Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I officially welcome Mrs Emma Bohill, chief executive of Down Business Centre, and Mr Sam Anderson, Mr Gareth Jones and Ms Sheila Maginn, who are members of the Newcastle Concerned Residents' Group. Can I seek Committee agreement that the evidence session is recorded by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I invite the witnesses to make a brief opening statement of up to 10 minutes, and then members will have questions for you. We are in your hands.

Mr Sam Anderson (Newcastle Concerned Residents' Group): Thank you all for the invitation to come and give evidence today. It is a subject that is dear to our hearts. We are the leadership team of the Newcastle regional community resilience group (RCRG), and we represent hundreds of residents whose homes have been flooded and, as nothing has changed since then, are still at risk of flooding. There are really serious issues on the ground, and one of the reasons why we still exist is that we have neighbours who are suffering from anxiety and depression and who have made expressions of suicide should their houses flood again. Therefore, we are really keen that the risk of flooding disappears at some stage.

As well as that, there are some practical and financial issues. Some people find that insurance is impossible to get, and prices are going through the roof. Not only has insurance been withdrawn by some insurance companies, such as the Post Office, but people can no longer afford to pay their insurance premiums.

We have engaged with all the agencies over the past two and a half years to try to address that topic, without much success, to be honest. We have engaged with DFI Roads, DFI Rivers, NI Water, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (NMDDC) and anybody who will listen to us, supported by our public representatives. We have met Liz Kimmins, our MP, some MLAs and local councillors.

I will move on to the substantive matter of the Bill. We will cover some things that are not directly in the Bill. It is great to see the Assembly trying to address the issue of flooding. It is definitely needed. Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) look like a really good thing for future-proofing new builds, planning and de-risking additional flooding, so we fully endorse them, but we think that their use should start straightaway. There should be no exemptions at all. There should be no weasel words that get a builder out of implementing that stuff.

Moving on to flood and waste water management, I will use an analogy and take 30 seconds to describe it. There is an expanse of one hundred yards near our area where, when it rains, the water is owned by DFI Roads. Then, when it goes into a grating, it is owned by the council. When it goes further down into the pumping station, it is owned by NI Water. When it is pumped over the wall into the river, it is owned by DFI Rivers. The water does not know that all those different organisations exist, but there is continual flooding there. There has been significant investment. You guys have invested in flood defences in our locality. There have been two big investments, but design flaws in both of those schemes have caused flooding.

The current infrastructure for dealing with waste water is absolutely broken, and additional pressures are being put on it by lots of new developments in our area. We believe that the Bill is not fit for purpose without the inclusion of actions to review existing drainage and flood protection mechanisms, such as the Burren river flood defence system, which is closest to our homes.

On a slightly different note, over the past two and a half years, we have had an interesting view of how things operate among all the agencies and people who are accountable. Water changes hands over such short distances, so it is crucial that those agencies cooperate really closely and work tightly and with urgency when things start to happen. To be perfectly frank, they do not. We have silos in this country, and it is really difficult to navigate them.

The Bill is about flooding, but you are missing an opportunity to review the governance structures around water in this country. We have sat in meetings with civil servants from all the agencies. Some of them have come together in meetings with us, and we have had to ask them to take their badges off, put them down and just talk about the problem that we are trying to solve. They say things like, "I need to take it back", "I need to go here" and "I need to go there". There is a lot of confusion between them.

In our opinion, the Bill is not fit for purpose without a review of the whole ecosystem of water governance. The agencies are very poor at communicating with us as a recognised group and with the public in general. In fact, a protocol was put in place by NI Water locally, and we asked multiple times to see it to find out what it was doing for us. We ended up having to submit a FOI request to see a two-page document. That tells you that there is an issue.

Recently, we had a meeting with NI Water. I do not know whether you are all aware of the DG5 register. It is a register that NI Water keeps of homes that were flooded, principally by sewage. We met the head of NI Water engineering investments about three weeks ago, and he explained to us that there are two properties in our area on the register but that the information on that register is used to prioritise investment of public money into defences against flooding. That data is completely shot; it does not represent the issue. We recommend that you suspend that DG5 process right now if you have the power to do so. We believe that public money is not being invested properly or prioritised properly because of the inadequacies in that process. In fact, believe it or not, a person from NI Water told us that, if there is a flood, we should not phone the flooding incident line — this is the truth — we should phone Waterline, otherwise NI Water will not record that the property has been flooded. The situation that we are in is absolutely laughable.

Gareth will now touch on a couple of things, and then Sheila will sum up.

Mr Gareth Jones (Newcastle Concerned Residents' Group): Our main focus will be on the flood prevention and remediation section of the Bill. The Bill's provisions on SuDS are good and form part of a forward-looking process that will improve things slowly. As far as we are concerned, they will have little immediate effect. SuDS are not very easy to apply retrospectively to existing developments.

Clause 6(4)(b) relates to eligibility for flood protection grants. I presume that the current system — the homeowner flood protection grant scheme, which is run by DFI — will be superseded by the proposal in the Bill. The current scheme excludes properties that were built after 2009, as does a separate insurance protection. I will not go into the fine detail — it is listed in the letter that we sent you a copy of — but the suggestion is that, post-2009, the planning system has been stronger and insisted on more measures being put in place to make new properties more robust, but that is certainly not the case. I will give a simple example. I live in a cul-de-sac of eight properties, four of which are pre-2009 and four of which are post-2009. In the floods of autumn 2023, three of those properties flooded, which were three of the newer properties. That goes against the suggestion that we are better protected. We are not. This is enabling Bill, and the eligibility is not set in stone at this stage. However, when it comes to making the enabling regulations, that is an area that needs serious consideration.

Sam touched on post-flooding recording. It is evident to us that there is no proper follow-up after a flood to try to identify what has happened and which areas have flooded. In my example, there are areas that have not been identified, and unless NI Water has recorded it, it has not happened. That means that it is looking at solutions without having a full picture. It is not all about NI Water. Within the agencies, there does not seem to be an adequate follow-up process to identify the extent of flooding. The DG5 register — a register of properties that have experienced internal and external flooding — is not complete insofar as all of the properties that have flooded have not been properly identified. That impacts on the strength of an argument for implementing any remediation works and receiving funding.

My final point is on maintenance regimes, specifically of surface-water outfalls into rivers. Our issue is with out-of-sewer flooding. The flood defence systems — flood alleviation schemes (FAS) — are in place and they work, but, when it comes to the out-of-sewer flooding, the clean surface water is unable to discharge into the river, so it backs up from those outfalls. The main focus is on one, in particular, but there are others, and we have been trying to get NI Water to confirm their condition. There is no maintenance regime. NI Water claims that there is a lack of resources, but since the flooding in 2023, those must be considered to be critical locations, and they must be inspected. We do not know whether they are operating properly, nor do NI Water and DFI Rivers. That is all from me; thank you.

