Would Mr. Mooney share that view? Is the idea of there being inter-wrangling just a made-up narrative? Does the chairman want to comment on that?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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It is not a narrative I support. I am just saying there was a narrative that emerged. I am sure Mr. Conlon recalls it.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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It was in the media. It was not my narrative. It was a narrative put out there by various people and it was discussed.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Does Mr. Moran have anything to say to that?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
It has been a very constructive relationship. We have progressed stage 1 very successfully, timely, on budget while achieving all the objectives. As I mentioned earlier, there might have been some confusion around the availability of technical information that we provide to local authorities. What we have been doing, and what we prioritised at the start of the implementation of stage 1 in January 2024 when we went operational, was to target flood guidance information and a flood advisory information in a technical document that packages emergency managers and engineers to allow them to augment and complement their own situational awareness and combine it with local knowledge and institutional knowledge. That was our priority at the start of implementing the flood forecasting centre. As I was saying earlier, last year we started looking at how we can package that information to facilitate allowing the public to access this information. To be clear, it is still just flood forecasts at a catchment level and advisories.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Moran. How long does it take from start to finish on major flood relief projects at the moment? The Draghi report, for example, said when it comes to wind projects Ireland was the slowest. We took seven to nine years from beginning to end. What does it look like at the moment in terms of flood relief projects?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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From beginning to end it is taking 11 years.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I am familiar with it having formerly been a local councillor Has there been improvement on the timescale over the past decade or has it got longer?
Mr. Brian Brogan:
I refer to schemes that are at the planning or construction stage or detailed design at this point. It takes roughly six years to design a scheme and get it into planning. The schemes at planning stage today would hit that average on a scheme-by-scheme basis. Schemes at the construction stage, from when they are incepted to when they are going to be completed will hit, on average, the 11 year average and likewise those at detailed design. I cannot say that all schemes hit 11 years, which is why that is an average, and there are complexities, ground conditions and other issues that can cause variations in particular schemes. However, on average it is 11 years.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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What can we do to increase the pace of delivery? There is the critical infrastructure Bill that is coming through the Dáil, for example. Has the OPW requested that flood relief projects would form part of those projects that could be exempted?
Mr. John Conlon:
That is something we are discussing with our colleagues in the Department of public expenditure. We are already benefiting from quicker planning decisions. In the past six to eight months we have gotten three or four schemes through An Coimisiún Pleanála within a six-month period. Previously, that was taking a lot longer. We have already seen some benefits of An Coimisiún Pleanála being better resourced and coming through with decisions on a quicker basis.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Are some local authorities better than others? The witness may be blunt.
Mr. John Conlon:
Some are bigger and have far more schemes that others. Some are finding it very challenging because of the sheer scale of works they are dealing with. To address the other point on speeding up delivery, we are also working with the Department of public expenditure to try to find ways of doing design work in parallel rather than sequentially to the planning process so we can speed up that process as well. That also has the capacity to shorten that average period.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I will finish on this. Central government is putting an awful lot of pressure on local authorities to deliver on their housing targets. They are hauling them in to various Cabinet committees to make good on that. Should we have a much more centrally led governance mechanism on the delivery of flood projects? There are some local authorities - maybe it is because they are not sufficiently resourced - where we learn years later when the flood happens as to what caused this or that delay. We must move beyond that now. Would witnesses agree? How do we improve the governance systems around that to ensure we have every local authority operating to its absolute best capacity when it comes to delivering these projects?
Mr. John Conlon:
I will give the Deputy an example of that. Following the Storm Chandra scenario, we brought in, I think, seven local authorities to discuss how we can improve the delivery schemes in those areas. We asked them to come forward with proposals quickly. They are doing that so we can put some interim measures in place to deal with some of those areas quickly and to also consider what advanced measures we can put in place in the overall budget that can be done within planning regulations. We are working closely and harder with local authorities to try to advance measures, both interim and advanced, more quickly. That is along with the parallel consenting and the parallel design and planning processes as well. We are resourcing that.
Before Deputy Geoghegan came in to the meeting I did say we are also resourcing about 50 engineers in the local authority sector. That is something we consider augmenting to get more output from as well. As I also said earlier, we are also looking at our contracting base to see if we can widen that to get more contractors interested in doing our work.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I thank everybody for being here this morning. I thank both organisations for their continued and very important work.
I am going to pick up on the points with regards to the flood risk forecasting and warning service. Mr. Mooney stated to Deputy Byrne earlier that maybe it is reasonable to expect it will take another five-to-ten years. To be categorically clear, does that mean people should not expect to get warnings about flooding for the next ten years?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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We have no reason to believe it will not take that long.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What is preventing us from doing that now?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
We are doing it. We are moving towards it. As we have outlined, the work ongoing at the moment is about putting in the infrastructure that is necessary in order to underpin those models as we move on. There is scope to quickly move into developing models in other areas as well. That is being worked through at the moment. Key issues will be which areas will be tackled first. There are some technical issues around that in terms of what data is available at the moment and which lends itself better. There is work to be done around looking at what particular models might be suitable as well, which is within the Met Éireann space that it has to do. It is not unlike stage 1 where one must determine which models deliver the best results for the communities in question. There is work to be done on that as well.
I should also say regarding the stage 2 piece of work, there is a piece that has been endorsed by the Cabinet committee on climate action, environment and energy around that emergency management space. That is the end-to-end piece I was talking about in terms of forecasting, the impact assessment, the warning and the local response. Work is commencing on that end of the chain, which will meet with the local forecast when they come on stream to accelerate the ability so we will have an end-to-end system whereby local forecasts are integrated with the emergency management system. That has been endorsed and there is a memo going to the Government on that shortly.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I have stayed for the whole duration of the meeting to try to learn as much as I can from the contributions, and so far I have found it really helpful, but I cannot get away from the idea that there are too many chiefs with regard to this. I think that has led to something going catastrophically wrong with this project, notwithstanding that it takes time.
Was there no flood forecasting prior to 2016 in Ireland?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Any flood forecasting.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Mr. Mooney said he is standing up a brand new-----
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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That was not utilised as part of the establishment of the-----
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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When did stage 1 formally finish?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Am I interpreting from the contributions this morning that we are still in planning stage for stage 2?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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It is three years late.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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We are into the third year. Is that fair?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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We are ten years into a project. It is at stage 2. We do not even know what the ultimate ambitions and performance indicators will be for that never mind when it will finish and how much it will cost.
