Flood Relief Schemes
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-03
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Kevin Boxer Moran (IND), Longford-Westmeath

I thank Senator O'Loughlin for raising this matter. I assure her that the OPW and Kildare County Council are committed to working in partnership to progress the flood relief measures. Throughout Kildare the OPW has completed four flood relief schemes which protect 110 properties against the risk of flooding. A further two flood relief schemes in Athy and Naas are at development and preliminary design stage. The Morell river flood management scheme is being progressed towards substantial completion. A further scheme in Leixlip to protect 60 properties is being led and progressed by the local authority, with funding provided by the OPW. Upon completion, these four schemes will give protection to 670 properties.
The OPW funds two engineering staff in Kildare County Council to support its delivery of the programme of schemes throughout the county. As it is not feasible to deliver all flood relief schemes concurrently due to constraints in specialised engineer skills in the OPW, local authorities and the consultancy market, the flood relief delivery programme was subdivided into two tranches, focusing initially on tranche one schemes and those already in the delivery pipeline. The prioritisation of the first tranche of the scheme was based on three criteria, including scale of projects, capacity to deliver a national programme and maximising the return on investment with reference to property numbers. Under the national programme, work has yet to commence on the design of 50 tranche two flood relief schemes. The flood relief scheme in Newbridge is part of the second tranche of flood relief schemes. It is anticipated this scheme will provide protection to up to 70 properties. The Government is committed to progressing these schemes under the national development plan.
The OPW is piloting a new delivery model of flood relief schemes through tranche two schemes in counties Kilkenny and Donegal. This is referred to as the tranche two pilot. The two tranche two pilot schemes in County Kilkenny are in Freshford and Piltown and in County Donegal they are in Donegal town and Letterkenny. The tranche two pilot is transferring the management of data gathering, as a first step in designing a scheme, from consultant engineers for a single scheme to the local authority for all schemes in the pilot. The pilot means that data gathering, where feasible, may be scaled up from individual communities to all schemes in a county. The pilot will then better inform the prioritisation of future schemes nationally and the scope of service required from consultants to design and facilitate the construction of flood relief schemes. The design of the schemes being delivered through this pilot is at an early stage of data collection to inform the appointment of engineering and environmental consultants.
Localised flooding issues are a matter in the first instance for each local authority to investigate and address. The minor flood mitigation works and coastal protection scheme was introduced by the OPW in 2009. The purpose of the scheme is to provide funding to local authorities to undertake minor flood mitigation works or studies to address localised flooding and coastal erosion problems in their administrative area. This scheme generally applies where a solution can be readily identified and achieved in a short timeframe. Funding of up to 90% of the cost is available subject to criteria. Applications are assessed by the OPW having regard to the economic, technical, social and environmental criteria of the scheme, including a cost-benefit ratio.
Recently I announced an increase in funding supports to be made available to local authorities under the minor flood scheme, including an increase in the upper minor works threshold from €750,000 to €2 million. Details of these revisions to the scheme will be made available to local authorities shortly. Since 2009 the OPW has approved funding under the minor flood mitigation works and coastal protection scheme of approximately €1.8 million to Kildare for seven projects.

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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/2026-03-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-03