Ms Sheila Maginn (Newcastle Concerned Residents' Group): I will provide a recap by highlighting two simple points about improving the drainage system in the Newcastle area, which is our advocacy here, and the economic impacts in south Down. We are basically asking you, the legislators, to please listen to us and insist that the various agencies in Northern Ireland — Northern Ireland Water, DFI Rivers, DFI Roads and planning agencies — work collaboratively to plan, develop and implement a proper drainage system and prioritise areas that have flooded multiple times, such as Newcastle.

The three of us have been flooded before. I have been flooded four times. I am sure that you are wondering about that. Two major flood walls have been built, and they have been great and are holding firm. After the Burren wall was built, however, I was out of my home for six months in 2008. Again, in 2012, my house became a little Venice: all of the garden was like a big lake, and I was surrounded. The water did not actually come in, thankfully. In 2020, there was another very bad one. I could not believe it. What is this about a one-in-100-year event? Forget about that, because all those events have happened within 15 years. I was out of my home for six months in 2023. Then, the Shimna river flood alleviation scheme was built — brilliant. We advocated for that, and we are so happy. Now we have the final, big piece of the jigsaw puzzle. The drainage system needs to be looked at as a whole, because we still have flooding. We are talking about hundreds of houses in the Bryansford, Elmgrove and Marguerite area. That whole area is one of high flood risk.

Thousands of pounds were spent on the review of flooding in the south-east. Thank you for that. It was authorised by your Committee, commissioned by Infrastructure and authorised by the Northern Ireland Executive. What did it say? Why do we have those reviews? They cost millions of pounds. Jacobs Engineering did it, as you know. It said that we need to improve:

What could be clearer? It is encapsulated by that one sentence. We ask you whether that recommendation can now be actioned. We do not expect there to be a magic wand. We know that you are busy people and that you have a lot on your plate. We know that there is no magic wand, but we ask you to please promote it and push for it because you are our last hope. As Sam and Gareth said, we have tried everyone.

We do not want another expensive review. The review has done its job. It has been very expensive. We just want sensible forward planning and action on the ground before there is another flooding catastrophe in south-east Down. We do not want that.

My second point is about the effect on the economy. You all will agree, as you all have a family and a home, that we, as taxpayers who live in a developed country, are entitled to the following basic human rights: a working sewage system, which we do not have, a proper drainage system and pumps that work properly. I have been through the pumping problems in the Marguerite area with Northern Ireland Water. The people of Newcastle have a right to live in their homes without the fear and dread of flooding every time that it rains heavily. That is a real thing, as Sam mentioned.

Believe me, this is the most important work that politicians such as you can do. Your work on the Infrastructure Committee is so important, as it underpins everything else in the economy. Newcastle is a beautiful town in the heart of Mourne country. I love it. I do not want to move from my beautiful home. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty and it is dependent on tourism. Flooding is a blight on our tourist economy in Newcastle. We have tourists, including day trippers, people who come for weekends to stay at B&Bs and guest houses, and golfers who come from America. It is such bad PR. Our businesses are adversely affected by flooding. They are big ratepayers. I think of the number of B&Bs that have been flooded in my avenue, Bryansford Avenue. They are under threat. Restaurants, bars, golf clubs, hotels are still under the threat of future flooding, as water knows no boundaries.

On the point about media and PR, we have conducted a number of interviews, as you know, over the years. Sam and I have been involved in that. I conducted 11 interviews just a few months ago, in November 2025, with local radio, TV and newspapers. The BBC has also asked me to report back to them about progress on the flooding issues in Newcastle. There may be a 'Spotlight' programme; I do not know. What should I tell them?

Mr Anderson: The summary is —

Ms Maginn: Sorry.

Mr Anderson: Are you not finished yet? Sorry.

Ms Maginn: I have one more line.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): She is flowing, Sam. I would not stop her.

Mr Anderson: I know her well.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I would not stop her.

Ms Maginn: I am no orator. After this meeting, I would really like to say to the media and whomever that you as legislators in Northern Ireland have grasped the nettle, dealt with the difficult issues and are going to knock heads together to try to ensure some collaboration between the silos and the different Departments to ensure that plans are in place and developed in our area. I can only fight and talk for my own area, but other areas are at high flood risk. Newry and Downpatrick have suffered terribly too. We ask for the areas that have been flooded multiple times to be prioritised, please.

Finally, who will report back to us and let us know what is happening in the future?

Thank you for your time, your courtesy and your attention.

Mr Anderson: To summarise, as a group, we are very disillusioned. We have done as much as we could without just being a bunch of whingers over the past two and a half years. Honestly, nothing has been delivered. We have talked to all of our MLAs, we have talked to lots of councillors, and we have talked all of the agencies. Somebody has to deliver some stuff now for us. The problem is known, and the empathy is there. I can see that you all empathise with our situation. We just need delivery.

Ms Maginn: Yes. Everybody is very nice, but it is about getting something done. Being nice does not cut the mustard, unfortunately. It is about getting it done.

Mr Anderson: We took up quite a lot of time.

Ms Maginn: Sorry, Emma.

Mrs Emma Bohill (Down Business Centre): That is a hard act to follow, I have to say.

Mr Anderson: There is a lot of commonality, I would say, between our points and those that you will raise.

Ms Maginn: Priority zones.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Emma, do you want to comment?

Mrs Bohill: It is interesting because, personally, I have never heard that side before. Obviously, I was very aware of what was going on in Newcastle, but the impact is so deep on people's personal lives. Obviously, I am here to represent the business community, which has been equally impacted. However, when you have to move out of your home for six months, that is a lot.

Ms Maginn: It is not only me but a lot of people.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): First, thank you for coming in. Sam's point about water not understanding departmental boundaries was quite a good one, and that is very true.

The Committee's role is to scrutinise and hold the Minister for Infrastructure accountable. We try to work collegiately with the Minister where we can, and we can make recommendations to her. In essence, this Committee is not a legislative body. The SuDS Bill has been referenced, and we are scrutinising that Bill. That is part of Assembly procedure, and we will make recommendations on that Bill, initially to the Department to see whether it will take amendments to it. If the Department chooses not to make amendments, I am sure that the Committee will table its own to make the Bill better and more effective. That is what the Committee is doing regarding the SuDS Bill.

We will now ask you some questions for clarity. Normally, the Chair asks the first questions, but, in the spirit of St Patrick and collegiality, because we are in South Down, I will pass to my colleague Andrew to ask the first question, and he will lead off for the Committee.

Mr McMurray: Thank you very much, Chair. Gareth, Sam, Sheila and Emma, thank you very much for coming down. I understand, to a certain degree, what you have been through without having been in it. We thank you very much. I think that everyone here has already taken a lot from your presentation, and we will certainly follow up with the Chair on certain things.

