Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this very important matter. I am well aware of the impact that flooding has on businesses and householders. Having visited affected areas this summer, I am aware of the hardship and loss suffered as a result of flooding.

Most people are reliant on their insurance policies to protect them against the worst of the financial cost and loss arising. In this regard, I remain aware of the difficulties some people have been experiencing in securing insurance cover for flood risk at affordable prices or at all. Insurance companies make their own assessment of risk in any particular case. However, in areas where flood defence and alleviation works have been carried out, I cannot accept that any property protected by significant public capital investment would not be able to receive a quotation for insurance at reasonable cost. I have been engaged on this issue for some time now and I have made it clear recently that I am somewhat frustrated with the rate at which progress is being made in coming to an agreement with the Irish Insurance Federation, IIF, and the industry.

I first met with the industry in March 2012 and I had a very constructive engagement with it about the scope and scale of the work undertaken by the OPW on flood risk management, on the alleviation schemes being undertaken in many of our large cities and towns and, in particular, on the mapping of areas subject to flood risk nationally which will emerge from the OPW's catchment flood risk assessment and management programme. I indicated then that I wished to see an agreement reached as quickly as possible between the OPW and the IIF on a sustainable system of information sharing particularly for locations vulnerable to flooding and for identifying flood alleviation schemes and works completed and where the standard of protection afforded by these works could be verified.

While this may seem to be a straightforward matter, there are complex technical issues involved concerning the design standards and risk levels of defence works and the impact of those works in reducing the risk of flooding. Officials in the OPW have been working on developing a system for presenting information on flood defence schemes to the insurance industry to meet the technical requirements set out by the industry for risk assessment purposes. On 5 July 2012, the OPW made a presentation to the IIF and a number of the main insurance companies on a proposed template for providing the required information. The essential focus and objective of OPW's work has been in putting flood defence information on a GIS platform. This means the information will be accessible and viewable in a mapping environment and via the Internet.

The demonstration of the system at the meeting on 5 July showed examples of flood protected areas of Clonmel and Ennis. The areas identified are protected by flood relief schemes carried out by the OPW or local authorities. These areas are generally protected against a flood that has a probability of occurring of 1% in any one year. The maps will be presented on a web viewer with a link to details of the scheme design, including a design report, environmental impact study, if one was carried out, and scheme drawings.

Following the presentation on 5 July, the OPW wrote to the IIF on 19 July providing it with detailed information in template form on the schemes mentioned and requesting that it disseminate this information to its member companies with a view to getting feedback and comment on the proposed template. I understand the IIF has indicated in recent days that it is in the process of collating the responses it has received from its members on the OPW information and it hopes to be in a position shortly to formally respond on this.

I look forward to receiving the IIF response and I very much hope that it will be positive and allow for speedy agreement on the format of the information to be provided by the OPW. There may be some technical details to be ironed out but I would hope that these can be resolved quickly. With the agreement of the IIF, the OPW will then be in a position to progress with its work on compiling the information on other flood defence schemes that have been completed. This will take some time as there is a lot of detail to be sorted through. The focus initially will be on compiling information on the main schemes that have been carried out since 1995 when the current programme of major flood works began.

I acknowledge the insurance industry's engagement on this important matter. There is no question but that the industry has suffered substantial losses from major flood events in recent years. In its presentation to the joint committee, the IIF indicated that the cumulative cost of the eight major flood events since the year 2000 has been €697 million. Against that, however, must be balanced the very significant investment made by the State in major urban flood defence schemes since 1995 and the huge benefit deriving from that investment in terms of properties protected and losses avoided. It is estimated that almost 8,000 properties have been protected to date and the value of the benefit deriving from that is of the order of €800 million. The State, therefore, is certainly doing its part to mitigate the impact of flooding and I can assure the Deputy and the House that the Government and I will continue to do so in so far as resources allow.

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