Storm season is almost upon us, leaving thousands of homes and businesses up and down the country fearful of what the weather will bring over the autumn and winter months.
Those households and businesses will not be encouraged by this week’s warnings from the Climate Change Advisory Council that plans to escalate the response to extreme weather events such as Storm Éowyn – the storm that swept over the country in January – have not been finalised.
This does not augur well, particularly with Met Éireann already issuing weather warnings for the first named storm of the season, Storm Amy, for Thursday and Friday.
The council, the independent body that advises the Government on preparing for climate change, criticised the delay, saying that Storm Éowyn and its immediate predecessor, Storm Darragh, which hit in December 2024, exposed “significant shortcomings” in how the State managed the impact of the storm.
RM Block
[ Met Éireann issues wind and rain warnings as Storm Amy approachesOpens in new window ]
It also expressed disappointment that an across-Government review of the Storm Éowyn response was overdue, saying that preparations were needed urgently before another storm of Éowyn’s magnitude hits Ireland.
The record-breaking winds of that storm left 768,000 premises without power and 200,000 without water. Yet, had its timing been less fortuitous, the impact could have been even more severe.
Researchers at the University of Galway said parts of the western seaboard were “incredibly lucky” the tides weren’t higher as Éowyn made landfall. The storm coincided with the tide going out – meaning devastating flooding was avoided.
“If the whole storm surge had happened a week earlier, the water levels would have exceeded five metres for Galway,” says lead researcher Dr Indiana Olbert.
“That is something the city is not prepared for. And it is really difficult to be prepared for – a massive amount of infrastructure would be needed.”
She says the storm surge created by Éowyn was “unprecedented”, setting three new records at Galway, Limerick Docks and Shannon Airport.
“We were very lucky – the storm was extremely powerful. Usually when we have really high wind speeds, we would expect a coastal flood but it didn’t happen. Some localised places in the west, Kerry and parts of Galway saw some flooding but not the level that would normally correlate with such a powerful storm,” says Olbert.
She says if a similar event were to happen during rising tides the impact on areas such as Spanish Arch, the Claddagh area and Salthill in Galway would be massive.
“We see pretty much one devastating event every year now,” she says, citing Storm Debi in 2023 and Éowyn.
“They are occurring more frequently. What we can see from climate models is that it is now very likely that extreme weather events will intensify.”
Caroline Leahy’s home in Midleton, Co Cork, was badly hit by flooding during Storm Babet in 2023. The storm caused more than €200 million in damage to homes and businesses. She has been campaigning for more urgent flood defences since.
“We have no flood insurance. Anyone who was flooded will have no cover. That’s terrifying,” she says.
“We had €80,000 worth of damage and without insurance there is no hope of us rebuilding our house to any decent level. You are always trying to justify your spending on a day-to-day basis – wondering if you might need that money in the future.”
Leahy says access to the Humanitarian Assistance Scheme enabled her to cover some basic repair costs, but it went no further than making her home “habitable”. The scheme is open to anyone living in an affected area who has lost access to power or water or needs help paying for immediate costs.
However, Leahy says this extended no further than tidying up the mess.
And the prospect of further flooding always looms. The impact of Storm Babet came without much in the way of official warning, she says, and any sort of imminent bad weather leaves residents deeply anxious.
“Alan O’Reilly at Carlow Weather was the only person who predicted the flooding in 2023. We didn’t get any warning from Met Éireann. It seems there is very little co-ordination between departments. It’s left to ourselves a lot of the time to monitor water levels and predicted rainfall – but we are not professionals”.
She says a planning notice for her housing estate went up late last week – notifying residents that flood relief work is due to be carried out.
“One more winter for me to survive,” she says, but points out that it will only cover a small percentage of homes that are still in harm’s way.
“Seeing it going up yesterday was a weight off of my shoulders. But some of my neighbours might be facing decades without protection,” she says.
With hugely disruptive weather events like this becoming more frequent, the potential damage and associated costs only look like rising.
In a study of inland flooding last year, the Central Bank put the annual average loss in Ireland at €101 million – and said coastal flooding was “likely to add significantly to that cost”.
The paper looked at the insurance “protection gap” around the State – areas that were prone to flooding – and the ability of householders and property owners to get adequate insurance cover. It estimated that one in 20 buildings had limited access to flood cover.
The differences were stark. It found that in some counties “whole villages or towns may be unable to obtain flood insurance while in other areas it is freely available”.
Taking into account an extreme climate-change model, it said that winter rainfall could increase by up to 34 per cent – and an extreme event costing €2.5 billion would become twice as likely by 2050.
Under what it said was a more probable scenario – where sea levels rose by 0.5m and rainfall increased by 20 per cent – it found that the average annual loss would be €135 million.
These costs would largely be borne by property owners without insurance cover.
The report also talks about the “near miss” scenario – and points out that Ireland had a lucky escape from Storm Desmond in 2015.
While it caused extensive flooding in the west of Ireland and led to losses of over €200 million – it wreaked havoc in northern England where it “stalled” for three days.
It analysed the costs that would have been incurred had Desmond stalled over the east coast of Ireland and the densely populated Dublin region.
The property losses from inland flooding would likely have amounted to €1.1 billion, it said.
“A loss of this scale would put significant financial strain on both the insurance industry and the State”.
This week, analytics company Gamma Risk published a study highlighting the risk of potential insurance claims rising to €4.5 million in a worst-case scenario in the decades after 2050.
The company, which evaluates risk for local authorities and insurers, said the vulnerability of buildings on the Irish coastline to flooding due to “extreme coastal events” exacerbated by climate change had increased to 4.5 per cent of all properties. Many at-risk properties are new and the properties are concentrated in Dublin.
Dublin-based mortgage broker Michael Dowling has seen clients struggle to get a home purchase over the line due to difficulties in getting flood insurance.
“In a lot of instances the insurance companies will exclude flood cover if the home is in a flood zone – and if there is an exclusion on the policy the banks won’t lend,” he says.
“In most cases, it is the first time people are aware the property is in a flood area.”
Dowling says he has seen more cases of this happening over recent years – since mapping of flood risk areas took place.
However, he says there is still some flexibility within the banking system – and an initial refusal from an insurance company to provide flood cover need not be the end of the transaction.
Dowling says banks have their own in-house lending criteria – and will sometimes take their own view on a particular property despite a lack of flood insurance being available.
This flexibility might not last much longer, however.
While thousands of vulnerable homes and businesses await flood protection, Leahy says there are other measures the Government could be looking at to help.
She suggests something similar to the UK’s flood insurance scheme Flood Re – a partnership between the UK government and the insurance industry that ensures affordable access to cover for vulnerable property owners.
“There are other things that can be done as well – like early warning systems,” she says.
“It would give some sort of comfort.”