Sam, I want to start with a point that you made towards the end regarding, in the most tactful way, the disillusionment about communication to the flood resilience group, which is, essentially, what you are. The Bill might not directly affect that, but where has the communication lacking? What would you like to see? I ask that because when departmental officials reply to questions, the flood resilience groups are often referred to as a beacon of how things work well.

Mr Anderson: We know that we are held up as a beacon. We have been mentioned in Stormont Committees and in the House. The agencies do not communicate with us directly. We have meetings with them, now and again, but we call for those, and our local politicians facilitate them. Otherwise, they would not happen. There is a protocol. The document for which we submitted an FOI request is an example of that. It is a NI Water document. Due to the design flaw in the Burren defences, NI Water put in a protocol that a pump is deployed if it looks as though there is going to be heavy rain and a risk of flooding. It sources a pump and gets a couple of men to come. There is a protocol document of a couple of pages to say how that happens and how it is triggered. We are interested in that, because we think that that was the source of our flooding in 2023. It would not send us a copy or email us; in fact, no agency responds to us directly. We have to enlist the like of "Mr Andy"

over there, and other MLAs from across the political spectrum, to chase them. Agencies listen to them, and then we get information back. It got to the point where nothing was being delivered and nobody was listening to us. We could have simply kept talking to our politicians and got information. At our most recent AGM — you have the document — we tabled a motion to say that, potentially, we would wind up and cease to exist, because we were just a conduit to other people to get questions asked, and nobody was doing anything. The RCRG, which has been held up as an example of how well things can be done, is not being listened to or communicated with. Does that answer your question?

Mr McMurray: It does. I will touch on the Newcastle end of things and then go to Mrs Bohill. Gareth — Mr Jones — has gone through the items, and, Mr Anderson, you have touched on this: clause 8 relates to drainage works and the installation of pumps. Having worked and liaised with you, I know that pumps are an issue. Will you elaborate on the issue with pumps?

Mr Anderson: There is a particular pumping issue in the Marguerite area. As I mentioned, a temporary pump is brought in. There is a flood wall, and water is supposed to go through that into the Burren river. When the Burren river gets to a certain level, there is a flap that does not let water go through. That waste water then backs up around all of the streets. That was discovered. The solution was to bring in a pump and pump over the wall the water that cannot get through the hole in the wall.

Sadly, however, to take a more systematic overall view of it, we sat down with NI Water, which told us that it was putting an investment case in place to put a permanent pump in that locality to pump the water over the wall when it needs to. We asked them, "Have you checked with DFI Rivers how much water the Burren river can take before somebody else, elsewhere, is flooded, because you will be pumping into the Burren flood defences and the flood wall?". NI Water said, "Oh, no, we didn't do that", and we said, "Will you do that, because we really want that pump, but we don't want you to cause lots of flooding elsewhere?". There is a systematic thinking issue on the topic across all of the agencies. They sit in their offices and do not talk to each other. It is weird. Actually, it is not weird: I do not want to use the word "scandalous", but it is inefficient in addressing the issues of flooding in this country.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Not just flooding, Sam.

Mr Anderson: I know, but we are here on our specialist subject.

Mr Jones: I will expand on that. The issue with out-of-sewer flooding is that the water cannot go where it is supposed to go, so it needs to be pumped across. Theoretically, that is where the water is going anyway, so, if it is pumped over, there is no real difference in the total volume within the flood alleviation scheme area. Therefore, that should not be an issue, and it should have been considered in the design criteria for the flood alleviation scheme in the first place.

Mr Anderson: There is a plan for several thousand more homes to feed waste water into that infrastructure. A pump might be brought in to solve the current problem, but will it take care of everything that is coming?

Ms Maginn: It is about future planning.

Mr Anderson: It is all linked. Sorry, Gareth.

Mr Jones: No, no; it is a valid point. It will, obviously, be cumulative, but it will take a long period of time. The SuDS element will offset that as well a little bit with the natural drainage, as opposed to the pipe drainage from hard surfaces.

Mr Anderson: Gareth mentioned timing, which is really interesting. We really appreciate the Assembly's looking at flooding, but I do not want anybody to get the impression that we are solving flooding. We should be trying to solve or de-risk flooding. It will take a while for any recommendation to be implemented. I think that I will be long dead and buried before the Assembly looks at flooding again once this flood Bill passes. Everything needs to be taken into account now. There are big holes in the Bill.

Ms Maginn: We do not want it to be a document that just gathers dust on a shelf. There will be outworkings from it that could be looked at to try to de-risk flooding in an area, but they could cause more problems in a greater area because, as you said, water knows no boundaries.

Mr McMurray: Thank you very much. Mrs Bohill, I am not sure whether you can see it from your end, but I see a picture from the front of St Patrick's Centre here, looking on to Market Street. While it looks like serene, lovely, mirror-like calm water, anybody who was here at the time of the floods will remember that it was pretty shocking. When I was here, the water was literally flowing past the steps here at the front; it was a river.

The Newcastle group touched on flood protection grants. There is no reference to commercial protection grants in the Bill. Is that something that is lacking? What can be elaborated on in that regard?

Mrs Bohill: Very much so. The Downpatrick regeneration working group was formed prior to the floods in 2023. Our group was designed for a pilot programme to look at the regeneration of Downpatrick. That was very quickly overshadowed by the flooding in 2023. Some of the work that we set out originally to do was overshadowed by the floods. We very much welcome the consideration of the Bill, but there is no mention of a commercial focus of any kind. It looks at residential, but what are the parameters and the reform for businesses and commercial? That includes grants as well. Businesses, like residents, cannot survive when the impact is ongoing. It definitely needs to be considered in the Bill.

Mr McMurray: We touched on the flood review. Are there any thoughts on how SuDS could be incorporated into commercial spaces? This very much deals with SuDS in residential spaces, but are there any views on future developments or current businesses in business centres or industrial estates?

Mrs Bohill: That should definitely be considered and incorporated. We had the review originally from the floods, so it is about how that works with that review. The recommendation was that flood alleviation measures be put in place, but those are going to cost £22 million. That is probably not going to happen, so it is about how we use what is proposed and what is already there to counter that.

Mr McMurray: Thank you very much. Chair, you have been very good to indulge me. I will leave it there.

Mr Dunne: Thank you, folks, for your presentation. I am not from south Down, but I am from North Down, which is part of County Down, so we are not a million miles away. I know that you are tired of sympathy — that is the wrong word — but we understand your predicament regarding engagement with the various agencies. Unsurprisingly, that confusion piece has come through again. We engage day and daily with those agencies, and we share your frustration. As you said, there are no boundaries with water. Whether it is DFI Roads, DFI Rivers or NI Water, it is confusing for all of us. Things could be done a lot more effectively going forward, and this is a welcome opportunity to look at that.

I will touch on the grant process from a residential and a business point of view. Grant support after flooding cuts across a number of Departments. What is your experience of that? Can you drill down a bit on that?

