Climate change to cause frequent flooding

The River Shannon has been flooding in winter for centuries, Fine Gael Deputy Marcella Corcoran Kennedy told the Dáil during the same debate. However, the onset of summer flooding, coupled with an increase in the incidence of torrential rain in recent years, has alerted us to the fact that something else is happening, namely, climate change.

“Climate scientists tell us that extreme weather events will become more frequent,” she said. “Rather than being a one-in-100-year event, as we were led to believe when we experienced the most recent major flood event in 2009, more intense rainfall and high river flows can be expected to become the norm.”

In 2012, a summer flood also caused havoc along the Shannon catchment, including the Shannon Callows in west County Offaly, parts of north County Tipperary and other Midlands counties, she said. This prompted the Joint Committee on Environment, Culture and Gaeltacht to hold hearings and produce a report. Committee members agreed that no further investigations or surveys were needed and proposed instead to make practical recommendations to take action to deal with flooding before and after it occurred. The resulting report was titled, Eight Proposals Urgently Required to Tackle Flooding on the River Shannon, its Tributaries and the Water Feeding into it.

“The first and most important recommendation was to appoint one agency to oversee management of the River Shannon,” she said. “The Joint Committee recommended that this agency be the Office of Public Works. It envisaged that all other agencies would be obliged to follow directions given by the OPW if their response was not sufficient to have a positive impact as soon as storms were forecast. It is also worth noting the seven other recommendations made in the report, which were to maintain the River Shannon, its tributaries and the water feeding into it, engage in local consultation and co-ordination, maintain appropriate water levels, prevent and alleviate the build-up of silt, establish flood warning systems and emergency management, utilise boglands to attenuate water from the River Shannon, where necessary and protect our natural heritage.”