Mr. Robert Mooney:
We do know where we want to get to, which is that we want to have local forecasts and we want to have the ability to issue local warnings so that communities can take appropriate action as well as a emergency response being rolled out. That is preparative measures from the emergency services and otherwise deploying preventative AquaDams and the like in order to head off the worst effects of flooding.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I am conscious that the witnesses do not comprise the full membership of the task force. On the flood forecasting and warning service, how many people are working on this project full-time? From the OPW perspective, how many people are working on it full-time and it is their sole responsibility?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I thank Mr. Mooney. What about Met Éireann?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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They are working in the forecasting centre-----
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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-----on the overall project setting strategic goals in leadership and management. How many people are working on it full-time to Mr. Moran's knowledge?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Yes.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Yes, its work on this.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I can give the Deputy the numbers from Met Éireann. We have 14 staff in the flood forecasting centre and, of course, senior management then contribute to the overall strategic guidance and scientific governance associated with developing a flood forecasting centre. Our scientific culture is to ensure that we deliver everything in line with best international practise to ensure that all of what we do is rigorously benchmarked against the latest available peer-reviewed standards and best approaches from institutional science in Europe. This is the approach that we took in stage 1.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I accept that. Those 14 people are experts in their field in terms of working within the forecasting centre. That is their role and their purpose. They are not concerned with phase 2, essentially. Am I right? They are working as part of the output of phase 1. They do not have any insight or they are not responsible for the implementation of the targets or anything to do with phase 2. Mr. Moran is saying that is the leadership team within Met Éireann. The sense I am getting, however, is that there is nobody working full-time on this project.
The picture I am trying to paint is that there is potential here. I have sat on many task forces - we all have - where we go to a meeting every couple of months and give our little bit of organisational input but there is no real meaningful commitment to it.
Mr. Robert Mooney:
I will come in on that. Absolutely, the staff in the flood forecasting centre will be and are working on stage 2. I mentioned the work on developing the local forecasting models. All that work sits within the staff of the flood forecasting centre. Then, we have other work associated with it, as I mentioned, the actions endorsed across the emergency planning and emergency management space. There will be staff in the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management who will be reviewing the emergency protocols that are in place at the moment, which the local authorities and principal response agencies work with in response to flood events to update those to have regard to the local forecasts, which will be coming on stream.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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It is a continuum, essentially.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I can see that.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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No, I know that.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Who requests the budget line for 2026? Who decides this is what we need to implement our ambition for 2026?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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This relates to a parliamentary response that I got. Again, at random, I got a parliamentary response from the Department of housing but we are saying the Department of Defence is leading this project.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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It said there is a budget allocated of €7 million for 2026. Is that requested or is that just given? That is requested, surely.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Does Mr. Mooney see what I mean, though? We are all kind of saying this is somebody else's responsibility. I cannot wrap my head around the hierarchy of it.
Mr. Seamus McCarthy:
I might point out that there is a difference between a project budget, which is the total amount we expect to spend to deliver a project, and the funding that is required each year. It would be really important to maybe clarify that. What is the budget for the project as opposed to what is the amount that is provided in the next calendar year for spending?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I am specifically talking about the €7 million allocated for this year.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I can address that before I hand over to Ms Prendergast to address the allocation for 2026. It is important to remember that stage 1 was led by the OPW. We completed a stage 1 report setting out all of what was achieved and setting out recommendations in relation to the next steps. We have been carrying those out under the National Flood Forecasting and Warning Service, NFFWS, steering group and subgroup for the past two years, progressing the development of the overall project. The momentum has been maintained. There is an overall strategic oversight. There are clear proposals being put together at this point. There is a coherent approach being taken from a planning and governance point of view.
If the Deputy does not mind, I will hand over to Ms Prendergast to address the allocation for 2026.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Even just a breakdown percentage of how much of that €7 million is for the flood forecasting centre specifically and then anything outside of that.
Ms Fiona Prendergast:
As my colleague, Mr. Mooney, said, each Department or each partner within the National Flood Forecasting and Warning Service gets its own budget for its component through its Vote. For Met Éireann, it is entirely in relation to the development of a flood forecasting centre and then our elements of stage 2 and whatever tasks and projects are assigned to us, like I mentioned earlier, the coastal and flood modelling projects and so on. The €7 million the Deputy referred to for 2026 is entirely for the flood forecasting centre. About €1.6 million of it is for the ongoing works in relation to the existing operational flood forecasting centre, enhancements and resilience for the operational services and so on. Then, the remainder is in relation to tasks associated with stage 2 and further development. That will be the commencement of the development of flood and coastal forecasting models and so on once the plan we have been talking about throughout the session is in place. That is purely related to flood forecasting and not the other elements of the National Flood Forecasting and Warning Service, if that makes sense.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I thank the witnesses.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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We will take a short break. The meeting is now suspended for ten to 15 minutes.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Over the past few years the OPW has been one of the bodies that has been diligent in publishing their purchase order data online. There is a bank of information from quarter 1 of 2015 right up to quarter 4 of 2025. I welcome that the OPW has already published its quarter 4 data for 2025, which was published in January 2026. Across that timeline we have visibility of purchase orders or payments to the tune of €2.7 billion. I have two questions for the witnesses. Would the OPW consider publishing these data in a machine readable format? Has the OPW received a letter from the Minister for public expenditure, Deputy Jack Chambers, reminding the organisation of its obligation to publish in a machine readable format?
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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That is okay.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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It was in response to a parliamentary question that I had tabled to the Minister for public expenditure asking whether he could remind bodies of their obligation and he confirmed that he would send a letter. I wanted to check if that had been done at this point .
My second point relates to an issue I am trying to work on. When the OPW publishes purchase orders, it is very hard to decipher what they were for, what that money was spent on, what was achieved or what was the outcome. There is no link between the payment that I can see on the back end and the tender contract that was awarded in the first place. The OPW might have some contractor that it works with and it might do multiple projects with them but I cannot tell which payment was for which project. There is one thing the OPW does that is really interesting, which is to have a transaction number on every payment. Will the OPW link that back to contract award notices and the tenders? Essentially, when the OPW publishes its purchase orders quarterly, could it put in an extra column that links it back to which contract it relates to? That is the missing link across our entire State as to where contracts are awarded and ultimately where money gets spent. Deputy Farrelly was here and he referenced the €7 million budget. If the Deputy could see how much was spent against a certain contract he would know exactly today, as of quarter 4 of 2025, how much was spent on that project and whether it was on, under or over budget . That is where we have to get to. Will the OPW consider linking those so that I can see it from contract being awarded to purchase orders being raised and ultimately payments being made?
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Yes. This is really important for the likes of me as a Deputy and also for the wider public who have an interest in good public governance. They cannot tell what the money was spent on. Looking at 2025 I can see 2,353 records, €353 million worth of spend, with 495 of those records labelled as "construction contract".
That totalled €230 million approximately. For anyone in the wider public who is not looking at the accounts but just wants to see the detail, you can see how that would be frustrating. How can I evaluate value for money or performance if I do not know on what it was spent and how much? I see €200 million going out on construction contracts but I need to know which contract that was against and then it is much easier to measure performance. It allows me to ask better questions, ultimately.