Mr Anderson: It is a flood protection grant scheme administered by DFI Rivers. It is a scheme where up to £10,000 —

Ms Maginn: It has gone up to just over £13,000.

Mr Anderson: — sorry, up to £13,000 in costs will be covered. A resident can apply and avail themselves of the funding if they meet certain criteria, which include their house having been flooded a couple of times before, and if they have proof and have made an insurance claim. Someone will come out and assess their property and give them an estimate. The resident pays 10% of the money that is required, and DFI Rivers pays the rest. If the cost comes to more than the limit, they have to pay it themselves. One of our neighbours had to invest £6,000 of their pension into getting their flood defences sorted out.

The process is really handy, and it takes a lot of anxiety out of some situations. I availed myself of it, so I have flood defences.

Mr Dunne: Just to be clear, that is purely on the defences side.

Mr Anderson: That is just for defences. That is all that it is for. You get a barrier for your front door, back door and garage and non-return valves for your drains.

Mr Dunne: There are other potential options.

Ms Maginn: Sorry to interrupt, but I did not avail myself of it because it was going to cost me £24,000, which I do not have. Therefore, not everyone —.

Mr Dunne: Even with the 10%?

Ms Maginn: Even with the 10%.

Mr Anderson: There is a ceiling.

Mr Jones: It is up to £13,700.

Ms Maginn: The funding only goes to £13,000. It would have taken another £24,000 of my money.

Mr Dunne: For what you needed to do.

Ms Maginn: Yes. As Sam alluded to, people had to put in a lot of their own money, and £6,000 is a lot to a pensioner. Otherwise, it is a great scheme, and it is great to see it. It is a very good scheme for people who have to pay maybe only £1,000 of their own money.

Mr Anderson: We definitely encourage it, but there are limits.

Mr Dunne: What about other assistance when flooding events occur? For example, is there anything from the Department for Communities?

Mr Jones: There was money available through Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, and some people availed themselves of that.

Ms Maginn: That is the emergency £1,000.

Mr Anderson: They gave households that had flooded £1,000, and that was it. That is the only other money available from anybody.

Mr Dunne: Yes, I appreciate that. Are businesses eligible?

Mrs Bohill: On a slightly different note, I am not aware of any grants that are available to businesses to protect against flooding, though I stand to be corrected on that. Flood resilience kits are available, but that still has not been clarified for our business community here. We have 116 businesses in the flood catchment area, and, as far as I am aware, none of those businesses has been provided with any of those kits.

In relation to the grant that was issued following the floods, the feedback was that it was a particularly onerous process to get payment for replacement machinery, goods or products or payment for redesigning shops. Businesses were expected to pay that up front and to submit their receipts to our council, and they would then be reimbursed. That was not really practical for a lot of businesses. For example, there was a local dry cleaners here, and he had three machines, which each cost £150,000. He did not have £150,000 to pay up front to replace those, so he just closed his business. He was done.

There was some criticism around the issuing of that money. Some businesses that were in a better financial situation availed themselves of it and paid for those things up front, but the value of it needs to be improved. I do not think that it would have covered anywhere close to any of the costs that businesses had to incur as a result of the flooding.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate the impact on business, residents like yourselves, tourism and all the areas that you covered very succinctly earlier. You mentioned a meeting with Minister Kimmins. When did that take place?

Mr Anderson: That was about this time last year, was it not?

Ms Maginn: Yes.

Mr Anderson: She was very empathetic, and she posted a video on the DFI website about it. She was very empathetic, but, at the end of the day, we are looking for delivery. That was over a year ago, and our big flooding event was two and a half years ago.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that. That is the crux of what we are trying to get to the bottom of.

Ms Maginn: All the parties have been very good. They have come into my house or come into Newcastle centre. They have met us, and we appreciate that very much, but, as you said, it is about the outworkings of it and what will happen. Sympathy does not deliver on it.

Mr Dunne: We will probably follow up on that later, but we are keen to see what action points the Minister has delivered on since over a year ago. Have you heard anything directly from her Department?

Mr Anderson: We get communication, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, through her office and from MLAs. It is about all of you together, to be honest. We are not really interested in political designation. You are all representatives of the Stormont Government.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that, but the Minister is responsible for infrastructure, and it is our job to challenge her.

Mr Anderson: She was very empathetic and said that she would do as much as she can, but there was no definitive statement about delivery.

Mr Dunne: As a cross-party Committee, we will probably follow that up later.

Mr Jones: Originally, the meeting that was being set up was with a previous Minister for Infrastructure.

Mr Anderson: John O'Dowd.

Mr Jones: It was probably one of the first meetings that she attended.

Mr Anderson: It was.

Ms Maginn: About a week later.

Mr Dunne: That is good. Thanks for that, folks. I commend you on your work to date. I have read the minutes and so on. You are certainly very active, and you have engaged with a lot of residential and business representatives. Thank you, folks.

Mr Anderson: We are joined at the hip on SuDS, because, in our community, businesses and residential properties exist right beside each other. There is no point in implementing something for residential properties when it is not implemented for the business next door or the new business. It is a system. We need system thinking, and we need it in this Bill.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that, yes. In so many town and city centres, town centre living is becoming a bigger thing.

Mr Anderson: Absolutely, yes.

Mr Dunne: There can be a residential premises above a business and so on.

Ms Maginn: SuDS might not be a magic wand either. It takes a complete series of events to work together.

Mr Dunne: Yes, there needs to be an engineering solution for that problem.

Ms Maginn: We do not know yet. It is a new thing.

Mr Dunne: Thank you, folks.

Mr McNulty: Good morning, folks. You are serious heavy hitters if you are able to get a place at the Committee table. Well done on that front. A belated Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona

Happy St Patrick's Day from the home of St Patrick. It feels special to be here.

Ms Maginn: Go raibh míle maith agat.

Mr McNulty: It is nice to meet you all in person. Having liaised with Laura Devlin, who has worked with your group from the get-go, and Colin McGrath, I know that a huge amount of work is being done behind the scenes on that front. When it comes to silo working, I will tell you about another little silo. My party is the Opposition, and the people responsible are the governing parties elsewhere around the table, so just recognise that little distinction. We work collaboratively on this Committee to try to hold the Minister's feet to the fire when it comes to commitments made or commitments that should be made to deal with the issues at hand.

You mentioned design flaws that are causing further flooding.

Mr Jones: An official from DFI Rivers said at an earlier meeting that we held that the issue that we are confronted with is out-of-sewer flooding. Water goes into the drainage — [Interruption.]

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): We will reconvene the Committee meeting. Anyone who was listening may have heard that there was a fire alarm. We have been out, and we are back in again. We will continue to take oral evidence. We will start where we left off, with Justin.

Mr McNulty: Thank God we are all safe. Speaking of fire alarms, somebody could do with lighting a fire, because it is cold in here. [Laughter.]

