Prof Mary Bourke

Good morning.

We so need it to be incorporated.

Rivers need space and optimistically this review could finally give it to them.

So for a long time Ireland has managed its floods where they happen.

I'm advocating, along with several other people, that we should be managing them where they start.

So upstream.

And this land use review could shift that conversation from the towns and cities that are enduring these floods upstream where it belongs.

Because upstream we have floodplains and grasslands and intact river margins.

And

That's not wasted land.

They are infrastructure that can be used to protect communities downstream.

So I'm optimistic about the potential of allowing rivers the space they need to prevent several people having to experience the floods like the farmer in Kildare did.

But I also think that...

The way I'm hearing the phrasing on the radio this morning is it's A or B, one or the other, someone has to lose out.

But actually, no.

Land use and flood risk are absolutely inseparable, but we have been treating them as separate problems.

So how we use the land absolutely directly determines what happens in the river systems downstream.

It dictates how water moves through the catchment.

Intensive farming with significant drainage, with compacting soils, speeds up how water reaches the river and creates worse problems.

Absolutely.