The effects of flooding and climate change

This is what council officials in Ireland had to say about the floods they had a few days ago, when an underpass in the city ended up under 20 ft of water.

"We have to realise that it appears that torrential rain is going to occur on a more regular basis - the weekend was no freak occurrence.

"This means we have to introduce measures to adapt to this situation. New strategies are needed to ensure that flash flooding is minimised and that a co-ordinated emergency strategy is in place to cope with the consequences of flooding," he said.

"I urge the Executive to get to grips with the twin issues of improving our response to flooding and adapting our environmental and planning strategies to deal with increased rain in the future."

This applies to floodplains and monsoon drains too of course.