I asked you about the design flaws that you have identified. Will you give some more information on that?

Mr Jones: I started to try to answer that. The issue is out-of-sewer flooding. The clean water that enters a surface water sewer, in particular, is discharged by gravity into rivers; it is not pumped. In flood conditions, the water rises, and the outlet from the surface water sewer becomes submerged. There is a flap on the outlet that closes, which effectively means that all the water that is collected in the surface water sewerage system is unable to discharge as it should. You might say that that is a design flaw in the flood alleviation scheme, but the only answer, in order for the water to go where it is supposed to go, is to take that over and pump it into rivers. I do not know whether you would consider that a design flaw in the flood alleviation scheme as it was originally designed, because it should have taken into account the fact that water is meant to go from the drainage system into rivers. At one of our earlier meetings, a DFI Rivers official made the point that the issue has probably always existed, but it has been masked. There are two terms: fluvial flooding from the river and pluvial flooding from the drainage network. The issue has been masked by the fluvial element — the rivers themselves overflowing — that caused flooding. That has, hopefully, been addressed by the flood alleviation scheme for Burren river a number of years ago and the more recent scheme for Shimna river in Newcastle.

Mr Anderson: What we find, Justin, is that a lot of people who own infrastructure across the silos will say, "Our bit did its job". However, if those bits are doing their job, why, when you join them all up, is there is 6 ft of water in a street? There is an absence of system thinking. That is a fairly simple one that probably should have been picked up in a design review way back when that was instituted.

Ms Maginn: DFI Rivers said to us that the problem with back drainage was disguised and that Northern Ireland Water's drainage system problem was disguised by the river flooding that happened in 2008 and 2020, before and after the flood walls went up.

Mr Jones: Do you mind if I say one thing? This does not directly relate to what you said, but it is about the outlets. There is one particular outlet that is the main focus of the issues, but there are other smaller outlets serving a lesser number of properties. It has come to light since the flooding that, in one case, the flap on an outlet was missing, so it was not the case that the pipe was closed, as it were, and was unable to discharge. We are not getting anywhere with NI Water. It has now put a flap in place. In autumn 2023, the river was at such a level that the flood alleviation scheme was breached not by overtopping but because of a lack of maintenance of the outfalls, with no flap in place. Basically, the river was allowed to flow up that pipe and flood the streets and properties in that area. That was then compounded by the fact that it met the flood in the main area. As far as I can see, certain properties flooded for that reason. That is why I emphasise the need for a proper maintenance regime to ensure that we know that things are working properly.

Mr McNulty: On that, have you engaged hydraulic engineers to assess the design flaws that you speak of? You are speaking of a bin lid-type, non-return valve that is causing flooding because it is not working, so water levels are —.

Mr Anderson: We are a pressure group. We rely on the agencies to do their jobs.

Mr Jones: NI Water is supposed to be doing that. It has undertaken a hydraulic modelling review of the system. Even though we tell it about those other locations, it is not addressing them.

Mr Anderson: Sheila and I were at the meeting a few weeks ago, and it presented its results.

Mr Jones: Yes, I was not there, unfortunately.

Mr Anderson: They came along, and they took Marguerite Avenue as their test case. They did all the models, including up to 2050, with 4,000 new homes being built, putting pressure back onto it. We said, "What about the rest of the catchment area around the Burren flood defences?". They said that they only did that street. That is the same meeting where we asked whether they had talked to Rivers about the effect of what they were proposing on the overall scheme. There is no systems thinking. I am saying it again. I am really sorry. It is the same answer. They do not talk to each other, and they do not have systems thinking on the whole ecosystem. This is fresh. It was four weeks ago, and it is exactly the same behaviour.

Mr McNulty: I say that because there seems to be a little potential for legal culpability here on the Department's behalf that could be explored by your group. If the other barking is not working, that type of bark might make the Department move a little bit.

Mr Anderson: We have no money. We are friendly group of people with lots of —.

Mr McNulty: There could be a local engineer who could be a consultant and could be living in Newry.

Mr Anderson: We know some. If we were to take a case against anybody, we suspect that it would be very difficult to win a case. It would probably take a long time. We would rather work with you guys —

Ms Maginn: Yes, we do not want to go there.

Mr Anderson: — to get the right infrastructure in place and solve the right problems with our money. Please solve the right problems with our money, based on the right data to do the prioritisation, and get these people in the Civil Service to work together on the problem. We are not interested in going to the courts.

Mr McNulty: Are you collaborating with any other groups?

Mr Anderson: No, we are solely focused on Newcastle.

Mr McNulty: You mentioned that there are major issues around some properties accessing insurance. How many properties, households, businesses and people are being impacted on as of now?

Mr Anderson: I think that every household in the BT33 postcode is affected.

Mr McNulty: How many?

Mr Anderson: That is, effectively, everybody in Newcastle, because insurance works on risk in a postcode area.

Mr McNulty: How many?

Mr Anderson: Thousands of people live in Newcastle.

Ms Maginn: Nine thousand in the town itself, but the extended area is double that.

Mr Anderson: It affects both your home insurance and your car insurance.

Mr McNulty: I am asking you how many households, how many people and how many businesses are affected.

Mr Jones: It must be hundreds, anyway.

Mr Anderson: What is the population of Newcastle?

Ms Maginn: Nine thousand, but it is not just the town itself.

Mr McNulty: Come with the data that will help serve you.

Mr Anderson: Nine thousand people.

Mr McNulty: Guys, you are putting huge store and huge hope in the SuDS Bill as being the solution.

Mr Anderson: We are actually not, if you listen to what we said earlier. We are not putting much hope into it. We like some bits of it. We love the SuDS bit, but this Bill is not going to solve flooding in Northern Ireland, so we do not have a lot of hope in it.

Mr Jones: The SuDS element is very marginal from our point of view. It is the flooding element that we have been asked to comment on.

Mr Anderson: The whole Bill needs to be reframed.

Ms Maginn: Hopefully, the outworking of it, surely, will do something to help alleviate the flooding problems in Newcastle.

Mr Anderson: It should help.

Ms Maginn: Why is there a flood Bill?

Mr Anderson: One of the reasons why we are here is that you are the Infrastructure Committee, providing oversight of what happens on Bills coming through on infrastructure.

Mr Jones: We know that there is no magic wand, and we know that climate change is impacting on these issues.

Mr Anderson: We are trying to tell you honestly and clearly that our experience on the ground is what it is and that we do not think that you are going to solve flooding. If that is what you think that you are solving with this Bill, you are not.

Mr McNulty: I can hear and sense the total exasperation from you guys. I understand that and completely empathise. However, as you all say, it is not honeyed words that you need but action and delivery. You have talked about the 100-year flood return periods, and you are seeing floods every other year, almost.

Ms Maginn: Over the past 15 years, yes.

