OPW spends just €167,000 on adapting flood management plans
In Caused Flooding In Road Storm Banteer 2023 Babet Picture: Denis Late Minihane Cloghroe Cork On The
The State body responsible for managing flood risk has spent just €167,000 on adapting its flood management plans in preparation for climate change over the past five years.
The Office of Public Works (OPW), which is also responsible for managing the State’s property portfolio, has also made “very little or no progress” in adapting its individual flood management plans in terms of specific climate change targets.
A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) on how the agency has adapted its flood risk climate change plan noted that “assessing and tracking direct spending on the plan is difficult to achieve”.
The OPW said the direct expenditure on the plan that it was able to quantify amounted to “just under €167,000 to the end of 2023”.
The slow pace of flood management risk mitigation across the country has been exacerbated in recent times by disastrous flooding events — such as that wreaked by Storm Babet in Midleton, Co Cork, in late 2023 — with that damage estimated to be at least €150m.
The flood risk climate change plan was first approved by Government in October 2019.
In each of 2021, 2022, and 2023, the agency's adaptation of the plan was rated as "good" — the second highest level on the progress scale — by the Climate Change Advisory Council, the State’s think tank on environmental policy.
However, the C&AG said that evaluation “is a qualitative assessment based on information provided by the OPW itself and extracted from its progress tracker”.
The C&AG said that, of five interim climate change adaptation indicators included in the flood management plan, two which related to flood risk mapping had been fully implemented by the end of 2023.
Those two indicators related to the number of flood relief schemes, both completed and under construction, which have been assessed for appropriate adaptation options and for which such schemes have been prepared.
Just one completed flood relief scheme, or 2% of the total, had been so assessed as at the end of 2023, the C&AG said.
Regarding spending by the OPW on the implementation of the plan, the agency told the C&AG that such expenditure is difficult to estimate as its aim “is to embed climate change adaptation into flood risk management processes and practices across the public sector”.
“As such, expenditure contributing to the implementation of the plan is integrated into — and mostly cannot be distinguished from — expenditure incurred on other, ongoing work programmes and projects,” it said.
The C&AG noted that, while the agency’s plan identifies the groups and bodies responsible for implementing its 21 climate change adaptation actions, there is nevertheless “no formal reporting mechanism in place” for the OPW to receive progress updates regarding those targets.
It recommended that formal reporting mechanisms should be put in place in order for the agency to properly assess the progress of the climate change adaptation plan, adding that indicators should be established “to allow meaningful monitoring of progress” — recommendations which the agency agreed to in full.
The C&AG report comes at the end of a difficult fortnight for agency, with accusations of taxpayers’ money being wasted after it emerged that nearly €1.8m had been spent erecting a bike racktarget="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> and a security hut in and around the Leinster House complex.