Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): From the Department, we welcome Mr Jonathan McKee, director of rivers development; Mr Gary Quinn, acting director of rivers operations; and Mr James Kelly, head of rivers operations.

Are members agreed that the evidence be reported by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Obviously, we have the report, and I know that members were eager to go through it and look at it for themselves. As we have that, will you provide a brief five-minute opening statement, please? I will then move to members' questions. Thank you.

Mr Gary Quinn (Department for Infrastructure): Good morning, Chair and members. Thank you for the invitation and for the opportunity to update the Committee following the publication of the report into flooding in the south-east in autumn 2023. It is quite poignant that we are here today, almost one year on from the flooding event, to present the details of the report's findings and to offer the Committee the opportunity to ask questions about that. I intend to provide a very brief summary. I will try, Chair, to keep within the five minutes. I trust that you have all been provided with a copy of the report to familiarise yourselves with its content.

By way of background, it is important to explain the extreme event in the south and east. Northern Ireland experienced its wettest May to October on record since 1890. In other words, it was the wettest six months in over 130 years. October was then exceptionally wet, with double the normal amount of monthly rainfall. Storm Babet occurred in mid-October, unleashing somewhere in the region of 100 millimetres to 150 millimetres of rain on the Mournes. That was followed by another significant downfall of 100 millimetres to 180 millimetres of rainfall across the region at the end of the month. That exceptional series of events led to the flooding of over 600 properties, including 200 homes.

It is important to point out why we needed the review. The last review had been conducted in 2017. That was on the flooding in the north-west that impacted on a number of homes and properties. The scale and nature of the event last year triggered a joint organisational learning review, and that was led and chaired by me under the auspices of the flooding review group. That was in keeping with the Northern Ireland civil contingencies framework.

A number of people participated in the review, and it was important that we had a wide spread of involvement. That included representatives from the Executive Office, the Department for Infrastructure and the Department for Communities, but it also included representatives from DAERA, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council. The emergency services and civil contingency partners were also represented. It was a very large multi-agency piece, and the importance of that cannot be overstated. We also enlisted the help of an independent engineering consultant by the name of Jacobs. That is important because a lot of hydrometric information was gathered and captured. As you know, the report runs to 90-plus pages, with an executive summary and appendices that give a lot of detail on the rainfall, what occurred over that period and the causation factors.

We look at the importance of the review from two distinct angles. One is looking at the preparation, response and recovery from a multi-agency perspective, and the other is the technical components and what caused the flooding in each of the areas. In the review, we really looked at the four major urban areas that were impacted — Downpatrick, Newcastle, Portadown and Newry — but we appreciate that there was widespread flooding across a wider geographical area, from north Down right across to Armagh. Like those before it, the review provides a look back at events to help us shape the future. It needs to be considered as a springboard to help us make further improvements, not only in flood risk management but in civil contingency arrangements.

I will not go too deep into the report, but I will give you a flavour of what it contains. As I said, it is 90-plus pages, and it looks at the probability of rainfall and floods and tries to explain that. It looks at the timeline of events, such as what led up to the emergency event, how we responded, when we stood up our major emergency response plan and so on. It also looks at existing and proposed defences at each location; the multi-agency roles and responsibilities; the debriefs that occurred during the preparation of the report; and the likely causes of flooding by area and the performance of existing defences.

As you may know, some of your colleagues attended stakeholder engagement days in Newry, Downpatrick and Portadown on 27 and 28 March. It was very important to capture some of the background information, particularly from those who were in Downpatrick, Portadown and elsewhere during the flooding event.

The report's key findings are documented in our letter, but, for completeness, I will go over them. The existing flood defences performed well in the four towns that were most impacted by the severe flooding: Downpatrick, Newcastle, Newry and Portadown. In Newcastle and Newry, existing drainage systems were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of water. In Downpatrick, the Quoile tidal barrier served its vital purpose of protecting Downpatrick from tidal flooding. However, the limiting factor in the drainage of the Quoile river is, as many of you know, the average level of Strangford lough. In Newry, the canal was operated effectively during the flood, but there were limitations on flood storage around the canal. That is a short synopsis, but we are happy to answer questions on any aspect of the findings.

In addition to stakeholder engagement, we presented the draft publication to the public at open days in June 2024 in Portadown, Downpatrick and Newry. There were around 60 attendees in total. That gave them an insight into what the report would look like. The final report was published on 30 July. It contains 22 recommendations across two areas. As I mentioned, 12 of the recommendations look at the multi-agency response, and 10 look at flood defence, drainage systems and other technical aspects.

The key recommendations of the report, in summary, call for consideration of the viability of a flood forecasting and warning system for Northern Ireland; the need to build community resilience in response to flooding; and how best to ensure that residents and businesses are better informed about insurance and financial assistance. There are also recommendations that partners examine their organisational resilience and that education on and awareness of flooding be improved. I will not go through the rest of the recommendations because I appreciate that you may have questions and comments. Again, we are happy to discuss them further.

