Flood plans offer little ‘real solutions’, warns TD

Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice has criticised the national draft flood risk management plans, saying that without any real solutions, people across the State could face serious flooding every winter.

The draft plans under the Catchment Flood Risk Assessment and Management (CFRAM) programme were made available for public consultation earlier this month.

The CFRAM programme was tasked with producing flood hazard maps, flood risk maps and flood management plans required under a timeframe set out in the 2007 EU floods directive.

Speaking on Shannonside radio, the Galway Roscommon TD said after years of consultation and costly engineering expertise, there appeared to be very little in the way of real measures available to deal with flooding across the State.

Mr Fitzmaurice said the issue of dredging was still not being taken on board, despite the fact that EU officials had indicated that it would not be blocked.

He said unless there was a total change of attitude in the Office of Public Works (OPW), people would be heading into serious flooding every winter.

Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy highlighted earlier this month the OPW’s failure to meet a deadline under the EU’s Flood Directive which required that each member state publish its flood risk management plans by March 2016.

The pilot flood management projects, which the OPW originally estimated would cost €3.5 million, ended up costing €9.1 million, according to chairman of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee Seán Fleming.

Director of the OPW Clare McGrath told the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee that flood plans would be finalised by the end of this year, nine months after the deadline for the six-year programme.

She said finalising the plans would also depend on the information which emerges from the OPW’s public consultation which began this month.

The OPW announced a public consultation process for draft flood risk management plans earlier this month with the Shannon and south western draft plans running for ten weeks until mid-September.

It noted that in the past, flood risk in Ireland had been managed in a reactive manner including the construction of walls and embankments to contain flood waters but said the EU Floods Directive in 2007 had changed this focus from "reactive" to "proactive".

The OPW said it had also engaged in informal public consultation on flood maps which was completed in December 2015. The final maps are now available to view on the OPW consultation website.

The outgoing Government was accused earlier this year of “arrogance beyond belief” by a member of the National Flood Forum after it emerged that an interdepartmental group set up to oversee the national co-ordination of flood risk management and flood response did not meet for six years.

The report by the Comptroller and Auditor General also found that a steering group established to oversee the CFRAM programme did not meet for a four year period up until November 2014.

Pilot projects set up in 2005 to prepare flood maps and flood risk management plans for a number of river basins incurred delays of at least six years in each case and significantly exceeded cost estimates, the report says.