Mr. John Conlon:
I will talk to our financial controller about this because there could be a number of issues. There could be a contract for something in Galway, for example, but there might be three or four purchase orders for various types of works within it. I will take it away and we can revert directly to the Deputy.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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The same contractors could be doing multiple projects across the country and it is hard for me to tell how much was spent on the Galway project as opposed to some project elsewhere. I wanted to make those points. It is important because we are going to get to a place where we can have better oversight and transparency and it will ultimately allow us as members of the committee to ask better questions as well. I do not want to get too parochial, but I raised this when the OPW was last before us in the context of the Turoe Stone in Bullaun being returned to its home. Is there any update on progress in that regard?
Mr. John Conlon:
I spoke to officials late last night. I knew the Deputy had submitted a parliamentary question about this. I await a further update and will revert to the Deputy in the next day or two. Things are progressing in terms of getting that project to the stage where we can put the stone back where it was and construct it within a certain type of building.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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It was 2023 when a funding announcement was made. Planning permission is secured on that site. We do not want planning permission run out.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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That cannot happen. It is vital that the project progresses before the planning permission runs out in order that people be allowed to see the stone and enjoy the experience.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I would appreciate that. It was stated in the Dáil that the south Galway flood relief scheme will go to planning in quarter 4 of this year. What is the latest update on that scheme?
Mr. Brian Brogan:
The south Galway flood relief scheme - with a number of caveats - is on schedule or programme to go for planning consent in quarter 4. It is a €20 million project to protect 115 properties. We realise the impact of flooding on those properties over vast areas and the impact on people and the community. It is very complex. The combination of river water, groundwater, swallow holes and turloughs in the karst lowlands in the Gort area makes this a very unique international area. We are working hard. Not only have we employed engineering and environmental consultants as we would for any scheme, we have employed specialists from Trinity College and Geological Survey Ireland to contribute to the development of the scheme design which we now have. We are working with the National Parks and Wildlife Service to navigate the environmental sensitives in order to inform planning constraints that may arise. We are talking through those and we hope, subject to those results and survey results, to issue planning later this year.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Am I right in saying the scheme is fully designed at this point?
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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It is now March. Why will we have to wait until quarter 4 of this year to submit planning?
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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People can understand the frustration about those 115 properties for those who live in south Galway around the Gort area who know the impact flooding has had historically. We saw it in the east of the country this year primarily, but it was not that long ago that it was happening in the west. It is important that the scheme is progressed. I accept that planning is another hurdle. Once we get planning, however, all going well and assuming the homework is done - which I have no doubt it is because a lot of work has gone into it - there is another stage when it comes to actually delivering the scheme. Is there a timeline delivery, assuming that planning comes through?
Mr. Brian Brogan:
I do not know the timing of that particular scheme but if it goes in at the end of the year and we get planning consent mid next year, I would be hopeful construction would start on average about seven to nine months post planning. As the chairman stated a few times, once we get the planning, one measure we are bringing forward more now is to start work on the detailed design. When we get planning, we then have to go into detailed design and get a contractor. We start that the day we go into planning; we do not wait for planning to come.
Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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That would be very important. People are long enough waiting. I know the work will be done correctly on the planning permission. It is about getting it done in order that people in south Galway can get on with their lives and know that they have greater security. I have run out of time, but I might come back in with a question for Met Éireann later.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I thank everyone for coming in. I know it seems slightly reactionary in the context of the issues we are talking about, but, at the same time, that is why we are here. We are here to ask these questions, particularly when the matter in question has been so topical for the past couple of months. While it might seem topical, we are here as a result of possible questions that may have arisen in the past. I am not saying that action in respect of those would necessarily have prevented anything happening, but at least certain systems and barriers would have been put in place to deal with some of the worst issues. These, perhaps, would have removed the element of surprise relating to certain aspects of the recent flooding.
I am no expert in the field, and I will not pretend to be. However, I might ask some high-level questions. My first question is for Met Éireann. I live in north Kildare, an area that has probably had less flooding than other areas. I was in touch with one of my colleagues in Enniscorthy Senator Cathal Byrne. He asked when will we have localised systems? What are the barriers to having such systems in place in order that people in areas like Enniscorthy will know what is happening ahead of time?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
Met Éireann represents just one constituent piece of a multi-party, end-to-end national flood forecasting and warning service. We focus on the forecasting dimension of that task. It commenced in 2016. It is a staged, phased process because we are building capacity from scratch for the State. We implemented an operational flood forecasting centre successfully in January 2024. For the past two years or more, we have been providing a full seven-day, year-round flood forecasting service. We provide catchment-based forecasts which provide guidance on the potential for flooding within catchments. We also provide advisories. We are at a catchment-scale forecasting capability at this point. With our colleagues and the other partners, we are-----
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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How big is a catchment area?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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It is a county or half a county?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
For that type of thing, it is landscape scale. For the past two years, Met Éireann has focused on developing observational capacity to ensure we have wave observations, to improve availability of wave observation with our colleagues in the Commissioners of Irish Lights. We have also been trying to improve our understanding of and build up the monitoring capability around our coasts through pilots studies - a pilot study in Galway was quite successful. It is now moving to a feasibility stage. We have also been working with local authorities in Wicklow, Wexford, Cork and Limerick to look at the hydrometric infrastructure they have. This is the river gauge infrastructure. They might have installed them for other purposes such as engineering.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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If that is the cast, then Met Éireann seems to have a lot of work done. What is the barrier to it being localised? Is it not possible from a systems point of view or can Met Éireann not get to that level of granularity?
The question I was trying to focus on was the local element of it. There is a river in Enniscorthy that is not too far from the sea currents, but whatever impacts that might have might drive flooding. It is not as simple as saying it is going to rain; there are other factors at play. I live in Leixlip where there is a river and a canal. In the past, the River Rye flooded but thankfully a lot of works have been done.
When does the Met Éireann foresee us getting to that level?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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How long will that take?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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We are not getting to the point. When does Mr. Moran think we will be able to get somewhere localised? Is that possible?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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What is the timeline?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Is there a gap involving someone else? Is somebody else not helping Met Éireann?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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That is fine.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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This is going to be my last question on this topic. There is a plan and the witnesses are working together, but there is no timeframe in place. Is that correct? Is that what Mr. Moran is saying?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
Exactly, and I will explain that now.
Last year, the OEP, which is under the Department of Defence, was given the responsibility to chair a subgroup of the Government task force on emergency planning. It has been tasked to progress the development of stage 2 of the NFFWS, which is moving exactly to the level of localised flooding the Deputy is talking about, which is essential.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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But we do not have a timeframe.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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It is developing a plan.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Moran for that.
Going back to Enniscorthy, how much has been ring-fenced for works,? Is that the responsibility of the OPW?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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It is €51 million. Is that ring-fenced and all there?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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The OPW has everything it needs. Is the funding in place?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Going back to something Mr. Conlon said at a previous meeting, we discussed the science. He was saying was afraid that if money did have to come out of a pocket, that it would have come out of something like flood relief, and that was topical at the time.