To conclude, it is important to see the report as a look back at events that is critical for us all, not just in flood risk management but in the multi-agency community. It helps us to put forward improvements in flood risk management. It also helps us to maintain the profile and importance of that work across the public and government, especially in light of climate change and the potential for an increase in episodes of that nature. I can point to examples across Europe. Many people in the room will have seen those examples of severe flooding this year. The report is very important to us. It not only serves as a reminder of the difficulties and impacts that can occur but follows on from the reports in 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2012, so it supports the idea that we need to focus on flood risk management and its importance to all of society here.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. We appreciate your time. I am sorry that you were brought in slightly late: our previous evidence session ran over time. The report comes after the event, and it is about the south-east, but how often do you do such reports for across the regions in Northern Ireland?

Mr Quinn: The previous major report was in 2017. We look at it critically. When flooding occurs, as it did more recently in Eglinton and Drumahoe, we look at it internally and have conversations with our multi-agency partners, but we do not necessarily produce a report of this scale. The size, impact and extreme nature of the event triggered the most recent report. We have conversations with the Executive Office on the scale and complexity of an event, which may lead to a report of that nature and size.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): How will we measure the outcomes of the report?

Mr Quinn: That is a good question. Measurement will be based on the 22 recommendations. How successful we are in implementing the recommendations will be the key.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): What is the timescale for implementing them?

Mr Quinn: Some of them are quick wins that we are working away to resolve as quickly as possible. Others are much more complex in origin and require conversations and discussions with other Departments. Ultimately, we would like to see them all implemented within 24 months. That may seem a long time, but, when we look at the previous reports and the amount of work and engagement with others that was required, we see that as a reasonable time frame. That said, a flooding review recommendations group will form a timeline and provide more detailed project management plans for individual aspects.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): So, the matrix for successful outcomes is the success of how the plans have been implemented?

Mr Quinn: I would say so. I will bring Jonathan in on that, because he has been involved in previous reports and has a better insight into how those evolved and were incorporated in flood risk management plans.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I asked that because success might look very different to the Department than it does to people on the ground.

Mr Jonathan McKee (Department for Infrastructure): On flood risk management, I will take a step back. The two documents that guide our work are our flood risk management plan, which runs from 2021 to 2027, and our 10-year asset management plan, which runs from 2020 to 2030. Those documents give us the focus for all the areas that are at flood risk here. The review was generated because there was a flooding incident: the driver for it was the flooding that occurred. Such reviews do not happen routinely every so many years in the way that the flood risk management plan — the umbrella document — does.

The recommendations are very clear on the progression of schemes and the provision of flood forecasting. We will know whether the tangible benefits to society are in place, so it will be easy to measure whether they are being provided. The benefit of that in past reviews, for example, was to develop community resilience. We have done that, and that has proven to be successful. We have invested more in our hydrometric infrastructure, which is infrastructure that monitors water levels in rivers and allows us to respond and tell communities what the river levels are when there is an emergency. Those are really practical, tangible infrastructure investments that people can see are in place. Therefore, their success is easy to understand and to measure.

There are other recommendations around communication. We have made big improvements in recent years on the communication of flood risk, the production of flood maps and engaging with communities and explaining their risk. We get feedback from them as part of that open engagement as to how successful that is, which allows us to tailor our approach. If we initially engage with a community and find that the message is not being properly understood — maybe we are not explaining it well enough — we can adjust our style so that the recommendation is, ultimately, successful.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): You mentioned flood maps. How often are they reviewed and how often does engagement take place with councils in relation to flood mapping? I know that that is a broader question, but a lot of homes and businesses were flooded during that particular incident.

Mr McKee: The flood risk management plan, which I mentioned earlier, runs for a six-year cycle. Within that six-year cycle, there are key milestones every two years. For the first two years, you make a critical assessment or a reassessment of the areas of known flood risk. In the next two years, you undertake a review of flood maps, and in the last two years, you review the overall plan again. The flood maps are reviewed once every six years. They can also be reviewed if we have a significant flooding event and get more information that could inform or change our mapping. It can also change if, for example, there is an alteration to our climate change guidance that causes us to reconsider the flows that might occur in a watercourse as a result of climate change. That, in turn, might make the overall flood map bigger.

We communicate that information by sending it out into the community resilience groups and to our key stakeholders. Even this week, we are running a social media campaign to promote our flood maps. We are getting that information out as far and wide as we can. Hopefully, in that way, communities at flood risk, not just public bodies and so forth, can start to appreciate the extent, if any, of that risk.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I have one last question, which is about the community resilience groups. I have concerns, as a representative, that those groups are not that resilient when it comes to a flood incident. I feel that, often, it is all on the community for their response to a flood incident. What tangible support can be given by agencies when there is a flood incident, whether it is in the south-east, Londonderry or Fermanagh? When an incident is happening, the communities are up to their eyes trying to protect their homes and livelihoods.

Mr McKee: Gary can come in on that in a minute. The community resilience piece that we have developed has been going for just over 10 years. Each community is different: their appetites for resilience are different and their understanding of what they can and cannot do is different. We tailor support to suit that. Some are more resilient than others. However, it is about not government stepping away from its responsibilities and just leaving it all on the community; it is an extra layer of support. A resilience group's being in place does not mean that we will not respond, that we will respond less or that we will have fewer resources with which to respond. It is an extra layer of support. Anything that they can do is a positive step forward.