Mr McNulty: How many times over the past 15 years?

Ms Maginn: Four times, certainly.

Mr McNulty: Four times where you have been moved out of your home in the past 15 years.

Ms Maginn: The house was only flooded twice, but we are talking about up to 200 houses in that area that I know of, but, for a lot people, the statistics are not actually there.

The council will say that it has given out so many thousands of pounds in emergency grants, but that was, perhaps, for gardens or for underfloor issues. People may not say that they have been flooded because they do not want it to affect their insurance or because they are selling their house or whatever. Hundreds of houses were, and still are, impacted by those floods. The latest one of those was in 2023.

Mr Anderson: I need to clarify something for you, Justin. In general, people's insurance costs in the area have gone up because of the flooding, whether they are in a flood-risk house or not. When it comes to the next layer of people who have been flooded, once you tick the "I have been flooded" box, your insurance company will say — a lot of them have — "We're not going to cover you any more. We'll give you insurance, but not for flooding". What is the point of that? Flooding insurance is the most crucial insurance that we need. There is a scheme called Flood Re. A number of insurers that are in that scheme will give insurance at a reasonable price to people who have been flooded — people who have ticked the "I have been flooded" box. However, the number of insurers that are in the Flood Re scheme is declining: it is down to Admiral and a couple of others.

Ms Maginn: Zurich and a few others have pulled out of domestic insurance.

Mr Anderson: The Post Office refused one of our members. There is an issue with insurance. If you want to take something from this meeting back to the Assembly generally, it is this: insurance is a racket, guys; when you most need it, you cannot get it.

Ms Maginn: Flood Re is a good scheme; I have been insured under it twice. As you say, however, the prices are going up. A lot of the insurance companies have pulled out of that scheme and are not taking us on board. It is a government-backed scheme; it is government and British insurers combined. That scheme has been good. At least you can use it if you have been flooded. I think that you have to have been flooded twice to get on to it. It has helped, but insurance is still very expensive.

Mr McNulty: The people of Newcastle are blessed to have you guys in their corner, fighting their cause. I will be political: it is disappointing that the main party of government — the party of the Minister who heads the Department that is responsible for addressing the flooding that you all experience too often — is not represented here today.

Mr Anderson: We are apolitical.

Mr McNulty: I am just noting —.

Mr Anderson: I am just making the point that we are apolitical, and we look to all of you at Stormont to fix the problem.

Ms Maginn: If we do not have you, I do not know who else we can go to now. We have been to everyone else.

Mr McNulty: I made that as a point to be noted. Thank you very much for your evidence, folks. I really appreciate your giving your time.

Mr Anderson: I will give you one example to put this in context. Just last week, one of our residents went to get an insurance renewal quote: it had cost £350, and he was quoted £1,250.

Mr McNulty: Crazy.

Mr Anderson: He is a pensioner. He has spent £6,000 on his flood defences, but that is not even taken into account.

Mrs Bohill: Justin, you asked about the number of households. There are 116 businesses in Downpatrick that are at risk of flooding and have no insurance. That is a figure that you can work with.

Mr McNulty: OK. Thank you.

Mr Harvey: I want to touch on a couple of points that you have mentioned. You talked about pumping the water over the wall. Does that have to be done where the valve or flap has closed?

Mr Anderson: Yes, when the river is too high.

Mr Harvey: Does that mean that the levels on both sides are the same?

Ms Maginn: No. The river level is very high. Before this, it worked on gravity — it went down into the river bed. However, a pipe now has to be —.

Mr Jones: The temporary arrangement has in place a telemetry system that is operated by NI Water. It triggers an alarm that indicates, "The water level is rising. We need to get there and start pumping the water into the river". That is the temporary arrangement. It has failed on a few occasions, but doing something semi-permanent is being looked at now, apparently. In October 2025, in the aftermath of flooding in Newcastle, we said that there had been out-of-sewer flooding in Marguerite Avenue, near the pumping station. The response was, "No, there wasn't; that isn't what happened". We were on-site, and we knew that it had happened. We are still awaiting an explanation and an apology for that.

Ms Maginn: We had photographic evidence as well.

Mr Jones: What we say is disregarded, which frustrates me. Nobody wants to engage with us.

Mr Anderson: To be fair to NI Water, it deploys a pump, according to weather warnings. If we get a particularly bad yellow or amber warning, a pump will be deployed and left there to mitigate. However, in a recent meeting, we heard that that process is being reviewed, because it is very expensive to source a pump from a contractor, get it out and pay the guys overtime. Deployment of that pump is going to be reduced, because we have not had a flood. We are saying, "Don't do that, please". The response is, "We need to do it. It is costing —".

Ms Maginn: Some electronic thing is being put in, but —.

Mr Harvey: If the flap closes, the pump activates, but you said that a flap was missing. There is no point in pumping if a flap is missing.

Mr Anderson: It is manual, so that is totally different.

Mr Harvey: Is that a different area?

Mr Jones: Yes.

Mr Anderson: Harry, just to be clear: there is no pump there. People are rolling the dice and saying, "That flap might close. We'll deploy a pump —

Mr Harvey: So, it is not there?

Mr Anderson: It is not there.

— that we'll switch on when a little trigger telemetry device in one of the gratings, 50 yards away, shows that the water is getting heavy". There is no pump actually there. As I said, NI Water has a proposal to put a permanent pump in place in 2027, but it has not considered where the water was going to go or if the flood defences could take it.

Mr Harvey: As local people, would you say that there has been a change in the run-off from the mountain, and that that is where the problem starts?

Mr Anderson: Not really.

Mr Jones: It certainly comes down into the rivers, off the mountain.

Ms Maginn: That seems to have been what happened in Tullybrannigan and Sunningdale. It appears that that was a flash flood. DAERA was involved. That is a separate area, about half a mile away.

Mr Anderson: We think that that was a one-off.

Ms Maginn: That had not happened since the early '60s.

Mr Anderson: You are right to mention that though, Harry. There is a bigger scene here. We are a unique little place, geographically. We have the sea, so we have storm tides, and we have all of the rain coming off the mountain.

Mr Harvey: I was going to ask about tides.

Mr Anderson: It takes time for the rain to come down the mountain, and it depends what path it takes.

Mr Harvey: On whether it meets a high tide.

Mr Anderson: Exactly.

Ms Maginn: And there are three rivers.

Mr Anderson: The Shimna defences that were put in take most of the water that comes down the mountain. The Burren river takes some, as well. The problem is that we have had a lot more wet weather and the ground gets saturated.

Mr Harvey: Abnormal circumstances.

Mr Anderson: You get a burst, and then you have problems.

Ms Maginn: You are right: the water comes down into our rivers, and there is a problem if the tide is in. There needs to be liaison with the Met Office on the tidal system, because that impacts a lot.

Mr Harvey: It is very difficult.

Ms Maginn: There is a lot going on. A whole-systems approach is needed.

