Calls for a 'managed retreat' from coastal erosion in the coming decades with thousands of homeowners forced to abandon their properties are 'hard to get your head around' Ciara Kelly has said.
A new Government report has listed a retreat away from the sea among the 'high-level risk management' policy options being considered.
The long-awaited National Coastal Change Management Strategy suggests abandoning homes due to coastal erosion and flooding could be a likely prospect in the decades ahead.
The report says a plan is needed to ensure the State is not faced with an "uncoordinated, reactive or emergency response" to events like major coastal storms.
Newstalk Breakfast host Ciara Kelly said she's overwhelmed at what this change might mean.
"We have always developed our coastline, so most of our major cities - Cork, Galway, Dublin, Limerick - they are either on an estuary or they are on the sea."Always 'living by the water' has been prime real estate... we have hundreds of thousands of houses we're talking about being affected by this.
"Some of our most expensive houses in the country; look at Sandycove, look at Glenageary.
"South County Dublin is all along that DART line very low above sea-level.
"How are we going to do this? How can we afford to do this and what does it mean for all the people who currently live in those places?
"It's hard to get my head around it, and I actually don't know how this is going to work at all."
Ciara said adapting to these changes will be difficult.
"Are we going to just move all our major towns and cities in land 10 miles?
"Or are we going to put some kind of coastal protections like they have in the Netherlands?"
"How are we going to do this?" - Ciara Kelly on a plan to 'retreat' from coastal erosion. @NTBreakfast pic.twitter.com/VievcCVlp2
— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) October 31, 2023
'Reality of global warming'
Presenter Shane Coleman said it is a stark indication of what is to come.
"This is global warming, this is the reality of global warming," he said.
"I think, even with the weather, I think we're starting to see the impact of that.
"We're not saying Dublin is going to be dwarfed completely by water, [but] there are going to be implactations here.
"We don't exactly know what those implicitions are.
"We are going to do what has to be done," he added.