On the type of support that we offer, we can engage with communities, share with them information around weather forecasts and weather warnings that we use to gear up our emergency response, help them to develop community plans and help them with sandbag storage. If it is of benefit, we can provide them with a water level text alert system. Those are all practical, tangible steps that communities can avail themselves of. That helps them to be alerted in time and to deploy the resources that they can readily access. We will do anything that we can to help them within our responsibilities. It is in our interests to be as supportive as we can.

Mr Quinn: We provided the Committee with a list of the groups. As Jonathan said, some are more proactive than others. You tend to find that groups in areas in which there is some degree of recurrent flooding are more active than those in other areas. Eglinton and Drumahoe are good examples of that: there is a really good community group in Eglinton. We have tried to re-engage with the groups since the flooding. We have been engaging very closely with the Newry regional community resilience group, we have had some conversations with the Downpatrick group and we are meeting the Newcastle group again on Friday, which James is leading on. We will offer whatever support we can. The Newry piece is slightly different, in that the group is led more by businesses. We are finding new challenges with that piece, but we are trying to rise to them; we will try to do whatever we can within the resources that are available to help those people.

Ultimately, we would like to develop a flood forecasting centre, which you will have seen in the recommendations. However, in the interim, it is about communication. It is about having the text alert system that Jonathan talked about and providing interim measures until we get to a point at which we have a fully functioning, well-developed piece that reaches out right across Northern Ireland, not just to the communities that have been impacted. We will see with climate change that such events can happen anywhere — it happened to happen in the south and east — and that is what we really need to be prepared for. It all ties together. It is a large jigsaw.

Mr Stewart: Part of my question has been asked. It is about the multi-agency, cross-departmental and community response. I represent a coastal area that includes Carrickfergus and Larne. Regrettably, with rising rainwater and rising tides, we have seen more and more coastal flooding, and, unfortunately, when the response happens, it feels as though it is more by accident than design. When such events happen, who is the overall czar? Who coordinates the response? I have seen myself, along with other volunteers, rocking up with sandbags because no one really knows the first port of call when flooding happens. Is it the Department? Is it the council? Is it a combination of three or four bodies? Who coordinates it?

Mr Quinn: We are the lead Department for flooding, so the coordination role is ours. If you look at what happened in the south and east, you will see that the PSNI took the lead role, particularly because of the flooding that occurred in the early stages, but we then took on that role. We lead from a strategic command perspective. We met over 14 or 15 times during that period.

A good example of what happens with the coastal piece is last weekend. We led from the front. The coastal piece is slightly different, in that you tend to get more of a heads-up. We get daily forecasts from Aberdeen about tidal and surge events. We were able to prepare and took some precautionary measures along Cutters Wharf in Stranmillis. We get a wee bit more time with the coastal piece. The difficulty is with how the event falls out. In the south and east event, we knew that the extreme rainfall was coming, but we did not know exactly how that was going to fall out. We had all our engineers primed for a situation that could see rainfall anywhere in Northern Ireland. It so happens that the Mournes received an amber warning at one stage and further rain fell, so we had to divert our resources there. We take the lead, but we have many conversations with our multi-agency partners. That work is, perhaps, not seen, so maybe there is an issue with how we communicate the work that goes on behind the scenes. It is fair to say that much of our work is unseen.

Mr Stewart: Granted, it may be more sporadic in coastal areas. I appreciate the work that was done at the weekend, but I am talking more about protecting homes when an event happens and the instant reaction. In the initial minutes after people start experiencing flooding, I am curious to know when the emergency services' role starts, versus the council's role and people power on the ground.

Mr Quinn: We will have those calls; we will have a local impact assessment call. James will give you an example of what happened over the weekend, because it probably best illustrates how we respond to such events.

Mr James Kelly (Department for Infrastructure): Thanks for your question. We get a weather warning from the Met Office a certain amount of time in advance, and, every day, we get coastal updates and coastal alerts regarding the coast and shore. Also, if severe weather is coming, a severe weather warning is initiated and shared by the Met Office. A medium-impact warning — there is a matrix if it reaches a certain threshold — is the catalyst for a call with all our partners together. That is coordinated by our resilience colleagues, and all the relevant people are involved, including councils, blue light services, ourselves, other parts of the Department and other Departments. It is all about shared awareness among the people of what is coming and of what might be coming. Everybody checks in. These things, inevitably, happen at the weekend, so everybody checks in to see where we are with our severe weather. It could be a wind event, a surge event, a rain event or something different. There are different parts in the severe weather action plan to which different stakeholders and multi-agency partners will be alert. If there is a threat to life, or a potential threat to life, the police will lead, as Gary said. If it is a less significant event, we are the lead Department for severe weather. We coordinate what the others do. Everybody still has their areas of responsibility, but it is about having a focal point for coming together and agreeing a plan.

Mr Quinn: In November 2022, a tidal event occurred in Belfast. You might not have heard of it, because we dealt with it, but it moved from an issue of flooding to an issue of risk, because it occurred around Halloween. There were a lot of partygoers in and around Belfast at the time. The PSNI took control of that because of the risks, particularly given the night that it was.

