Debate contribution: Flood Forecasting Service
Debate contribution by Ms Liz Kimmins on .
- MLA
- Ms Liz Kimmins
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 13 October 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Flood Forecasting Service
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5789887
Read the official Assembly record
Text
The key role of a flood forecasting service is to ensure that, where there is a potential flood risk, people are aware of it. It is about getting alerts out to people and having the foresight to prepare for and be more resilient to such events. Protecting people, businesses and homes from flooding more widely is a much bigger piece of work that we are doing all the time. As I said in my answer to Andrew McMurray, it is Flood Awareness Week, and we have put out some information about how we can all play a part in protecting our homes or businesses from flooding. Among the things that I have done since coming into post is to increase the threshold for the homeowner flood protection grant scheme, which I did, given in particular the experiences that we had in 2023 and other years, when we saw significant flooding affect homes and businesses. We encourage more people to avail themselves of that scheme, because it provides a valuable opportunity to protect their home as well as possible. Along with the Minister for the Economy, we recently launched flood protection grants for businesses, with the pilot launched in Newry. On the back of that, I hope to see the scheme broadened out across more areas, because I recognise the importance of giving businesses certainty. We are the lead Department in the multi-agency response, and we always plan for the worst-case scenario. A lot of our work involves building flood alleviation schemes. Schemes for Newry, Downpatrick, Portadown and many other areas are at various stages of development. We know, however, that hard infrastructure is not the answer to every issue, so there is a huge amount of work to consider. The key message that, I hope, the Member will take away is that it is ongoing work. We have all those things in our armoury to help us prepare for and protect against flooding, but —
325 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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