A new report has found Met Éireann's weather warning system can be confusing.

The Department of Housing review suggests people can struggle to understand what is happening when multiple alerts are in place at the same time.

The review looks at Storm Emma - which brought heavy snow to Ireland in 2018 - and the record-breaking winds of Storm Ophelia the previous year.

It finds that while Met Éireann's system of colour-coded warnings is effective, it can sometimes be hard for people to understand.

According to the report, having multiple alerts in place at the same time - such as individual alerts for wind and rain - can be confusing.

The authors state: "Met Éireann’s colour-coded warnings are designed to get attention, and we believe are widely recognised, if not fully understood at times."

They also note: "One of the limitations of the current system is that warnings are issued on an all-county basis - with the result that expected extreme weather conditions in one part of a county can lead to the whole county being placed under a warning."

The review explains that Met Éireann's current long-term plan is moving towards decision-making based on the likely damage of a weather event.

It would mean more of a focus on ‘what the weather will do’ rather than ‘what the weather will be'.

Professor John Sweeney, a climate expert at Maynooth University, believes some small changes could be looked at when it comes to the current system.

He explained: "It may well be that the tinkering might involve more geographically explicit warnings - and this has been done to a large extent by Met Éireann, to their credit over the past few years."

However, Professor Sweeney doesn't want to see things dumbed down too much.

He said: "You can't go down the road of saying 'well it's going to rain very heavily, or it's going to be quite windy'.

"You need people to get more information than that, and you need to have criteria which is consistent from one event to another event."

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