Mr Anderson: Harry, if flooding can be solved in our area, it can be solved anywhere in Northern Ireland, because we have the mountains and the sea.

Ms Maginn: Look at the Netherlands and other countries that have areas below sea level: wetter countries than this one have dealt with flooding. It is a high-priority flood risk area. If other countries can do it, surely we can learn from them. I know that DFI Rivers went to the Netherlands to look at what they were doing.

Mr Anderson: DFI Rivers has been to Holland to talk to the guys who sort out dykes and all that kind of stuff.

Mr Harvey: Redirection.

Mr Anderson: I have not heard anything back from DFI Rivers about what the guys in Holland do. That was two years ago, I think.

Mr Harvey: You said that there are big holes in the Bill. I take it that you have noted all those today.

Mr Anderson: We have mentioned some of them today. Governance is huge. You need to figure out who looks after water. I am repeating myself, but the way in which we are set up at the minute does not work. We expect human beings, with different badges, to talk to each other, but they will not respond to a flood risk. That is our biggest issue. I showed you a photograph earlier — I will send some photographs in as evidence. The day that that flood happened in 2023, tens of houses were flooded, but it could have been hundreds. It was not because of DFI Rivers coming and pumping water, or because of anything done by DFI Roads, Newry, Mourne and Down District Council or NI Water, that the flooding was limited to tens of houses. It was because volunteer farmers from up the country came down on their tractors, with big slurry pumps, and sat on the middle of the streets and pumped the water away from the houses. I had packed the house and everybody up. We were going to go to live with my son and hope that the flood did not do too much damage. We came back, because those guys started to alleviate the situation. They sat there in their tractors for 48 hours and saved hundreds of homes.

Ms Maginn: Voluntarily.

Mr Anderson: It was not any of the agencies that we pay for that did it — none of them.

Mr Harvey: It was farmers and the people on the tractors.

Mr Anderson: DFI Rivers was there with pumps that failed. I talked to people from DFI Rivers at 1.00 am, as we watched the water, and they said, "The pumping station's OK. The banks of the Burren haven't gone". I asked, "Why the hell is all that water there then, guys?".

Mr Harvey: They were not moving enough litres per minute.

Mr Anderson: DFI Rivers' pumps failed. They were sitting right outside my house.

Mr Harvey: You were very thoughtful, earlier, in saying that you do not want to give your water to someone else.

Mr Anderson: We do not. That would just be passing the problem to another set of families.

Mr Harvey: You want to get it to the sea, if the level is low enough to take it.

Mr Anderson: Yes.

Ms Maginn: Yes.

Mr Anderson: There is a Burren relief scheme. I am not an engineering expert, but somebody could come along and ask, "How much water can that take? Do we need to put another 3 feet on the boundary?".

Mr Harvey: The first question to ask is where it is coming from and whether we can redirect it.

Mr Anderson: Redirect it: you are dead right, Harry; absolutely.

Ms Maginn: And the water could potentially be removed to somewhere else — to other areas. This is such an important area for tourism and the economy.

Mr Anderson: Gareth made a really big point as well: maintenance is important.

Mr Harvey: And heights and levels.

Mr Anderson: That point about maintenance applies not just to rivers but to gullies.

Ms Maginn: Basic housekeeping.

Mr Anderson: We live in a place where there are also lots of forests, so there are lots of leaves. You would think that the local council, DFI Roads or whoever would come and suck the drains out more regularly in a flood risk area —

Ms Maginn: It all helps.

Mr Anderson: — but that does not happen.

Mr Harvey: OK, thank you. I will finish with a question to Emma. I have seen the problems here. I have always heard how bad Downpatrick can be and has been in the past, but I did not think that I would ever see it in my lifetime. I was here to see it, and it was just terrible — really bad. How are the businesses — those that were able to come back — doing now?

Mrs Bohill: Some closed as a result.

Mr Harvey: Permanently?

Mrs Bohill: Yes. A lot of them returned and reopened. Some availed themselves of the grant that was available. I suppose that there is apprehension all the time, particularly if there is a Met Office warning: "What is going to happen? Where are our resources to alleviate, prevent or whatever? What support is there?". Communication has been mentioned. There is a lack of communication with businesses. Businesses are asking, "What next?". The agencies do not have the information at hand to reassure businesses or show them what is being done. That is a missing piece. Businesses are very apprehensive. Every high street is struggling as it is, and that added dimension is particularly unsettling for people. There is a bit of a lack of hope, with people thinking, "What's the point? It's just going to happen again. No measures have been put in place to alleviate anything". They have not seen any work being done — nothing practical — or any investment.

Mr Harvey: They have not heard any reasons why.

Mrs Bohill: Exactly.

Mr Harvey: I get you. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): We are going completely the wrong way round, because I normally start the questioning, but today I am finishing it. There has been quite a bit of chat about general flood defences and the lack thereof. I will pick up on a quote from way back when this all started. We were talking about the SuDS Bill, and I think that someone said that the Bill is "not fit for purpose". You can give us some oral evidence now or email us with your thoughts on that, but I want to give somebody a chance to say why they think that it is not fit for purpose or what changes it would be important for the Committee to consider.

Mr Anderson: Those were my words, Peter. We are thinking about it in the context of the whole Bill and the desire to solve or de-risk flooding. There are more important things than SuDS that are not in the Bill. We have touched on those: governance and all the rest of it. We actually said, "SuDS are good. Implement SuDS immediately, but take away all the caveats in the implementation of the legislation". It has to be mandatory, so that no builder can squeeze his way out of it or get an exemption, saying, "I'm not going to do it. We never flood here". SuDS should just be in there.

We are in favour of SuDS.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Yes.

Mr Anderson: However, I will echo the point that the businesses made: water does not know the difference between a business and a residential area. There should be SuDS in any new development anywhere. Otherwise, we will, again, be working in man-made silos.

Mrs Bohill: I mentioned the 116 businesses that are potentially at high risk. There will be housing around those businesses. It has to go hand-in-hand, because, as you said, water does not know the difference between a residential property and a commercial property.

Mr Jones: SuDS is a major thing that will help, but it will not solve anything, certainly not retrospectively. Nobody expects it to anyway.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): The SuDS Bill is at Second Stage, and all the parties support its going forward. There is no question of that not happening. SuDS is one part of the Minister's three-pronged approach to solving the waste water infrastructure problems in Northern Ireland. The other prongs — or straws, as the man on my right might call them — are more money from the British Treasury; and voluntary or mandatory developer contributions. We have not really seen the detail of the latter prong. From the evidence that the Committee has received on the SuDS Bill so far, it is probably fair to say that the people who are building houses in Northern Ireland and some of the federations feel that SuDS will not solve the problem. We have an extensive waste water problem in Northern Ireland. SuDS will help in future developments. SuDS will hold soft water so that it can be dispersed more slowly and contain hard water along similar lines, but SuDS will not cut through our waste water infrastructure issues. That does not mean that it is not the right thing to do and that SuDS will not have an impact. However, SuDS will not solve your problem in Newcastle, as there are other issues.

