Storm Chandra: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-10 ============================================================ Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach I thank the Minister for coming into the House to address a hugely important issue across the country. I have a degree of sympathy for him as when he was appointed to his Ministry last year we had Storm Éowyn and he has just had another major storm event. It had major ramifications in his area and I congratulate him for the way he spoke so openly and candidly about that and about having first-hand experience. If we compare Storm Chandra and Storm Éowyn the one consolation - though there is no consolation for the people who saw their properties and businesses destroyed by flooding - was we did not have the severe high winds and the multiple power cuts and loss of water supply we had due to Storm Éowyn. If we had had those same high winds again this time I do not think we would have been in a much better state or readiness for that. We are going to have another storm of this magnitude next year. They are going to be an annual issue and we need to ramp up our response to them. As the Minister said, the national emergency co-ordination group was activated on 27 January. If you listen to Kieran Cuddihy, his show really came alive. He probably had a low-key start but he gave outstanding coverage of Storm Chandra and brought home to the nation the impact these storms had. Businesses were destroyed and family life was upturned. A grandmother had to help her newborn grandchild into a boat in the Minister's county. A man who owned a garage business built up by his father saw it flooded for, I think, the third time. Your heart really goes out to all those people. Listening to them, they knew it was coming. There must be such a sense of foreboding when you see that coming. You are effectively standing on a psychological shoreline with water coming at you and you know that water is going to reach you tonight. There is no accounting for the fear, the depression and the mental health anguish those people are going to go through. Nothing short of a complete and sustained response from us as legislators will do in this instance. The Minister mentioned some issues with gullies. There are several local authorities that have not plans for clearing gullies. They did not clear gullies in anticipation of this. It is a very easy fix and should be done. It should be mandatory for every local authority to clear its gullies. On the ESB and Uisce Éireann, everyone in this room will say there has been no improvement from either of those service providers since Storm Éowyn and if it happened again we would have the same problems. We should have active and ongoing engagement. I mentioned at the time of Storm Éowyn we should have a dedicated committee within this House looking at how our utilities are responding, because we are very much in a changing climate landscape. As a country and as a society, we are not prepared for it. I acknowledge the vast sums of money that are being spent on it but in many cases that spending is also dependent on the work of outside agencies such as the ESB and Uisce Éireann. I ask the Minister to outline the level of engagement with Uisce Éireann and the ESB following on from Storm Eowyn. One would expect that they would have identified the weaknesses in their infrastructure and put in place a plan to address them. They have had 12 months to do so. They are going to get another 12 months to do it now and if it is the case that they need additional funding, I am sure that will not be too big a request and will be supported by everybody in this and the other House. The OPW is doing fantastic work on flood relief schemes. We know the challenges that present in relation to planning and trying to get these schemes through the planning system. Many of the people objecting to these schemes are the same people whose properties have been flooded and who have benefited from support and relief when it comes from the Government. By the Minister's own reckoning, it now takes 11 years to complete a flood relief scheme which, for those who faced floods over a ten-day period, is agonising to hear. The OPW has completed 56 flood relief schemes which have provided security and certainty to 13,000 properties and avoided further damages in the region of €2 billion, which is significant. There are ten schemes under construction nationwide in Athlone, Crossmolina, Glashaboy, King's Island, Morrison's Island, and the River Mall at Templemore, among others. All of those schemes are very welcome and cannot come soon enough. A big issue for many people is insurance. People who have been flooded now are never going to get insurance again. I welcome the fact that the Department of Finance is engaging with multiple stakeholders, including the Central Bank and the OPW, on this. We have a ready-made, white-label solution for the insurance issue. The people who cannot get flood insurance should be allowed to access the Irish Public Bodies for insurance. That does not need any discussion. It is there already and is basically our insurance company. Cover should be offered to all of those people who have no cover until we come up with a proper solution. It is the least we can do for these people. It is a very easy, quick, short-term fix and would demonstrate proactiveness on our part. I urge the Minister to give that suggestion serious consideration. The development of the national flood forecasting and warning service, NFFWS, is obviously very welcome, as is the Government's task force on emergency planning. However, there is a sense in communities that these bodies only meet on the cusp of a crisis or when something serious is looming. These organisations need to be meeting on a regular basis. We heard many academics on radio and we read articles by them in newspapers saying that there is so much information out there on water levels. There is a whole pool of knowledge that could be shared and that needs to be collated. We need to be much more proactive on this. If these two storms have taught us anything, it is that mother nature can be horrific when she turns against us. We need to make better preparations. We must consider the sheer scale of this. The Graiguenamanagh flood relief scheme in Kilkenny is costing €22 million and will protect 84 properties. While no amount of money is enough, we should bear in mind that this amounts to €95,000 per property. It is a significant cost but one would not begrudge it to those people. If it costs €200,000 to protect each of their homes, they should get it. The Minister has responded very well to what has been a huge crisis. He has a very busy desk with a lot of crises on it but he has dealt very well with this. That said, I would emphasise to him that there is a sense out there that we are reacting too late. We need to make it a raison d'être of this Government that we are better prepared for these crises of mother nature - these natural disasters - because they are going to be coming on an annual basis. We really need to be better prepared for them. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-10