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

On 10 January, the OPW wrote to city and county managers in coastal areas indicating that it will accept applications, under its minor flood mitigation works and coastal protection scheme, for funding to assist with repairs to built flood defences and coastal protection structures which have been damaged by recent storms.

This is a once-off measure to reinstate built coastal defences to their pre-storm condition. Any work for which funding is sought will be carried out by the local authorities concerned. The Government decided on 11 February that funding of up to €70 million in total will be made available to local authorities to assist them with the repairs to damaged infrastructure. Of this total amount, and based on estimates submitted by local authorities, funding of about €20 million will be available to assist with repairs to damaged coastal protection structures this year.

It is also open to local authorities to carry out flood mitigation and coastal protection works using their own resources.

The OPW has been carrying out work to repair damage to the flood defence structures for which it is directly responsible and substantial progress has been made in this regard. The OPW does not provide direct financial assistance to individual property owners or businesses which have experienced flooding. Emergency financial aid and humanitarian assistance is available to households under the humanitarian assistance scheme operated by the Department of Social Protection.

The OPW is taking a number of key measures to deal with flooding generally. One is the progression of its programme of capital investment in major flood relief projects throughout the country. The OPW's budget this year for capital flood relief activities is €45 million and the biggest part of this will be used to progress ongoing and planned flood relief schemes in places such as Fermoy, Bandon and Skibbereen in County Cork, Ennis in County Clare, and the Dodder and Wad rivers in Dublin, as well as Waterford city, Templemore, Claregalway and Bray in County Wicklow.

A large part of the balance of the €45 million allocation will be used to progress other flood risk management work programmes which include the Catchment Flood Risk Assessment and Management (CFRAM) Studies, known as CFRAM.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

The CFRAM programme is a core part of the strategy to deal with the most significant areas of flood risk nationally and involves a more sustainable, planned and risk based approach to dealing with flooding problems. Under the CFRAM programme, flood maps for these significant risk areas will be completed by the end of 2014 and flood risk management plans will be produced by 2016. The studies will consider the best possible options, both structural and non-structural, for dealing with the risks on a long-term basis and, when completed, will form the basis for decision-making on capital investment by the Government on long-term flood mitigation infrastructure into the future.

The emergency funding of up to €20 million being made available for repairs to damaged coastal protection infrastructure is additional to the €45 million OPW 2014 capital allocation for flood risk management.

Every major flood defence project either undertaken or funded by the OPW is subjected to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis and only schemes with a positive benefit-to-cost ratio are considered for further progression. Cost benefit is, of course, only one of the factors taken into account when decisions are made to progress schemes as a scheme needs to be environmentally acceptable as well as being acceptable to the general public in the relevant area. Schemes which will be advanced arising out of the CFRAM process will be subjected to a multi-criteria analysis before being progressed. These include technical, economic, social and environmental criteria.

This Government has prioritised investment in flood risk management by allocating some €225 million over the period 2012 to 2016 as part of its infrastructure and capital investment framework. This is a substantial financial commitment in current difficult conditions and underlines the priority the Government attaches to this area.

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