Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. I thank the Senator for bringing this Commencement matter forward after a devastating few days in the southern part of the country and in many other parts of the country too. The increasing ferocity and frequency of these weather events is something that is catching us all. Unfortunately, it seems as though our future seems to have arrived. It is critically important to thank all the local authorities and the emergency services for their action, as well as the local communities, that meitheal that has always existed here in terms of people being able to support and help one another through what are really devastating times for businesses, households and communities all across the affected areas.I reiterate that the proposal that is going to the Cabinet today on supports for local businesses will be a generous package. It is important to state that. Many businesses will have to pick up the pieces and literally try to start again from scratch, so it is critically important that we can give some support to them.

Met Éireann is Ireland's national meteorological service. It is maintained by the State under the UN World Meteorological Organization Convention of 1950. Met Éireann's warning system is in line with international best practice. It is based on the adoption of the common European framework and terminology for the presentation of weather warnings and the alignment of national weather warning systems with the international MeteoAlarm framework. Warnings are based on state-of-the-art ensemble-based numerical weather prediction, NWP, models and observations. There are several observations streams which include satellite imagery, observations of weather parameters and weather radar images. The observations and NWP guidance are used by Met Éireann's forecasters to produce forecasts and warnings.

Weather warnings are currently issued in two distinct channels, as stated by Senator Cummins. The first channel is to the public and these are delivered via Met Éireann's website and mobile applications as well as on both TV and radio forecasts. The second channel is via the established major emergency management framework in Ireland.

Met Éireann works continually to improve localised forecasts and warnings. Over recent years projects have included the development of a flood forecast centre, which is nearing the completion of its establishment phase, the introduction of probabilistic forecasting, and building a high-performance computing centre which will allow Met Éireann’s weather forecasts to be run at a higher resolution and at a higher frequency.

At the same time, Met Éireann is improving its observational infrastructure, most significantly with its plans to expand its weather radars from two to six. Met Éireann is also advancing plans to access artificial intelligence-machine learning, AI-ML, and novel weather satellite data to improve forecast capability. The above-mentioned advancements from Met Éireann would support a more localised warning system, as the Senator has called for, if warranted by an update to the major emergency management framework. Step 1, as requested by Senator Cummins, in regard to a localised system, is something Met Éireann is working towards. He also referred to the county-based traffic light coded warning system, which is based on the functional areas of local authorities in order to mobilise emergency services.

My own county of Kilkenny had an orange warning in place yesterday and it proved accurate because flooding incidents occurred from the tip of the county in Freshford right down to Thomastown and Inistioge as well.

Senator Cummins spoke of Carlow Weather. Niall Dollard of Kilkenny Weather very much backed up where the local areas of flooding might occur. Met Éireann is making significant improvements in terms of a localised system of weather warnings. It will help in the longer term with the preparedness of local communities to deal with these events.