Member's statement: Flooding: Newcastle

Member's statement by Mr Andrew McMurray on 20 October 2025.

MLA

Mr Andrew McMurray

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

20 October 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Flooding: Newcastle

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5188254

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I will speak on the flooding that affected Newcastle, specifically the Sunningdale area and the Tullybrannigan Road. It is really important that I thank all the agencies that were involved. All reports stated that the Department for Infrastructure and other statutory agencies were out on the ground, as, I am sure, were council staff. Unfortunately, it is all too often left to locals to be the first line of defence and resistance, with people volunteering hardware. We also seem to speak about the matter all too often, and here I am again raising the issue of flooding in my constituency. The residents who have been affected need to be listened to now. They need to be engaged with in order to determine the cause of the most recent flooding and how best to treat it. The Newcastle regional community resilience group has been very active on that front for a number of years now. The group needs to be listened to, because it is finding it more and more infuriating that, at times, actions taken on the ground are not necessarily marrying with what had been discussed. That having been said, everyone on that group is very keen to help. As you referenced earlier, Mr Speaker, we can sometimes get very rumbustious in here, and political divisions are often brought into sharp focus. Members will know this, as we are all on the same WhatsApp groups, but, at times over the weekend, people from different parties were out attempting to do what they could to address the situation. There is therefore a uniform sense of desire from all parties to help sort out the matter. We have spoken about flooding in South Down before. It could be in Ms Forsythe's Kilkeel or more towards Ms Ennis's end in Killowen. All too often, weather events are demonstrating that infrastructure has failed. Ultimately, whatever way we frame the climate change debate, our oceans are getting warmer. That means that we have more intense storm periods and are getting them more and more often. That bears highlighting. We are still chasing our tails after storm Éowyn. We have since had storm Amy, and now we have had what was only a yellow weather warning that produced a month's worth of rain between early morning and early afternoon. One dreads to think what an amber or red weather warning could have brought.

398 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:31 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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