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

I will take back that ask. A timeline for a localised approach is important. I had family members who lived in areas prone to flooding in Kilkenny city.In the past, local knowledge gave a certain indication of when a flood would breach houses. However, what we are dealing with now is vastly different. A month of rainfall was dumped in an area in 24 hours. It would be useful to have local adaptation measures to protect properties in place that could prevent even a few inches of water coming into a house, which can be devastating.

On the bigger picture, we need to start looking at nature-based solutions to how we can attenuate the problem by holding water and letting it back into a catchment more slowly. It is critical, as we continue to adapt to climate change, that we look at nature as an option in trying to manage water catchments, when we have large bodies of water in areas where there are lots of hard surfaces. We will revert to the Senator about the timelines and the localised approach he asked for.