Mr Stewart: That is useful to know. Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I was fascinated watching the tidal defences go up at the Lagan at the weekend. I was watching some of the videos, which were really interesting.

Mr McMurray: I will crack on until you tell me to houl my whisht. [Laughter.]

I thank the gentlemen for coming in. I will touch on it in a minute, but when it comes to communication, you have been very good. I have been in communication with you at various times, so I appreciate that.

This review report's publication is timely, because we are a year on. I will not lie: a lot of residents are hypersensitive, and rightly so. What solutions are being looked at to the surface flooding issues in Newry and Newcastle that affected residents?

Mr Quinn: In relation to surface water —.

Mr McMurray: The cause of the floods was attributed to surface water flooding. What solutions are being looked at?

Mr Quinn: That has to be taken forward by the group as part of the recommendations, because it involves not only us but NI Water and DFI Roads. There is a combination of factors there. That is one of the recommendations in the report. We have had preliminary discussions with those agencies, and we are meeting again with the local communities resilience groups. We have met the Downpatrick and Newry groups, and we are meeting the Newcastle group on Friday to expand on the related issues, problem solve and implement the recommendations in a meaningful way that ensures that the responsible agencies take action.

Mr McKee: As you know, we are developing flood alleviation proposals for Newry and Downpatrick. Newry's, in particular, are well developed, because that work commenced earlier. As we work through the proposals to deal with flooding from the river, it becomes more obvious as to where the real surface water problems are and what infrastructure might be needed. The recommendations in the review are timely, because, as we are working on schemes and identifying the areas that will have an issue with surface water, we can bring the recommendations to bear. That will allow ourselves, other parts of the Department and NI Water to come together to see what can be done on some of the surface water issues. There could be a need to upgrade pumping stations to lift water up, out and over the defences and into rivers that might be at a higher level. Those are the technical solutions that may, or may not, be viable, but we most definitely are focused on findings solutions.

A lot of investment is needed in flood risk management. As we take forward our flood alleviation programme, a spotlight will be put on what remains, which is the surface water problem. We cannot invest in infrastructure that deals just with flood risk from the sea or from rivers and have society still feeling that it is still subject to flood risk because there is still a surface water issue. The recommendations in the review are really timely and helpful in that regard. We will definitely be focused on that.

Mr McMurray: That is good to know, but — I will say this out loud — you talked about 24 months, and Newcastle had a flooding event three years before the one last year. Such events do not happen once in 50 years any more. Do you know what I mean? We have touched on that, but it needs to be said out loud.

I have asked this, and will continue to do so, although it is mentioned in the report: what interim measures are being looked at for Downpatrick? The rainfall has not been too bad this October — the fields are not flooded as they were previously — but what interim measures are being looked at to put the residents and constituents in Downpatrick at ease?

Mr McKee: There are two parts, to give a full answer. One concerns what the Department has done since last year, and the other concerns the detail on the complexity of developing a flood alleviation scheme so that we can get a proposal that is right. Gary, will you and James deal with the interim piece? I will then cover the scheme.

Mr Quinn: Yes. We have to look at the wider piece across the country, not just the Downpatrick piece. We have accelerated the Downpatrick feasibility study, and we have communicated with you on that. Our capital teams are driving forward the Portadown and Newry flood alleviation schemes. Our ops teams were very busy immediately after the flooding. We removed a lot of detritus and debris. We are not saying that that caused the flooding but we had to remove that because of the impact of the flooding. We have enhanced maintenance across the Downpatrick, Newry and Portadown areas. James, do you want to add anything?

Mr Kelly: Downpatrick has particular circumstances, with the Quoile barrier keeping Strangford lough out and being the limiting factor in water levels down there. The Quoile barrier has 14 flap valves. We have cleaned, serviced and reset the tidal gates and made sure that they are functioning properly. There are a couple of fish passes there, and we have put new motors on them to make sure that they remain fully automatic to maximise the potential for discharge. Maintenance has been done on the plank drain — you will be familiar with it, although others may not — to remove any potential blockages and weed across the summertime. Weed does not necessarily cause a hydraulic problem, but it can cause concern among people who look at the water course, so material has been removed from there and the Saul Street stream.

You will be aware of the work that was done in the Quoile river to remove material that had been carried down and was lying across the bridges and gates at the time. That work was ongoing during the flooding event because the material kept coming. Even over recent months, more work has been done there to remove material that could go into the river. Trees and overhanging branches that could compound difficulties or cause concern have been trimmed back in an environmentally sensitive manner. There is potential for material to build up in some of the wider stretches of the Quoile beyond the reach of our long-reach machines. We have had an amphibious vehicle out there of late, making sure that any weed or accumulations of stuff that could cause a flooding problem at the Quoile barrage or at either of the bridges upstream are removed. Some of the bridges have good spans. The Killyleagh Road bridge is not too bad, but the Belfast Road bridge is a bit narrower.

It is really about just keeping an eye on it, doing our maintenance and inspections and satisfying ourselves that it has its full capacity. It is limited by the constraints that are there — the bridges and things — but the main constraint is the Quoile barrier and keeping Strangford lough out. I am not sure whether it brings any comfort, but the flooding emergency that occurred last year was caused by a sequence of significant heavy rainfall events that compounded things, one after the other. Gary explained the rarity of those rainfall events and the problems that they created.

