Martin Conway (Fine Gael)
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The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, is very welcome.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for taking what I feel is a timely Commencement matter this afternoon on the need for a more specialised and location-specific warning system for extreme weather events in light of the recent flooding experienced in my own county, Waterford, Cork and many other areas.I acknowledge at the outset the utter devastation that businesses and home owners have experienced over the past six days. On Saturday I visited Tallow, Clashmore and Knockanore in west Waterford and saw at first hand the carnage levelled on those areas with damage to infrastructure including roads and bridges. A clean-up was under way after water ran through homes and businesses from front to back and vice versa.

Yesterday heavy rainfall resulted in further businesses and homes in east Waterford being impacted including the Saratoga Bar, Woodstown, and Jack Meades Bar, near Faithlegg. The sense of desperation among those impacted was very visible. My heart goes out to every single one who has been impacted. The Cabinet is signing off on a support package at the moment for those affected. The Minister of State will agree that it must be flexible and agile to ensure the money gets to those who need it most in a timely fashion.

My question is on the need for a more location-specific flood warning system. The national flood forecasting and warning service was established in 2016 with the aim of enabling members of the public and local authorities to take more preparatory actions towards reducing the impact of flooding. Stage 1 of this was due to be implemented between 2016 and 2022 and stage 2 was due to run between 2022 and 2027. However, I understand stage 1 is yet to conclude. Will the Minister of State clarify whether this is the case and will he outline the timelines that will be in place from here on in order that we can have a more localised system put in place?

I understand that as part of stage 1, Met Éireann issues daily flood guidance statements to local authorities but these are on a countywide basis and are not made available to the public. Last week, an orange rainfall warning was issued for all of Waterford but the more heavy rainfall was more specific to west Waterford and east Cork, mainly between Cork city and Dungarvan. Similarly, yesterday an orange rainfall warning was in place for the entire county of Waterford. Thankfully, west Waterford did not receive the level of rainfall it received last week but east Waterford did and was impacted by flooding. Obviously, the bigger the county the bigger the potential divergence between the weather that impacts different areas. Our system needs to be more in line with the UK Met Office where areas are clearly delineated on a map and labelled accordingly. Within a county, there could be a red rainfall warning for a certain area and an orange advisory for the rest.

This morning I spoke to Alan O’Reilly of Carlow Weather who the Minister of State will know. He sent me examples of the type of warnings in place with the UK Met Office. They area far more appropriate basis on which to base our warnings than the county-by-county basis.

Of course, it is not just rainfall that impacts flooding. It is also saturated ground and water levels. The Office of Public Works, OPW, has about 500 monitors in places across catchment areas that feed in to the advisory note that is issued to local authorities but that detail is not issued to the public. It is only issued to the local authorities and they then have to interpret that. There is a case for that advice to be made on a more public basis and for the advisory warnings to be more location-specific. I would be grateful if the Minister of State would clarify the timelines.

Martin Conway (Fine Gael)
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We all share our solidarity with the people whose properties have been so badly affected by what happened over the last few days.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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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.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response. Unfortunately, there are no timelines for the implementation of a more localised approach. Perhaps he could follow up with a written response to me in that regard. While generalised weather warnings might have been appropriate yesterday from the north tip of Kilkenny down to the south of the county, often, as was the case last week and this week, it is more appropriate to have a higher level of warning for certain areas.

When we first implemented those warning systems, people paid good heed to them but unfortunately an element of fatigue has set in over time when people hear of yellow or orange warnings and it is really only red warnings that they pay attention to. Could we be more specific with the warning system? We could say, for example, that an orange rainfall warning in a specific area of a county is likely to lead to heavy flooding and that people should therefore take precautionary actions. That is something that would resonate more with the public and with businesses and that is the type of system we need. The sooner that can happen, the better.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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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.

Martin Conway (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State and Senator Cummins for raising an important Commencement matter.