A Waterford TD has called on Met Éireann to review their strategy when it comes to issuing weather warnings.
Sinn Féin's Conor McGuinness says we need a more concentrated approach when issuing alerts, as different weather patterns can be seen in different areas of a given county.
"You look at County Waterford," said Deputy McGuinness, "We're not a huge county but we're not tiny either. There are differences in how weather impacts us. look at the storm Babette flooding that occurred for example.
"The flooding and the bulk of it happened in West Waterford.
"Similar to the snow over the last number of days it has been worse in certain parts of the country, however, weather forecasters issue the weather warnings on a county-by-county basis.
"We need to ensure that that data that is coming from Met Éireann is passed on in a very granular way to local authorities, emergency services, and to other relevant authorities so that they can make the best decisions and that people can make the best decisions in terms of whether they'll venture out, whether they need to go to work, or whether they need to stay at home and also to allow school authorities to make fast and appropriate decisions in terms of school closures"
Met Éireann categorises weather events into three categories below:
| Yellow | Not unusual weather. Localised danger. |
| Orange | Infrequent. Dangerous / disruptive. |
| Red | Rare. Extremely dangerous / destructive. |
Deputy McGuinness continued, "We've seen this time and time again, particularly with winter storms of wind and rain, where we've seen flooding and damage and county-by-county weather warnings. We've seen particularly in West Waterford areas along the Cork border, where maybe they've had a yellow or an orange weather warning and a red a couple of hundred meters away in the Cork county area.
"Terrible conditions would be seen on one side of the Comeragh Mountains, particularly in western and northern parts of County Waterford."
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