Mr Anderson: We get it.

Ms Maginn: May I ask you a question, Peter?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Yes, Sheila.

Ms Maginn: Who can help solve our problems in Newcastle and Downpatrick? If it is not you, who will help to put a plan in place? I know that there is no magic wand. You have to work within your budget. You have a priority budget and, presumably, a contingency sum to deal with flood-risk areas. Who will help us?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is a really good question, Sheila.

Ms Maginn: Who do we go to next?

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Your question goes to the core of what we are talking about today. For context: the Committee does not have a budget, and it does not really make legislation; Committees can design Bills, but that is very rare. The Committee's job is to scrutinise the Department for Infrastructure and the Minister. From the evidence that we have received today, it is clear that silo-working is causing an issue for you. Breaking down those silos would be helpful, but how effectively they can be broken down is a separate question. When you said that, I smiled because it is an issue faced by Governments generally, but particularly the one in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, the issues that you face are for the Department of Infrastructure, DFI Rivers to a degree and Northern Ireland Water. Northern Ireland Water's funding comes from the Department, and there are lines of accountability. It is clear that the solution needs to be generated and led from there. It is a DFI issue, and it is up to DFI to work with other agencies, including some that are linked to DAERA. That is my understanding of who can solve the problem. The question is how far along you guys are in having that problem solved. That is problematic.

There is probably a little bit of frustration on your side that you were asking for answers but not getting them — that you would write seeking an answer, but the Department would not answer you. That is not overly unusual, because, as you said, you are a voluntary group that was established to sort out this issue. That is where public representatives fit in: they can write on your behalf, and they should be able to get answers. We will be writing to the Department with some questions about this. I will be saying, "Please provide us with an update on the work that has been done since 2023", which was when the flood occurred.

Mr Anderson: That was the most recent one.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I will ask about the work that has been done over the past three years.

Ms Maginn: There have been a few scares.

Mr Anderson: There was one in December 2025 in another area.

Mr Jones: The 2023 flooding was wide-ranging. It affected four different areas, which triggered the need for a review. We have had sight of the review document. It does not use the phrase "working in silos", but it highlights the need for better coordination. A group called the flood strategy group, or something, was also set up.

Ms Maginn: Steering group?

Mr Jones: Steering group: that is it. Do you know anything about that group and what is happening? Is there anything actively taking place with the flood strategy beyond that review? It is the flood strategy steering group (FSSG).

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): OK. I am a little bit cynical about steering groups, to be honest, Gareth. Sometimes, steering groups are set up, they meet every two years and they design a plan for the future.

Mr Jones: Somebody is telling us that —.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Have members heard of FSSG?

Mr Jones: I assume that it is DFI.

Mr McMurray: It touches on a wider point. There are, admittedly, questions being put here that stray beyond the SuDS Bill and into alleviation and mitigation in Downpatrick. Thankfully, the fields out towards Clough are not flooded at the minute, but, when they are, everyone is on tenterhooks. There are questions from the flood resilience and regeneration groups. Quite rightly, all MLAs have tried to raise issues, but, given the Committee's slight elevation compared with individual MLAs, it would be good for us to raise them. Perhaps some of the questions for the resilience group could be brought back and tidied up next week. There would certainly be merit in that. I am happy to propose that the Committee puts questions to the Minister on behalf of the groups, if that is agreeable to members.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): It is certainly agreeable to me, Andrew. You talked about a slight tidy-up. That would be useful. Whilst this session is about SuDS, we all knew that it would go wider than SuDS and deal with the very particular issues that you guys face down here. If there are particular questions that you would like answers to, you could feed those back to the Committee. This issue will come back next week, and we can write directly to the Minister on your behalf to try to get some of those answers. I certainly have a more general question about what has happened since 2023, and questions about how often the FSSG has met, what the outcomes are from that group, and so forth.

That will do for me, because I am conscious —.

Ms Maginn: Sorry, Peter. I will interrupt you for one moment. To be fair, Sam and I met Northern Ireland Water a few weeks ago — it was a most difficult meeting — and it put forward proposals. However, we would really appreciate feedback and greater transparency from Northern Ireland Water about what it is going to do to move things forward. Northern Ireland Water was saying, "We did this, and we said this", and, to be fair, that is the case to an extent, but it was an extremely intense meeting. There was a lot of obfuscation and a lot of protectiveness — fear. We are reasonable people, and we just want Northern Ireland Water to come forward with reasonable proposals to sort the problem out.

Mr Anderson: Peter, we have talked to everybody — all the agencies — about this at length, and we are at the end of it. To be honest, we came here because you guys on the Committee are the leaders of our country. You have powers that we do not have, so we need you to represent us on the broad issue that there is with infrastructure. I will leave it there. We feel disillusioned, still, on leaving the Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): We cannot solve issues, Sam, as you probably understand. We do not have the powers to do so. However, we can contact Northern Ireland Water; we can ask for feedback; we can write to the Minister to ask what is happening regarding the matter; and we can hold the Minister to account. That is the remit of the Committee, and that is what we can do.

Mr McNulty: "Obfuscation" is the word, Sheila, for what we have become accustomed to from the Department on multiple issues akin to this. Emma, you mentioned the fact that some people are beginning to lose hope. I get a sense that, having heard from us today, you are losing hope. That is not acceptable for us, as the Committee responsible for holding the Department and the Minister to account. As a Committee, we must show some teeth in order for you to understand that we are in your corner and fighting vociferously for people and so that there is no potential for loss of hope, because that would just not be fair.

Mr Anderson: Our AGM is coming up, at which there will be a motion on whether we should disband. I will vote to disband, because we are not getting anywhere.

Ms Maginn: It is very time-consuming for us. We have busy lives, and, as you can imagine, it takes up a lot of time and effort when we do it every day.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I am sorry to end on a rather bleak note, but I will say, on behalf of the Committee, that we really appreciate your time; you have given us a good two and a half hours. It will be our job to take the questions away and try to find answers for you about what is going on, what is planned and what is in train.

I will hand over to the Clerk for any summary or other points.

The Committee Clerk: For members' information: the review of the 2023 flooding, which was published in July 2024, made 22 recommendations. The Committee has not had an update on those recommendations.

Ms Maginn: Good point.

The Committee Clerk: Following the flooding, when officials came to the Committee in October 2024 to talk about responses, they mentioned the flood strategy steering group that witnesses have referred to. I say that for members' information when they start to consider actions.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Folks, thank you very much for your time today.

Ms Maginn: Thank you.

Mr Jones: Thanks for listening to us and for the time that you have allowed us.

Ms Maginn: It is appreciated.

Mr McNulty: Keep going.