Is Mr. Conlon happy the OPW has the funding in place to do all the flood relief needed this year or for even the term of this Government, in the next four years?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Does the OPW have the money it needs?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Conlon is happy enough with what the OPW has until 2030. We have the money and we are getting a time plan.
With the Department of housing, was there a question over the information that was given by Met Éireann and the timeline? Was it on the radio that somebody said the information was not given in time, or was that corrected by the Department? Did somebody say that? Was it the Minister, Deputy Browne, on the radio who said there was a question over the information given from Met Éireann at the time of the floods in Enniscorthy?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Was advance warning given in time by Met Éireann or was the information held onto? Was it distributed correctly?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Yes.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I get that, but was it distributed in a timely manner?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Moran is saying "Yes". How quickly did Met Éireann know beforehand? How quickly would it be able to identify where there could be issues ahead of time?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Flooding and flood risk. We are talking about a very specific issue in Enniscorthy, where there was flooding.
Could the Department tell it was coming hours before or did it just see it in real time like the businesses?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I have no problem with that. If the witnesses only find out in real time, that is fine too.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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And the information was issued out.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Once Met Éireann had that information, was it issued out on a timely basis? There was no delay.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Yes, we are having the same conversation.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I always find it is best to use an individual example to prove the wider point.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
That is very good; that is absolutely excellent.
We communicated the risk of flooding to all the affected areas in a targeted fashion. We did so across all platforms available to us. We included the saturated nature of soils, the potential for heavy and prolonged rainfall on those saturated soils and the potential for that interaction between heavy rainfall and the antecedent conditions to result in localised flood forecasting.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Who is speaking here on behalf of the Department?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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No, I know Mr. Moran is speaking here. Is there anyone from the Department to answer the question relating to Met Éireann? Was the Department happy that it got the information on time from Met Éireann, to cut to the nub of it?
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Was that stated publicly at the time?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
We provided the forecasts and an initial warning at 8.30 p.m. on Sunday 25 January that there was a risk of river flooding in the affected areas through our weather warnings. On Monday morning, we issued detailed flood forecast right across the catchment areas to all local authorities and to the public that there was a risk of river flooding and, not only that, the heavy rain that was to fall on the saturated soils was going to exacerbate raised level of rivers, which were already approaching bank-full and were approaching a point at which overtopping was to occur.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Why did the Minister say-----
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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The Deputy might finish up on this.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I am trying to get to a point and I cannot seem to get an answer. This is bananas.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I know but we are two and a half minutes over the Deputy's time.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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The Minister said that Met Éireann needs to improve its communications, and he suggested the forecaster withheld information. I am just asking what the view on that is. It is a simple question. I do not know why it has taken us this long for me to spell it out. Maybe it is something about my communication, but I keep asking the same question and we keep going around in circles.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Moran keeps saying, "thank you very much for the question", but at the same time, I am trying to get a response. Was there an issue with it? If there was no issue, then there was no issue but if there was an issue, there was. Can we clarify if the Minister was correct in saying that or not? That is what we are trying to get at. Then, we will know if there is communication. If there were no communication difficulties or the Minister was wrong, then that is fine too. Let us say that.
Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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He said there was a problem with communication. Was there or was there not a problem with communication?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in today. I will just follow on from Deputy Neville's question on what the Minister said at the time. The Minister said, "I'm really frustrated that some State agencies seem to think it's their duty to somehow withhold information". Met Éireann has the opportunity to defend itself here. Do the witnesses believe that Met Éireann did have the data and produce the information in time? I would like a simple "Yes" or "No". Did Met Éireann produce the data in time for the Minister? The Minister is saying that Met Éireann withheld the information. I just want to know if the witnesses believe that it did produce the information.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Moran. The Minister was very frustrated and subsequently said that he would be calling for a meeting with Met Éireann. Did that meeting in relation to the information he thought was being withheld ever happen?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I think it is a relevant question.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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How have things improved now?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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In relation to providing information. The Minister thinks Met Éireann did not provide the information in a timely manner but Mr. Moran thinks it did. What was the conclusion to that meeting?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister was wrong in coming with that scathing remark. He was wrong to say that.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Is there a joined-up approach? I am not seeing a joined-up approach here today. I have been sitting here probably from 10.30 a.m or 11 a.m since the witnesses came into this hearing and we have not got any straight answers. I want to know what the new approach is.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Where does that go to? Is it to local authorities?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
That information goes to local authorities. It is a detailed briefing that outlines all the contents of the technical documents that we provide to emergency managers, who support emergency management response across local authorities. That does not just address flood risk. It addresses all types of emergency management hazard. We provide a public version of all of that technical information through our weather forecasts or the news-----
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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What time does that generally go up? How long before an event would that go up? The witness said 8 p.m. the evening before it happened the last time.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Going forward, what time is it going to go up?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Met Éireann has spent five years making sure that it will be able to give a determination. Is Met Éireann able to give that determination earlier? For the past five years, it has been working on the flood forecasting and warning service. Has that improved in the five years that Met Éireann has been working on it?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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It did not give out any information at that stage.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
The country did not have a coherent catchment or flood forecasting modelling system in 2016. There were localised systems, as my colleague from the OPW mentioned. Since then, we have successfully put in place for the very first time a state-of-the-art catchment flood forecasting modelling system-----
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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How much did that cost?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, that is great. In five years, how much has it cost?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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During the statements today, a stage 2 was mentioned. Has it been started and how much will it cost?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Why would Met Éireann not develop plans before going to stage 2? Would it not have a plan in place?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Somebody mentioned that it was going to take 20 years for stage 2 to be developed. Was that Mr. Mooney?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Have we no plan for the 15 to 20 years?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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How can a plan be implemented if there is no plan?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Mooney just said to me that the OPW was implementing stage 2-----
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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But Mr. Mooney said that the OPW did not have a plan. I do not know.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I think everybody is confused. I do not know if they are all working together here or what is going on. Is there a lead partner in the flood forecasting and warning service to drive it?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
If I could answer the question with regard to the plan first. As colleagues have outlined, there is work ongoing in implementing requirements for phase 2 at the moment, that is, for stage 2. That is in the context of hydrometrics and wave buoy data. All of that data is required. There is also a piece agreed, as endorsed by the Cabinet subcommittee, with regard to actions around the emergency management piece. That is all part of stage 2 and what is required. There is a requirement for further work to be done and a plan, which Met Éireann is referring to, with regard to further development of the forecasting element. That work is ongoing at the moment.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I want to move on.
