Kevin Moran (Longford-Westmeath, Independent)

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue today. I am fully aware that flooding has a significant impact on people, families, businesses and communities. I refer in particular to the widespread flooding caused by Storm Babet in October 2023.

To date, the OPW has completed 55 flood relief schemes nationwide. These are providing protection to over 13,500 properties, and an economic benefit to the State in damages and losses avoided estimated to be in the region of €2 billion.

The catchment flood risk assessment and management, CFRAM, programme, the largest study of flood risk, was completed by the OPW in 2018. The output from this study was the flood risk management plans that are providing the evidence for a proactive approach for designing and constructing 150 flood relief schemes for the most affected communities.

Since 2018, the Government has trebled the number of flood relief schemes at design and construction to some 100. This has been achieved through the partnership delivery model between the OPW and local authorities, and by the OPW increasing the capacity of the local authority sector. Today, the OPW funds some 50 project management and engineering staff across the local authority sector. They are leading the delivery of flood relief schemes within their administrative areas.

While funding under the national development plan, of €1.3 billion to 2030, is available for the flood relief measures identified in the flood risk management plans, it is not feasible to progress all the flood relief schemes identified by the plans concurrently due to limited capacity in the local authorities and the specialised consultancy market. The flood-relief delivery programme was subdivided into two tranches, focusing initially on tranche 1 schemes and those already in the delivery pipeline. Under the national programme, work has yet to commence on the design of some 54 tranche 2 flood relief schemes.

Regarding challenges affecting scheme delivery and the impact of these on the timeline, senior officials in the OPW engaged with the directors of services of local authorities in spring 2023 to discuss and develop a planned national approach to future schemes that matches the return on investment from the available capacity between the local authorities and OPW.

One of the important lessons learned from the current delivery model is the time taken to gather the necessary data on the causes of flooding and the landscape of a community at risk.

Any flood relief scheme needs to map and understand the location and the flooding sources and constraints. This is achieved by extensive and wide-ranging surveys. In consideration of the above, the OPW is piloting a new delivery model for flood relief schemes through four tranche 2 schemes in counties Kilkenny and Donegal. These are known as the tranche 2 pilot. There are two tranche 2 pilot schemes in County Kilkenny, in Freshford and Piltown, and two in County Donegal, in Donegal town and Letterkenny.

The tranche 2 pilot will transfer the management of data-gathering, as a first step in designing a scheme, from consultant engineers for a single scheme to the local authorities for all schemes in the pilot and, where feasible, within their areas of responsibility. The pilot means that data gathering may be scaled up from individual communities to all schemes in a county. The pilot will better inform the prioritisation of future schemes nationally and the scope of services required from consultants to design and construct flood relief schemes.

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