Council outlines plans to prevent future flooding of Clontarf area damaged after August rains

On a sunny Monday morning at Castle Court, an estate in Clontarf, building materials are piled up outside one of the homes.

Two houses have skips outside. Workmen paint inside one house and others haul timber into another.

Some residents are yet to return to their homes, following flash flooding in early August after heavy rainfall overwhelmed the storage pond in the golf course, flooded the railway line and submerged part of her estate.

Next door to a house with a skip outside and a builders’ van in the driveway, Helen Rooney, a tall woman with brown hair tied back, opens her door.

Rooney says she was lucky compared to her neighbours. She was back in her home after nine weeks, she says, thanks to her dad’s building contacts and the fact that she and her family hadn’t been home during the flood.

She, her husband and three children were away for the bank holiday weekend when she got a text from neighbours asking if they were okay. “We were in shock,” she says. “Then you started seeing it on social media.”

Because the family weren’t home they didn’t have to open the door to escape like their neighbours did. Rooney thinks that this helped to keep the water out and limit damage, she says.

Since then, Dublin City Council has been making changes to drainage and flood prevention measures around there, said James Nolan, an executive manager, at a meeting of councillors for the North Central Area on 20 November.

Since the flooding, the council has widened a pipe under 102 Howth Road, he said, because part of it was too narrow.

There’s a pipe from Clanmoyle Road to the Clontarf Golf Club and a water storage pond system there, all built in 2017. Next year, the council plans to increase the water storage on the golf course, and also build a new tunnel under Howth Road to discharge water out to sea.

Constant anxiety

“We had to pull out our whole kitchen,” says Rooney, touching the drawers of her pastel-blue kitchen. In the end, they only had to replace some panels in it and on the island, she says.

“These are new floors,” she says, glancing down at the grey laminate flooring. There was moisture in the walls and they had to be replastered. “It was a building site.”

“It’s awful to think you live in a lovely area and you have a lovely house, but overnight this can just happen,” Rooney said.

The work was covered by the insurance, she says. But as things stand she doesn’t know if they’ll be able to get cover again.

Rooney said she hopes the council’s work next year will be enough to mitigate the risk, she says.

The council’s climate action plan makes clear that the council expects this type of extreme flooding event to be more common going forward due to climate change.

“Climate change is the greatest risk to our future,” says the plan, which commits to “take action to prepare our city and people living here for the known impacts of climate change – flooding, sea level rise, extreme weather events, drought – and the known unknowns – the intensity and frequency of events and slow burn impacts”.

It blames freak flooding events in 2023 on the wettest July on record.

Rooney says the council is monitoring water levels in the storage pond more closely. Residents now get a message if the water levels are high – but even if they know in advance there isn’t much they can do to prevent it.

“Our property could potentially flood again,” she says. “There is a constant air of anxiety.”

Tackling the floods

Following heavy rain on 4 and 5 August, the Clontarf Golf Club flooded, with water spreading across the railway line and into homes in Castle Court and Auburn Apartments, says a report to councillors in the North Central Area.

“The flooding occurred very rapidly, inundating the basement car park and some ground floor apartments in the apartment block, together with 18 houses in Castle Court and at the property at 102 Howth Road,” it says.

The Auburn apartments are at the end of the Castle Court estate, and 102 Howth Road is a neighbouring estate.

Since then, the council has “upgraded the surface water network at 102 Howth Road, therefore removing an unforeseen restriction within the surface water network”, says the report.

The restriction, the report says, was down to the fact that part of the pipe was 450mm in diameter, rather than the 600mm. This has now been fixed.

“In the event that there was a flood, it is the flow pathway that allows those waters to get away,” said Nolan at the meeting.

Council staff are closely monitoring water levels in the storage pond at the Clontarf Golf Club, he says. “We are just finalising what is our action plan for our on-call duty engineers so they can take early intervention should a problem arise in future.”

Next year, the council plans to increase the capacity of the Wad River by building a new tunnel under the Howth Road and building a new pipe to discharge water into the sea, said Nolan.

It will also increase water storage at the golf course, said a spokesperson for Dublin City Council.

The council will also look at raising the boundary between the golf course and the railway line, so that any overflow from the water storage onto the golf course doesn’t spread out over the tracks and into Castle Court and the Auburn Apartments in the future, said the council spokesperson.

Nolan said he expects all the works to be done by September 2024.

The council is also waiting for a report from engineering firm Nicholas O’Dwyer Ltd, which is working on the detailed design for the works to take place next year and planning permission has been granted, says the report.

Councillors’ reaction

At the meeting for the North Central Area on 20 November, councillors welcomed the works. They also asked for another meeting to discuss the plan because they hadn’t seen the report in advance.

Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney asked if residents who had been flooded previously and didn’t have insurance would be compensated by Dublin City Council.

“Any such claims being made against Dublin City Council will be investigated and assessed via Dublin City Council’s claims department, which can be contacted at law@dublincity.ie,” says the report.

Fine Gael Councillor Naoise Ó Muirí said that councillors and residents had expected the report earlier. He requested another meeting to discuss it with local area councillors.

After the meeting Ó Muirí said council officials are trying to get the work done as soon as possible, and it should all be completed next year. “In fairness to the council, they are putting the skids on it.”

But it’s hard to predict with certainty if the measures will be enough, he said. “It’s impossible to know in reality, to deal with a major rainfall event, it is hard to predict.”