The allocation to Met Éireann increased substantially over the past decade. It was €17 million in 2014 and is now €58 million. Will the witnesses give me a reason for that? Pay has increased from €13 million to €19 million. The non-administration staff figure has increased from €2.7 million to €23 million. Maybe the witnesses can give me an explanation as to why there has been such an increase.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Yes.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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What has Met Éireann done if its budget has increased from €17 million to €58 million? What has it done?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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To today.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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That is okay. It is all very technical but all I want to know is what it has done. Are the people in local areas getting a better service for this additional money that has been spent?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Local flood areas.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Okay.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Yes. What service have people been provided with for that funding increase from €17 million to €58 million? What is the additional service?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
The forecast accuracy and the forecast performance over the last number of years have increased dramatically. We now have a much higher resolution numerical weather prediction model with the Ensemble system. We have developed climate services that support the national adaptation framework. We have conducted extensive research in the area of climate projections to allow us to plan strategically on the approaches we are going to take in relation to our responses to climate-----
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Regarding all the additional services, I will just revert to Enniscorthy. There was no timely notification there, according to the Minister. Having spent €58 million, Met Éireann still could not provide that. Despite the additional amount of money that it had received in that period, taking it from €17 million to €58 million, Met Éireann could not notify local areas when they were at risk of flooding.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I am talking about the additionality. Met Éireann received an increase in its budget but it still cannot notify local areas of when they are going to be flooded.
Mr. Eoin Moran:
The additionality we have put in place and the capability we have developed as part of our flood forecasting centre is for this country to now have a catchment-level forecasting capability that we did not have until now. That is what has been delivered. These were the objectives of the stage 1 project and we have delivered those objectives successfully in a timely fashion.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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How much did stage 1 cost again? Was it €6 million?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. I thank the witnesses for answering my questions.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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This question is for the OPW. Flooding has happened in Monaghan town for a long period of time. I asked the OPW about it at the last meeting and the OPW said it was in tranche 2. Has there been any review of that and has Monaghan town moved up the list? It is still flooding and it will continue to flood until something is done about it.
Mr. Brian Brogan:
I thank the Deputy. The national programme continues to have two tranches. We are piloting the delivery model through tranche 1 at the moment. That is probably what the Deputy referred to earlier. The results of that are due in the summer and will inform the prioritisation of planning for tranche 2, of which Monaghan is one of those schemes.
I understand that Monaghan County Council has undertaken a flood catchment study for Monaghan town to include the town's drainage network and contributing catchments, including the Shambles and Blackwater rivers. That may feed into the flood relief scheme.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Brogan mentioned seven local authorities he had been in contact with. Was Monaghan one of those county councils?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I have one more question.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Can the Deputy be brief, please.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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The town has continued to flood and it is horrendous. It is in the centre of the town and people cannot drive through the centre of the town. I ask Mr. Brogan to review that and look at it again. It obviously has not been reviewed in its full context because it is desperate for people in County Monaghan.
I have an additional question to Mr. Conlon. In relation to the OPW, I brought up with it before this question about buildings. I know Mr. Conlon probably does not have it on him today, but at some stage could he provide me with an update on all the buildings under the responsibility of the OPW? I have here that there is very low occupancy within those buildings that have heat, electricity and everything, and the running costs are still going up in those buildings but I have been told there is no actual staff in many of them. Will Mr. Conlon make a statement on that or what is his feeling on that? Are many OPW buildings lying empty? At the previous meeting, we had asked Mr. Conlon about the Phoenix Park and the 11 ghost houses that were there. Has anything additional happened with those buildings since that previous meeting? Will he make a statement on that as well, please?
Mr. John Conlon:
I will take the last question first about the Phoenix Park. We are developing a policy strategy on how we will use what are currently vacant properties, such as selling them to our staff. Some will require further refurbishment but we are working on that policy so we can share that with the Deputy once it is completed, which should be in the next few months.
On the occupancy of the buildings, I do not agree with the Deputy's statement that we have empty buildings. We have a number of vacant buildings but in terms of buildings that are occupied, we are undertaking a number of occupancy studies. We can provide, but I do not have the stuff with me today because I was not expecting this question.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Will Mr. Conlon provide us with that occupancy study whenever it is ready?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Conlon. I apologise to the Cathaoirleach for taking so much time.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Deputy. I have a number of questions myself. To be honest, I find this meeting frustrating. To use a meteorological phrase, I think the answers and clarity we are getting here is foggy at best and add to more confusion around the whole process, timeline, cost and, more important, the future and what it holds for the people of Aughrim in my own constituency of Wicklow and for those who live in Enniscorthy in the nearby constituency of Wexford who saw huge levels of flooding and huge personal trauma as a result of that.
I will first ask a direct question of Mr. Moran. I am looking for a yes or no answer. It was about the direct charge that Met Éireann withheld information. Did Met Éireann withhold information in relation to Storm Chandra, yes or no?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Did Met Éireann withhold information, yes or no?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. Mr. Moran is saying no. Met Éireann did not withhold information. So, he disagrees with the line Minister on his analysis that Met Éireann withheld information?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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People look at the early warning forecast system and they see the figures going back to 2018. Between 2018 and 2024, just €6.4 million was spent out of an allocation of €21.9 million. I heard the rationale, the excuses and the reasons for that. That looks shocking if we look at the end result that we still do not have an early warning system.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Okay, they have been achieved seven years later. In 2016, what was the anticipated cost?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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What was the anticipated cost for the full stage 1 process?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I hear all of that but for stage 1, I am sure there was a brief or description that was done up. I am sure there was a proposal submitted on what was needed financially to see the full implementation of stage 1. What was that?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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The allocation is separate to what was requested to do the project. We might get that business case from Met Éireann as to what was proposed. Do we have a figure as to what was required to see the stage 1 process through to its conclusion? Do we have that figure? I am not asking what the allocation was. What was the expected cost?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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That is important. I would have thought that level of information would have been very basic in terms of the preparation for this meeting, given it is an area we had highlighted as one of our key areas of interest to explore. We might get that information. I am concerned that it is not readily available, to be honest.
I will move on to the allocation. In the budget for 2026, we heard the allocation was €7 million. What was provided for in 2025?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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How much was spent?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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So, that was more money handed back unspent. On the completion of phase 1 after seven years, we heard the rationale and the reasons. I think December 2023 was cited as the completion date of stage 1. Am I correct on that?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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A completion report was then furnished to the Department. Met Éireann might furnish a copy of that to ourselves following this meeting, if that is okay.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I am talking about Met Éireann's role in stage 1, which primary focused on Met Éireann.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Moran.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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What happened in the two years, between December 2023 and November 2025, in the Office of Emergency Planning under the chair of Department of Defence on the completion of stage 1 and it only being taken up at that level? Surely to God we are not awaiting the completion of stage 1 until the design and the process around stage 2 commences. Why did that not happen and what happened over those two years?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
I can account for the areas that Met Éireann has been tasked to carry out and perhaps the OPW can address the question as well in relation to the overall planning associated with that period of time.
