LAST UPDATE | 13 hrs ago

THERE WAS A quiet irony in Jack Chambers’ recent announcement that the National Development Finance Agency will rely less on external consultants and instead build internal delivery capability, using the NDFA to help transfer skills rather than simply produce reports.

On paper, it is exactly the right move. After years of outsourcing strategic thinking, project oversight and infrastructure planning to consultants, the State is finally acknowledging a hard truth. That is, you cannot outsource resilience. Capability has to live inside the system.

But Storm Chandra arrived with brutal timing. Because while the announcement spoke of future capability, the storm exposed the cost of not having it already.

As floodwaters rose across Dublin and the East Coast in recent weeks, what became obvious wasn’t just the vulnerability of roads, homes and rivers. It was the fragility of how we anticipate, coordinate and act. Warnings remained yellow even as the Dodder burst its banks in Rathfarnham, even as the M50 closed between Cherrywood and Firhouse, even as Enniscorthy town centre became impassable under several metres of water. Flood-prone areas flooded again, and communities were surprised by events that experts insist were foreseeable.

The flooded quays in Graiguenamanagh on the River Barrow. Rolling News Rolling News

Keith Leonard, National Director for Fire and Emergency Management, was remarkably candid on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland. The flooding in south Dublin, he admitted, “caught authorities by surprise.” They “just weren’t expecting those levels of rainfall.”

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This is not a meteorological failure. Ireland did not lack data about saturated ground, swollen rivers, or an approaching storm system. It lacked a joined-up........

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