Flood relief plans for Cork town ‘devastated’ by Storm Babet will be submitted in September

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Cork County Council (CCC) expects to submit a planning application for the major flood relief scheme for Midleton in September, with work on an embankment to protect a housing estate in the town – that was heavily flooded during Storm Babet – set to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

In an update on the major scheme given to this month’s meeting of the council’s Southern Committee, County Engineer Brendan Meagher said that landowner stakeholder engagement “has commenced over the past few months” and the council has also received what is effectively “approval in principle” for the MAC, the Marine Area Consent required to occupy part of a maritime area.

“Based on our current programme, we are looking that we will submit an application to An Coimisiún Pleanála for planning permission in September of this year. Once submitted, the statutory consent timeline is not within our control. It could be 12, it could be 18 months. We're not sure yet of the timeline on that,” Mr Meagher said.

The flood relief works for Midleton, which was devastated by the torrential rainfall brought by Storm Babet in October 2023, are estimated to cost €56m and include upstream storage, walls and embankments to protect the East Cork town from river and tidal flooding. The major scheme isn’t expected to be completed until 2032 at the earliest.

In the meantime, the Individual Property Protection (IPP) scheme is being rolled out by CCC and the OPW. That involves supplying property owners with barriers to keep the water out of entrances such as doorways in the event of a flood.

Mr Meagher said that all of the required expandable barriers have now been obtained by CCC and there are live tenders to procure barriers for the larger and more complex openings “with the first delivery of these barriers due in the next fortnight.” Civil works contracts for installing the barriers will be appointed separately, he added.

The county engineer said that 27pc of all East Cork properties in the IPP scheme have now been completed and 48pc of all openings. “We are looking to possibly complete these by September of 2026,” he said.

Additionally, an embankment is to be built along the Owenacurra River, which burst its banks during Babet and flooded around 100 houses in the Tir Cluain estate. Mr Meagher said the project was advertised under Part 8 of the Planning & Development Regulations in September 2025 and “we're aiming to be on the ground in Tir Cluain in Q4 of this year.”

Locals have been critical of what they see as the slow progress of the flood relief works. Responding to the latest CCC update, Caroline Leahy, secretary of the Midleton and East Cork Flood Protection Group, told the Irish Independent that the council told them in October that a planning application for the main scheme would go in in June this year with the Tir Cluain works to start in the summer.

“So, all dates are pushed back again. At the time of Storm Babet, planning for the big scheme was to be submitted in Q3 2025. Constant slippage in the timeline is exactly what fuels lack of confidence in the work ever getting done and we are never provided with a sufficient explanation for the time slippage,” she said.