The Cathaoirleach is asking about the period between December 2023 and November 2024 and why no proactive actions were taken in relation to planning. There were proactive actions in relation to planning and progressing the second stage of the NFFWS. These involved: developing wave buoy observations around the country, progressing tidal observations through pilots, and activating hydrometric observations across county councils - Wicklow, Wexford, Cork, Limerick. These are advancing projects. It also involved conducting a full scientific and strategic review of all the hydrometric requirements. These were all the observation requirements needed to drive the next phase of the NFFWS, which is the localised modelling and forecasting activities. All these activities have been carried out during that period between January 2024 and now. It has been quite an active time. This represents progress with stage 2. These are based upon the recommendations that were set out in the stage 1 report that the Cathaoirleach inquired about.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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What ultimately is stopping us then getting to a stage? Correct me, if I am wrong in this. Phase 1 was to build the data, the models and the systems needed to forecast flooding. Stage 2 is really disseminating that information to the local areas. By the sounds of it, all of that work is completed on Met Éireann's end. It is just a matter of getting that information out to a local level. Why can Met Éireann not do that now at this point? Why can it not get that information out to the local areas and give that advance warning that there is the potential of flooding?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
There are two dimensions to this. First of all, the scale of information we provide is at a catchment scale. It is at a landscape scale. We are providing the potential for flooding in a catchment. That is the level of forecasting we are providing at the moment. The Cathaoirleach is asking about the progress towards local level forecasting and how we can do that. The next stage is developing that capability, developing those models across the country right down to the local level so that we can increase the granularity and the resolution of the information we can provide. To do that, we have to establish observational infrastructure to underpin those models. That is the process we are carrying out.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I want to move to Mr. Conlon and the OPW. A number of Deputies have made reference to Mr. Conlon's previous remarks here about the potential to have to cut flood relief projects in the context of the failure to put in place funding to see through the obligations of the OPW to develop the national children's museum. Mr. Conlon said that is not the case. There will be no funding cuts to flood defence schemes. He referenced engagement with the Department of public expenditure and reform. While flood defence schemes are ring-fenced and there is no potential funding cut, is there agreement on a funding partner for the national children's museum?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I will move on. The Minister made reference to the OPW potentially buying homes on flood plains rather than put in flood defence schemes. I am not sure what the intention is when they purchase these homes. Is Mr. Conlon aware of that commentary?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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It was the Minister, Deputy James Browne.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister said it should be an option for the OPW to buy homes that are repeatedly flooding and potentially have them demolished to create flood areas rather than constantly trying to protect them.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Conlon might give us a breakdown on the regions in relation to that. Specific to this, has any analysis been carried out in terms of the Minister's train of thought?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Is the purchasing homes with a view to demolishing them being actively looked at?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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That is the end of my questions. I will open the meeting up, if it is okay with the witnesses.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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What is being said here repeatedly is that there has been a saving ultimately to the Exchequer. We know €6.4 million has been spent. There is no saving in that, as the original estimate was €2.4 million and €1.6 million.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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In my mind, it is not a considerable saving. I thank Ms Prendergast. I will open the meeting up to members for the supplementary round of questions. We will try keep it to five minutes.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for staying on. I greatly appreciate it. Mr. Mooney took issue with Deputy Byrne saying that the OPW has not said 15 to 20 years and that was an international timeframe, but he stated that he thought it would take five to ten years. Mr. Mooney has an understanding from Met Éireann as to when it will have the information for local forecasting. Whatever about when we release it, does Mr. Mooney have an understanding on that timeline?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Five to ten years is a broad timeline. It is 2026. Is Mr. Mooney saying to the people of Enniscorthy, for example, that it could be 2031 or 2036 before a local forecasting system could be in place for them?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Could the phased introduction result in local forecasting happening before 2031?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Moran, maybe?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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It is pretty straightforward. Was Mr. Moran listening? I do not mean that disrespectfully but the questions are pretty straightforward. It is about timelines on local forecasting.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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No, I know the requirements. Was Mr. Moran listening to Mr. Mooney? I do not mean that pejoratively, but did Mr. Moran hear what he said?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Moran heard what Mr. Mooney said. Mr. Mooney said it would be five to ten years, which would be 2036. I asked could it be 2031, which would be within five years. Five plus 2026 gets us to 2031.
He said there would be a phased introduction. Is it possible that Met Éireann will have information within its system that it could do localised warnings in a phased way on or before 2031? That is the very clear question.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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What does Mr. Moran anticipate right now as matters stand?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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We had a very clear timeline for stage 1. It was five years. Met Éireann delivered it in seven years. Is there a timeline for when Enniscorthy, for example, will get its localised warning system? Is there a timeline that Met Éireann is mandated to deliver on? If so, what is that timeline?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Moran is the head of the organisation. What is the answer to that question? Is it "Yes" or "No"? Is there a timeline? Mr. Moran knows the answer.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I know Mr. Moran appreciates it, but is there a timeline? It is a yes-no question.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I know what Met Éireann has been doing. Is there a timeline? That is a really simple question.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Is there one? That is the first question. Is there a timeline?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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When will that plan be made publicly available or known to whoever?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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At some point during this year, the public will know Met Éireann's delivery timetable for local forecasting systems. Is that what Mr. Moran is saying?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Met Éireann is an essential cog in this engine.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Met Éireann is an essential cog in this engine. It will inform the group to which Mr. Moran is referring on when local information systems may be provided. What he is saying right now is that Met Éireann will have the necessary information later this year to inform this group, of which it is part, of the timeline for the delivery of local information systems. Is that what Mr. Moran is saying?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Okay.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Right now, as he is before this committee, can Mr. Moran give us any insight into what that will look like? Will it be on a phased basis in those high-level counties? Will it be in 2027, 2028 or 2029? What does that look like right now?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I am not asking Mr. Moran to anticipate the formal outcome. Mr. Mooney gave a kind of five- to ten-year guideline. Can Mr. Moran any indication right now to me, to anyone who may have been affected by flooding, or to anyone in a community who has invested in their own flood protection for their business or house? They might not yet be covered by a flood protection scheme and might be awaiting one. They just want to know when the State will better inform them of the risk of flood. They want to know in plain English what it looks like in timeline terms. Can Mr. Moran give us any insight?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Okay, come on, give us some insight.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Mr. Moran said that he would give us some insight. He said that at some point this year, it will be publicly known when the local forecasting systems will be introduced, or at least Met Éireann will feed it into this group, it will come out of the sausage factory and we will know. It will come out some way. As the head of Met Éireann, Mr. Moran must have a sense of where it is going, what the direction of travel is, and when will it be introduced on a phased basis. As an organisation, Met Éireann would have this information. Leaving aside when it might be made publicly known and all of those various checks and balances, where does Mr. Moran feel Met Éireann is right now?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
Where I feel we are right now is we are working on developing the observational infrastructure and planning for that infrastructure to underpin the localised modelling research that has yet to take place and commence in Met Éireann. That work will commence once there is a coherent co-ordinated plan right across the system. We are just one constituent part of that system.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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That is fair. I acknowledge that. Who will press the button, as it were? Whatever about Met Éireann having the information, who will be the ultimate deciding entity as to when this information will be dispersed on a phased basis? Who will make the decision regarding the phased local introductions?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Quite clearly, it will be informed by Met Éireann's work, but will it be Mr. Moran as the director who will make the decision about when the information will flow? Who will then make the decision about when it will go publicly to local authorities or whoever is going to manage the local information flow?
