An application for flood defences to protect Sandymount in south Dublin, recommended more than 20 years ago, will finally be submitted to An Coimisiún Pleanála next year, Dublin City Council has said.
The council’s senior engineer with responsibility for flood protection, Gerry O’Connell, said he accepted the urgency of protecting the coastal village, particularly given the recent floods.
However, he said the council had to proceed with caution as any “missteps” in the planning process, “and we could be back to starting again and I don’t think anybody wants that”.
The defences, which will run along the coastline at Strand Road from the Merrion gates to Sean Moore Park, a distance of just over 2km, are being designed protect more than 1,000 homes against a one in 200-year flooding event.
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Planning for the protections began following an “extreme tidal event” in February 2002, which devastated large numbers of Sandymount homes, some of which had never before been flooded, and left many households unable to secure insurance.
In 2009, the council announced flood defences would be incorporated into the Sutton to Sandycove (S2S) cycleway. While the cycle project has been developed on the north side of Dublin Bay, no progress was made in Sandymount. In 2016, the council decided to go ahead with protections independently of the cycle plan. Permission was secured for the work in 2018, but it never progressed.
While interim measures have been put in place, the council in 2023 announced the defences needed to be redesigned to take into account higher waves and sea levels. Jacobs Engineering in December 2024 was awarded the contract to design the new flood defences that would be “technically, socially, environmentally and economically acceptable”.
Councillors were this week told a preferred option for the defences was expected to be selected by the end of this year, with an application submitted to An Coimisiún Pleanála by the third quarter of next year. If planning permission was secured within one year, work could start on building the defences in 2029, said O’Connell. The construction timeline has been estimated at two years.
Local Labour Cllr Dermot Lacey said he expected residents would be “deeply disappointed” that there didn’t appear to be “any great sense of urgency about a problem that has been going on for 20 years now.
“I would just urge you, any speed, any interim from works that can be done that don’t take away from the long-term work, please do it, because people’s homes have been flooded repeatedly.”
The defences were being designed to provide the highest levels of protection to homes in Sandymount, said O’Connell.
“We’re designing for the 200-year flood event, plus associated wave overtopping. That’s the critical design. We’re also looking at climate change and that includes the medium-range future scenario, which is a 500mm rise and sea level and the waves associated with that.”
Due to its location in Dublin Bay the project was subject to several environmental constraints, he said.
“Once you go on to the beach, it doubles or triples the amount of work that you have to do to progress a project, compared to one that’s on the land. It also limits the times the project can be carried out,” he said. “The restrictions on a project like this are much more considerable than something on the land.”
He said he would “completely agree” with the need to implement the defences urgently, “but if we miss one of these steps we could be back to starting again and I don’t think anybody wants that, so we are pushing as quickly as we possibly can”.
