People left homeless by this winter's storms are Ireland's first climate change refugees.
A leading climatology professor has claimed that wide-scale flooding around the country has been caused by our failure to tackle climate issues and will become more common in the future.
A recent international study published in the scientific journal 'Nature', has said storm Desmond was 40% more likely to occur because it developed in an atmosphere loaded with a greenhouse gases.
Professor Emeritus at Maynooth University John Sweeney has said the problem is getting worse: “What has been striking about these floods to me has been in addition to the usual houses that are flooded most regularly by the Shannon,
“There have been a number of incidents where houses which are much older than that have been flooded and to me that is saying that this is an unusual event, it is an exceptional event which has been driven by a contribution to climate change, which is quite substantial.”