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I am referring to the actual information and the fact that is going out publicly. Let us say that they pick Enniscorthy and Wexford for the first use of the local warning system. Who will make the decision that we are going to introduce the local warning system, and we are going to start it right now on a phased basis? Who ultimately has the decision for that?
Mr. Eoin Moran:
A governance structure will be put in place to co-ordinate the development of the stage 2 phase of the NFFWS. That governance structure will oversee and manage and make those types of decisions. For example, a proposal will be made in relation to the overall communications, the readiness of flood risk information and the state of development of the flood forecasting ability to provide localised forecasts and localised warnings. That is a co-ordinated multi-agency decision. We have to understand that flood warnings are downstream from flood forecasts. They are informed by local terrain, digital terrain models, exposure data and vulnerability data, and from that the warning is produced by expert hydrologists.
James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I do not doubt for a second the authenticity of what Mr. Moran is saying or the science that is underpinning the important work that Met Éireann is doing. However, he must obviously understand that on this side of the desk, we are all public representatives elected by people who are seeing an increased number of flooding events because of climate change, and who know they know they are going to keep going and going. All people want to know is this: when is the local system going to come to protect their communities? They want more information. They want a bit of guidance and communication. They may be frustrated by how long it takes and how far out it is, but they want that degree of certainty. Mr. Moran is saying that they will have that degree of certainty this year.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I ask Mr. Moran again to tell me who is in charge of this. Who is the project sponsor? Who is over this? Is it Met Éireann?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Who is Met Éireann reporting to? Who are all the different organisations reporting to on this?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I did not ask Mr. Moran that. I asked him who Met Éireann is reporting to. Who is it giving progress reports to?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Is the OPW driving this?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
For stage 1, the OPW chaired the steering group, which was established to progress that part of the service. That has changed. The chairmanship of the steering group has now gone across to the Office of Emergency Planning within the Government task force on emergency planning. Progress is reported through that, through the relevant Cabinet committee and up to the Government.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Is that happening?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Where is the plan, so the members of the steering group know exactly where it is at as it gets to each stage? There is no plan. I have been told that the plan is still being developed. How do members of the steering group know it is progressing?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
There is probably a lot of confusion around the term "plan". Actions for stage 2 are certainly being taken. Our colleagues from Met Éireann outlined that and I outlined it earlier. I also mentioned that further actions have been endorsed by the Cabinet subcommittee and a memo for Government will go out on that. There is then a final piece which has to be done largely around the forecasting side-----
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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What is the final date for that?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. Going by the Revised Estimates since 2018, my take on it is that €34 million has been allocated to flood forecasting and warning services through the annual budgets.
I want to know how much of that €34 million has been spent.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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The low twenties. How much of that-----
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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So it is just €6.4 million. Is that correct?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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To ensure that this does not become a white elephant, how much is it going to cost in total? We have no plan and we have no year. How much is it going to cost in total? Can anybody from the OPW or Met Éireann answer that question? It is a bit of a strange one, not to have a budget and not to know how much it is going to cost.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I have never seen the likes of this, to be honest. We do not have a budget. We plan a national flood forecasting and warning service but we have no budget. There is just an unlimited fund and we can spend whatever we like. Is that what the witnesses are telling me?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, but we are on stage 2 now with no plan. We are going around in circles all of the time. There is no plan, there is no year and there is no finale to this as far as I can see.
Ms Josephine Prendergast:
As Mr. Mooney said, there will be costings included with the memo going to Government. Internally within Met Éireann, from the flood forecasting perspective, we will be working out the costs associated with developing the localised models. We have initial estimates but we do not have-----
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Following this meeting today, I would like to see a report on how much this is going to cost in total. We should have budgets and a plan in place in terms of what we are actually working towards. At the moment that does not seem to be the situation. There does not seem to be any collaboration between the OPW and Met Éireann in relation to how much money is supposed to be spent. It does not make sense to me.
I am going to move on to the OPW and the voluntary home relocation scheme. Mr. Conlon said earlier that 25 people have seen their houses purchased by the OPW. How were these house prices benchmarked? How did the OPW decide how much it would pay?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Who qualified for that scheme?
Mr. Robert Mooney:
People who were subjected to flooding during Storm Desmond, principally. There are criteria set out in the scheme with regard to the extent of the flooding. The property must also have been a primary residence, for example, with no insurance. There is a whole set of criteria underpinning the scheme.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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What happens to the homes that the OPW purchases?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Does the OPW demolish them? Has it demolished them?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Okay, I have no further questions.
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, I know.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I have a few concluding questions. Ms Prendergast said that there are initial estimates for phase 2 from Met Éireann's perspective. What are those initial estimates?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Can you share those with us?
Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Or are they a secret?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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The Department made an allocation for 2026 of €7 million. Where did that figure come from?
Ms Josephine Prendergast:
The 2026 figure is in relation to our estimates for what will be happening this year in relation to the flood forecasting. There will be ongoing maintenance of the existing system and resilience for the operational services and an estimate for the initial stages of where we are hoping-----
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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How much is going to be required to see phase 2 completed by Met Éireann? Do we have a figure for that?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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It will exceed that.
Ms Josephine Prendergast:
These are the initial estimates. There are staffing costs, there will be infrastructure costs and there will be soft costs related to the development of the local and coastal models. We have not got all of those costs together yet. We are gathering all of the information related to all of the different actions that will be associated with it.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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You might furnish us with all of those costs-----
Mr. Eoin Moran:
Can I come in there? We have been putting together outline scoping costs associated with stage 2. This is our contribution to the overall planning process to ensure we have a coherent, co-ordinated plan across multiple agencies. We want to ensure that the work we have done and the success to date is progressed to stage 2 because it is critical and urgent and needs to be put in place as soon as possible. I will hand over to Dr. O'Reilly who will give some more detail on this.
Dr. Sarah O'Reilly:
It is important to note that the exact role that Met Éireann will have is not fully defined yet in stage 2 for the purposes of the estimates but for a ten-year programme we will be looking at about €6 million per year. That is what we are estimating. It will not necessarily be a uniform amount year-on-year and it will depend on our ability to hire the staff. There would be a constrained recruitment market for the particular expertise we would be looking for, so that might be a slow ramp-up. It would be focused on developing those localised modelling systems and there would be a gradual roll-out in public service recruitment over that time.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. My next question is for Mr. Conlon. This committee has seen lots of examples of negative fall-out from a failure to have a lead agency in place. We have had the OPW before us in relation to other matters around that. Is the fact that there is no lead agency here a problem at this stage? Is that slowing things down? Is that what is causing the delays and the lack of clarity? Is that why there are no clear objectives?