We have also mentioned the feasibility studies, the longer-term things that are coming and the maintenance work that is going on, but, as more immediate action for the people there, we have been engaging with the community fairly recently. Last week, I engaged with the Downpatrick regeneration working group. We are looking to gather contacts so that we can establish connections and communications, share those messages, point to rain warnings and alerts and share that awareness so people can make decisions based on the improved awareness that they will, hopefully, have. It is about familiarisation, communication, sharing the messages and, further to that, consideration of having, maybe, a couple of stores for sandbags in the community as we have in other areas. That is not to replace others' responsibility or duty to respond but to help those who are on-site as part of the initial reaction until others come. There are various different things.

There is also the potential for homeowners to apply to the homeowner flood protection grant scheme. That is property protection for homes that flooded homeowners can consider. Another thing that has happened this year is that, on the Minister's instruction, we reviewed the homeowner flood protection grant scheme to relax the criteria for it in order to make it available to more people than it might have been previously.

Mr Quinn: I will come in, if you do not mind, to close out on that question.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Very briefly.

Mr Quinn: We have done a few other things. We recognise the need for interim measures in those extreme events. There could potentially be further flooding; that is why we opened up the eligibility criteria. There were some conversations in this room before about how awkward and bureaucratic the scheme was, so we hope that we have lessened that burden for people.

In addition, we have availed ourselves of additional funding, and we have quickly replenished our stocks. We took about £1·2 million to improve our plant and equipment. We have learned a few lessons from the event's scale and intensity. We had to move people from all over the country to Downpatrick, so we are trying to improve that as part of the resilience piece, because, if it happens again, we will need that.

We also have appropriate training. We have updated our internal procedures and major emergency response plan in light of everything that happened. It was a very large single event. As we have talked about, the previous one was in 2017, and that was not even as impactful as this one, because the sheer economic damage that was suffered was much greater than that suffered in the north-west.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Andrew, do you want to ask a final question?

Mr McMurray: I need to choose one now.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I will come back to you if we have time.

Mr McMurray: You mentioned communications and communicating downwards with groups and such. That is grand. We will get more on that. You mentioned the meeting on Friday, and, hopefully, I will be there. We will see what comes out of it, so I will not pre-empt that. With regard to the flood review group and the bimonthly meetings, how do you communicate with other agencies in DFI? You referenced your maintenance, but how is maintenance by other agencies — DFI Roads or NI Water — communicated so that things are cleared out to make sure that surface water flooding is not an issue, if that makes sense?

Mr Quinn: It does make sense. It has been communicated. Those agencies have been asked a series of questions. Certainly, political representatives have held other organisations' feet to the fire about their maintenance responsibilities. As a Department, we can tell our colleagues; we give them information in respect of concerns that political representatives have. We pass all that information across, and we have those conversations.

From the flooding review recommendations, you will get a piece that is more formalised than those conversations. We tend to have individual communications from different areas, political representatives and local contacts that we have in DFI Rivers and DFI Roads and from talking to NI Water. The review piece formalises all that and means that the communications and actions taken against them have to be recorded.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Before I come to Cathal, I want to say that you can understand that, from a public perspective, it does not even seem that people in the Department are speaking to one another.

Mr McKee: There are good lines of communication between us and our colleagues in Roads and NI Water. The flood strategy steering group allows us to chair all the drainage organisations and bring to attention issues that emerge. Because of the importance of this review, a separate governance group has been set up, which will, again, give us further opportunity to get the messages that Andrew is talking about into the ears of the other flood risk management organisations.

I have not fully answered your question at the very outset, Andrew, and I will do that briefly. Since the flooding last year, we have carried out a lot of work to give our infrastructure its very best opportunity to take flood water away from communities. We are developing flood alleviation proposals in Downpatrick, Newry, Portadown and many other locations. It takes quite a while to develop those proposals, and, very often, there is a perception that government is dragging its feet or going slowly. That is absolutely not the case. Previous generations have invested in areas and carried out the easy-to-do schemes. What is left now for us to do is to revisit some of these areas and to see whether there are any further works that can be provided. That is a really challenging piece of work because economic viability then becomes a real issue in that the cost of the works is far greater than the damages that you are trying to avoid. Rather than just closing the file and saying that there is no scheme, we keep the books open, so to speak, to do everything that we can to try to find a viable proposal for communities. Drumahoe and Eglinton are classic examples of that.

On the surface of it, it seems that these schemes are taking years, but the reality of it is that they are very complex and we are doing our best to find a solution. There will be a similar process with Downpatrick, and we have accelerated that. We have carried out the surveys, and we are looking at the optioneering, but there is a gap between a flooding event, our responding quickly to do the maintenance and a scheme being delivered. In that gap, the community resilience piece is the best thing that can be done to make communities aware that this is a risk that they are going to be living with for the rest of their lives, whether they are living or working in the area.

We cannot give an assurance that an area will never flood again. It is unwise to put that message out there and give communities that message. Flood risk is only going to increase, and we need everyone's help, including that of elected Members, to get the message out that government needs to be cohesive around this. That brings us right back to the point about the surface water issue and how we all need to work together to tackle all the sources of flooding. We will do our very best to do that.

Mr Boylan: Thanks very much for the presentation. On that, Jonathan, what is your assessment of the preparedness of the agencies? I know that you are making a specific point, but we have had floods in the past. Secondly, how exactly is the Department working with communities to build up community resilience? My final question is on financial supports. Has the Department the capacity to help people with the grants process, and what has been the uptake so far?

Mr McKee: Do you mind repeating your first question?

Mr Boylan: The first one is about the preparedness of the statutory agencies. We have all been there with sandbags and everything else. It is an interesting point that James touched on about who takes responsibility.

Mr McKee: You are all aware that the review has been published. Some have welcomed it, and we are pleased to have it as a document that we can see as a springboard. There has been some criticism of the review and of the multi-agency response, and I think that it is important to put on record what went well. We were completely switched on to the weather that was coming, preparations were being made the weekend before, the communication around the response was good and the cooperation from multi-agency partners was good. That does not happen spontaneously. We have spent years developing multi-agency response plans — really from 2012 — to the point where other organisations and other Administrations now see that we have used our small regional size to our advantage. There are short communication lines, lots of personal relationships in organisations and lots of commitment from people.

The multi-agency response is really effective. My view is that it is as good as it can be, but the difficulty in responding to flooding is that you do not know what areas are going to start to flood first. You are faced with real operational scenarios. For example, if there is a rapidly evolving situation in the south-east, do you commit all your resources into the south-east when the weather could turn in the west, for example, and you could find that you had stripped out all your resources from the west and were left vulnerable there? The emergency response for flooding can never be perfect. The big question is this: is it as good as it can be? In my view, it is.

You asked about whether we could assist with financial support. So far, councils and the Department for the Economy have been involved in that. Our expertise in DFI Rivers is best focused on delivering our responsibilities to help to build the emergency response capacity, to help with community resilience capacity and to push on with the schemes. We have a limited number of people. If we were to diversify into giving assistance with grants, that would only take people away from delivering the projects that we need to deliver. My honest view is that we are better to focus on what is currently on our books and let other organisations that have expertise in the administration of grants and support help with that.

Mr Boylan: Fair enough.

Mr Baker: In his response to Andrew, James comprehensively answered a lot of what I was going to ask. I will not make him repeat himself. I will take it in a different direction.

When I was a councillor in Belfast, you were very good at alerting councillors to weather warnings and possible events in Belfast. I am thinking about community resilience. Do you know whether there is an uptake of that approach across all councils? In Belfast, we were always good at that when there was an emergency situation.

Mr Quinn: We have about 40 of those groups. They are very much led by places that have been impacted on by flooding; that is the difficulty. It is fair to say — I am looking to Jonathan — that that ties in with our flood risk management plan. Those are the same areas that were identified in the plan. Communities need to be proactive. We are certainly willing to help and to give information through the text alert and email systems when new people come forward to look for that. Those 40-odd groups have been established, but we see that the number of groups is growing; there may be 43 or 44 groups now.

Mr Baker: I have said this before: it has come from my time as a councillor. Flooding would not be a major incident in the area that I represent — it was bins all the time — but one home flooded is one too many. Having the sandbags ready and accessible to the community is a huge help. We were watching the storm over the weekend. I have no doubt that you had a really busy weekend and were doing really good work, but we were also ready in case the wind turned into something completely different. It can change within an hour. We went from yellow to amber in no time —

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Sorry, Danny, is there a question?

Mr Baker: I know that it is not a question.

Mr Boylan: I am proud of you, but do not record that.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I have to be fair.

Mr Baker: It is about building resilience. Good work is being done. Sometimes, when you see those big events, it is easy to point fingers.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. We appreciate the work that goes on.

Mr Durkan: Thanks, gentlemen, for coming to give evidence. You outlined the difficulties that your agency and all agencies have when working together to respond to flood events. It literally never rains but it pours. Jonathan, you said that you are content that the response was and is as good as it can be. You will always be open to criticism, a lot of which may come from the trauma experienced by victims of flooding. When you say that it is as good as it can be, do you mean that it is as good as it can be given the resource that you have? Would greater resource lead to a better response?

Mr McKee: It is entirely possible that a rainfall event that could cause flooding of such a magnitude as to overwhelm our ability to respond and our multi-agency partners' and the infrastructure's ability to respond. That is entirely possible. Obviously, with more people and more resources, you can do more things. I am still of the view that the emergency response last October was effective and appropriate. We would have run into difficulties if Storm Ciarán had come across Ireland, but it did not. That would have resulted in significant amounts of rainfall, which would really have tested the resilience of our teams. Team members gave everything they had, cancelling family events and working extremely long hours to do their very best for the communities in which they live and work. A lot of our staff, particularly our operational squads, live in the areas that were flooded and know the people and shop owners affected, so there is real commitment from them.

We do not know the scale of a potentially catastrophic flood, so that is where we need to recognise that the emergency response could be overwhelmed and start the conversation around living with flooding. For example, making communities resilient and making people aware that, when they are recovering from a flooding emergency to, perhaps, change their infrastructure so that it recovers from a flood faster the next time. Those are difficult and alarming conversations, but it is the reality. To not start grappling with them now, I believe, will disadvantage a future generation.

You mentioned criticism. Absolutely, people suffer from flooding, and we hear their grief — that is the proper term — at the loss of their property and possessions and the impact on their businesses. We accept that. It is difficult, though, when you read in the press that the review could have been written by primary-school children. That is clearly not true. It is not helpful. Our teams, which have professional expertise, are also human beings who have put a lot into this. That that needs to be respected is an important point. We have met those who have suffered — for example, the people in the Newry business community — and their attitude to pick up and keep on going is exemplary, and we will do all that we can, within our gift, to support them.

Mr Durkan: I like the way that we came in about the north-east and we ended up in the north-west. They went there before I did. I am going to go there, and it is not my fault, Chair.

You mentioned that you update existing flood maps every six years but, in the event of an extreme incident, you update it in between. What way does that tie in with planning? Is PPS15 still fit for purpose? Are existing applications being judged against one-in-100-year events where we have subsequently seen even more severe events?

Mr McKee: I understand your question. The flood risk management plans are in a six-year cycle. If there was no flooding, those plans would still be reviewed and direct us on what we need to do. Even in areas that have never flooded before, if we knew they were at risk, we would look to invest to prevent that. Our maps, as I outlined, are reviewed as part of that six-year cycle. Our planning policy here is strong, and we are thankful for that, and we advise the planning authorities on flood risk. The maps that they use, which give them the indication that they should consult with us, are our most recent flood maps. They are updated and put online. We do not hold them until they are six years old and then have a grand day of publication, for want of a better term. As we update them, we keep refreshing them so that the best information is out there as soon as possible.

Mr Durkan: I will go to the north-west. Where did the Department's plan for living with water in Derry go? It was launched and then seemed to sink without a trace. That might be a question for someone else, but you guys might be dealing with it. You mentioned Eglinton and Drumahoe and the particular complexities in those areas. Could you provide an update on those?

Mr McKee: Certainly. Drumahoe is in the design phase and it is hoped to have that complete early in 2026. For Eglinton, there is a review of options and we hope to have that complete next spring. We are happy to share those options and the outcome of any of our work, at any stage, to help the communities understand that we are still focussed on trying to deliver a solution. At one stage, it looked as though proposals in Drumahoe were not going to be viable. That goes back to my earlier point that it would have been easy to close the book and said that no viable scheme in the time frame looked reasonable, but, rather than doing that, we wanted to keep it open. Flooding occurred subsequently, in 2022, which gave us some further information to work on and a viable scheme seems to have re-emerged.

Mr Durkan: Finally, I welcome improvements to the homeowner flood protection grant scheme, but could you furnish us, in writing, with details of those changes to the criteria?

Mr McKee: Yes, certainly.

Mr K Buchanan: Thank you, gentlemen, for coming along. I have several questions. Let us talk about flood risk management plans. Give me an example. Pick Cookstown — why not Cookstown? What flood risk management plan covers Cookstown that would answer some of the questions of this report? Are you with me? So, what is the flood risk management plan for Cookstown?

Mr McKee: The very first cycle of flood risk management plans had 20 areas of significant flood risk, and the next cycle, the 2021-27, has 12.

Mr K Buchanan: What do you define as an "area"?

Mr McKee: It is usually a town or city.

Mr K Buchanan: OK, fair enough.

Mr McKee: You might look at it and say, "My town or city is not on it. Does the Department not care about the flood risk there?". That is not the case. These are areas where the level of flooding is over, in the more recent plans, a threshold of damages that we would regard as significant. Over £1 million of damages is regarded as significant and that would cause a settlement to be considered as a significant flood risk area.

In those plans, though, there is a whole range of what we call regional measures, which deal with community resilience, emergency response and the flood alleviation proposals that we are going to develop in other areas. So, no area that we know is at flood risk is left out. For example, Drumahoe and Eglinton were not in the areas of significant flood risk in the flood risk management plan, and yet we are proposing to develop schemes there because we know that there is a flood risk. Downpatrick was in the first list of flood risk management plans, the 2015-21 list. It is not in the 2021-27 list and someone could ask, "Does that mean that work in Downpatrick has stopped, or there are no proposals there?". Not at all. We developed a transitional list, so that no community was actually dropped off a list and work stopped.

As an organisation, no one wants to manage flood risk better than we do. We do not want to have any community disadvantaged if at all possible, and we really want to have viable schemes going forward. In the Cookstown area, if we were aware of an area of risk, that would go through the same proposals — assessment, feasibility, business case to check whether it is viable — as any other settlement.

Mr K Buchanan: In this report, it says at A10:

etc. Then, at B2, it talks about:

I go back to Cookstown, but this report is still relevant. We do not have sandbag storage in Cookstown. I requested it but was turned down. There is a local storage place two miles away. However, you have minutes, if not seconds, to get your sandbags. We have storage in Magherafelt but not in Cookstown. That is a very simple fix, but I am concerned that this £1 million figure is too high. Floods could affect 10 houses, and that would not necessarily cost £1 million.

The second point is about maintenance. There is no maintenance of the gullies, to a degree — maybe that is a wee bit blunt. You see them on the side of roads and in residential areas. I can go to gullies now and find that they are full of muck. You can have a flash flood, have 10 houses flooded, and, in 10 minutes, the sun would be shining, but less than a million quid of damage has been done. It is not a big thing, but it is a big thing to the owners of those 10 houses. There is a maintenance issue. At the start, to be fair, James, you referred to a lot of maintenance that had been carried out. However, maintenance should be carried out all the time, not after an event. We could be writing a report like this in the future for somewhere else, based on bad maintenance. Would you agree with that?

Mr McKee: Not necessarily, no. I have a number of points to make. You made a request about sandbags. We are very open to that. If an elected rep or a community leader was to come forward and say, "We would like a sandbag store here", and there was any justification for it at all, we would be very proactive and try to provide that. I am happy to hear about where that location was and see if we can revisit that. If it was, indeed, us who turned it down: I am not sure, was it —?

Mr K Buchanan: It was. It was Cookstown. The response referred to a store two miles away. We are getting very local.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Yes.

Mr K Buchanan: However, there is no time. An elected representative can be there within minutes. By the time you get a key, drive two miles out the road and get DFI — no disrespect — it is too long a time.

Mr McKee: I agree completely. I just query whether it was DFI Rivers that turned down that request. [Inaudible.]

Mr McKee: We will revisit that point.

Your second point was about how we deal with surface water, and the maintenance of gullies. It goes back to the point that Andrew made earlier. Where we are aware of issues, we will contact our colleagues in NI Water or DFI Roads, and pass that information on to them. I know that Roads colleagues appear before the Committee, and no doubt gully maintenance as part of that focus.

Mr K Buchanan: This is my final question, about staff and resources. You said that you pool all the resources together to go the south-east, and not take them away from wherever. What is your definition of staff and resources? How many people are you talking about in that October event? When you stand a team or teams up, what numbers are you talking about?

Mr McKee: James or Gary can come in with their own figure work, but are you are talking about the multi-agency response?

Mr K Buchanan: No, I am talking about DFI, as in Rivers.

Mr McKee: There are over 300 people in Rivers, and the vast majority of those will be active when we have an emergency response.

Mr K Buchanan: On the ground, as such?

Mr McKee: Not necessarily all on the ground, but they would be coordinating on the ground. We bring in staff to help from teams that, ordinarily, would not respond.

Mr Quinn: From a Rivers' industrial perspective, you are looking at just shy of 200 people. However, you add in the Roads complement, and Roads will help us a lot because it has a lot more people dispersed across the region

In relation to sandbags, the Department carries a stock of about 100,000. Those are accessed locally from the various Roads depots and Rivers depots. It is not that we do not have them dispersed across the country; we do. However, I accept your point about local resilience.

Mr Kelly: On the earlier point about being stretched, the Downpatrick flood was a focused event. In the previous year, it was Castlederg. We had operation staff from Strabane in Downpatrick. We were able to bring as much as we could and everybody that we could to focus on that south-east area. Harking back to that particular event, we were stretched. We had everybody we could get — about 160 out of 223 — on the ground there. Had that event been more widespread, however, we would have been more stretched. I just want to reinforce that point.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): The point that has really come out of this for me is flood forecasting and how key that will be in helping us to learn more about where flooding could happen. The cost of the incident in the south-east was estimated to be £40 million. With regard to the Department's assessment of the overall financial impact and the cost of getting flood forecasting, I am assuming that had flood forecasting been in place, the likelihood of a cost of £40 million would have been a lot lower.

Mr Quinn: One would hope so, yes, and we have been making that argument. The monetisation around this is difficult, and it is difficult for other jurisdictions as well. We have been fact-finding on issues and have looked north, south, east and west. We have been to Scotland to look at its flood forecasting centre. I have to provide a realistic expectation and say that it takes a long time to develop a flood forecasting centre. That said, what we are doing in the interim, particularly on regional community resilience, will give communities really good information.

It took Scotland six to 10 years to develop a fully fledged flood forecasting centre, but, over the first three to five years, you get good benefits. It has been shown throughout Europe, particularly this year, that forecasting has saved many lives. In economic damage, yes, it can help, but it is very difficult to put a figure on that. Other nations as well as ourselves are struggling with that balance between economic benefit versus the injection of finance.

Mr Boylan: Jonathan, is PPS15 fit for purpose, or does it need to be reviewed?

Mr McKee: PPS15 is falling away as councils develop their own local development plans. However, they are largely mirroring the wording of PPS15. We have a dedicated staff resource to engage with councils to give them the best information so that those policies are still strong in local development plans.

Mr Boylan: That is going to be a key element.

Mr McKee: Exactly. That is a key piece.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We appreciate what staff do when those incidents occur. It is a crisis situation, and we are all human. We want to put on the record our appreciation for staff, but we need to scope out how we can go forward and what we can do. We have a report, and it will be great to see some of those recommendations having successful outcomes. Thank you for your time.