Mr. John Conlon:
I do not believe so. Cross-departmental and cross-government projects are delivered with each entity inputting into them doing its own thing and then having a co-ordinating steering group. What is important here is that there is a co-ordinating steering group which is now chaired by the office of emergency management. The steering group will provide the governance model going forward. At various stages over the next number of years, each entity contributing to that - whether that is ourselves, Met Éireann or the local authority sector - will have various inputs to make and will be an important part of this as we move forward. A good governance structure with a steering group overseeing this is what is required and I think that can be further developed.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I want to move on to the issue of the flood maps and the review that is ongoing. In a response to a parliamentary question last year I was told that the review was coming to an end and the maps would be updated in early 2026, with a 30-day public consultation period thereafter. Where are we at in terms of flood mapping?
Mr. Mark Adamson:
The flood maps for Bray would have been produced following the construction of the flood relief scheme, which obviously changed the hydraulics. We have had draft maps provided by the consultants and they have been reviewed. We have sent our comments back and are awaiting the final drafts which will then be published for consultation, as was stated.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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We are in early 2026.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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That is just in relation to Bray. I had a look at the national map and there are lots of other areas under review as well. Is this an holistic review or is it more localised?
Mr. Mark Adamson:
Under the EU floods directive, which is cyclical, we are required to review the various stages every six years. Rather than waiting six years to review the flood maps en masse, we decided it would be better to keep them open to continual review. The public, local authorities and others are entitled to make a request for a review, which we screen to see if there is valid information to warrant a detailed review, after which we go on to conduct a detailed review and then go through consultation.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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How does that process feed into the drawing up of county development plans?
Mr. Mark Adamson:
The OPW would have developed the guidelines for the planning system on flood risk management in tandem with the Department of housing, as it is now, back in 2009. Obviously, the flood maps are to support the planning system. Local authorities would make reference to those maps as part of their decision-making around flood zoning and, hence, land use zoning.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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If the maps are outdated and under review-----
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I am conscious of a recent report that referred to councillors who tried to rezone almost 300 flood-prone areas, land for sites for development all around the State, over the past six years. The regulator’s office had to intervene on 93 occasions to block plans. I dare say that these are county development plans with specific rezoning.
Mr. Mark Adamson:
They would make use of the flood maps for that, or they should be doing so. We do review all of the development plans and local area plans coming through the system. There are various stages of consultation, and we review them at every stage. I think there have been about 280 reviews over the past five years or so. We provide observations back to the local authorities in terms of whether they are complying with or in line with the guidelines.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Or recommend that decisions be reversed.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Reference was made to Bray, and this is one of the areas that did have a flood protection scheme put in place. It goes back to 2017. At that stage, it was built to provide protection against a one-in-100-year fluvial event and a 0.5%, one-in-200 year, annual exceedance probability tidal flood event. It gave protection to over 600 properties, which was really welcome. That was in 2017. I have a broad question. What ongoing re-evaluation is there of those schemes, given climate change and increased sea levels? Do those levels of protection still apply? What process is in place to have a look at other flood projects that have been put in place across the State? What re-evaluation takes place?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Is that process complete?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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When will it be completed?
Mr. Mark Adamson:
We issued the first contract last year. It took some time to develop. It is a new approach and not something we would have done before in Ireland. It took some time to develop the approach through a pilot that we applied on the Mallow flood relief scheme in Cork. We then worked that through in terms of how we would specify it out as a brief for contracted services. That was done. We are now into the full programme, and the first contract went out last year. It is to pilot, particularly in Kilkenny, the application of this through consultancy services to make sure the brief is properly specced out in order that we are progressing this in a cost-effective manner. Based on that, we will then let out subsequent bundles, with a view to having this programme complete in 2029.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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It is expected to have the process complete in 2029.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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The process is two years behind the expected delivery of the work according to the Comptroller and Auditor General's report.
Mr. Mark Adamson:
It was. In relation to the indicator, I think we could have clarified it more specifically and conveyed it better in terms of how and when we were expecting that to be achieved. We have had a two-year delay with that programme. When we set out our intentions in 2018 and 2019, I do not think we fully understood how complex it would be in terms of balancing the level of technical detail versus the uncertainty and cost-effectiveness of this programme. It did, therefore, take quite some time to work through it, but we are now under way with the national programme.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I have one final question. Again, it relates to the flood protection scheme in Bray. There is ongoing maintenance taking place, which, I am sure, is expected in all flood defence projects across the State. A number of years ago, as part of that maintenance work, a considerable amount of material was removed from the River Dargle in an area called the Slang. Instead of being moved off site, it was put directly into the middle of a flood-plain. It has remained in situ since, despite the matter being raised continuously at county council level. I also raised this with the Minister a number of years ago. Hundreds of tonnes of material have been removed from the river channel and deposited directly on the flood-plain area. That seriously undermines the overall project.
I do not expect the OPW witnesses to have information on this, but what kind of inspections are carried out or what responsibility is there other than funding that maintenance via the Department? Would that be an issue? It is certainly an issue of concern for me, given the gravity of this serious situation. In the context of Hurricane Charley, people in Bray, and especially in Little Bray, know only too well the challenges that can arise. They also know that other sections of the flood-plain are continuously under threat from further development. Would the OPW have concerns about something like that?
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I have all of that information and all the figures from over the years.
Mr. Brian Brogan:
The steering group was established in 2024 between the OPW and Wicklow County Council on the operation and maintenance programme. It met recently. Arrangements are being put in place for the removal and disposal of sediment from the channel and areas surrounding the Rehills land, if that is the same location. We might have to get the details from the Cathaoirleach on the specific locations, because I would not be familiar with them, but we will have the issue addressed through the next meeting of the steering group, which is in the coming months.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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The flood protection scheme was long fought for. To have its viability undermined, essentially, by the deposition of material on an area designated as a flood-plain or storage area is-----
Mr. John Conlon:
To make a general point in response to the Cathaoirleach's question, which is a very valid one, a governance structure where there are steering groups in place like that is what is required to make sure that these things are observed and dealt with. From my perspective as chairman, this is what I want to see. I want to see these steering groups acting like that.
John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Conlon for that. That concludes our engagement for today. I thank the chair and the officials from the Office of Public Works for attending. I also thank the officials from Met Éireann and the Comptroller and Auditor General for their attendance. Is it agreed that the clerk will seek any follow-up information and carry out any agreed actions arising from the meeting? Agreed. The committee will meet next on Thursday, 26 March 2026 and we will resume discussions on the 2023 financial statements of Inland Fisheries Ireland with representatives from that organisation and the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment.