A photograph of a man bracing against waves crashing over a seawall in Clontarf, north Dublin, captured the frustration of residents as coastal flooding returned on February 5th, 2026. The image, published on the front page of The Irish Times, evoked comparisons to the legend of King Canute, who purportedly commanded the tides to halt – a demonstration, not of power, but of its limits. The man in the photograph, Garrett Connolly, a local chiropractor, wasn’t attempting to control the sea, but to flag down buses as waves surged over a flood gate.
“That was me standing on the wall trying to get the buses to gradual down. There was one wave they sent over the flood gate and I could have surfed on it. I was furious,” Connolly told The Irish Times. He recounted watching waves crest the sea wall from around 1pm on February 5th, gradually encroaching on his clinic. “At about 2.15pm I was saying, ‘The high water is now past, that should be the worst of it’, and actually I was wrong. It continued to wash over the wall, over the grass. Then the tiny wall between the footpath and the bicycle track, at the roadside, that was breached. That’s only about a foot high – it was like a lovely little waterfall coming over that – and very quickly the road started to fill.”
Dublin City Council workers responded quickly, distributing sandbags to protect properties. Connolly credited their efforts with preventing water from entering buildings this time, but the incident underscored a decades-long struggle to implement effective flood defenses along the Clontarf coastline.
The area experienced significant flooding in 2002 and 2004, with properties inundated and businesses temporarily closed for repairs. “I’m here about 20 years, but a couple of years before I came they were inundated here in 2004. They were ankle deep and more at the time, and the business closed briefly because there had to be some reconstruction,” Connolly said.
Following the 2002 and 2004 floods, Dublin City Council initiated plans for defenses, gaining planning permission in 2008 for a scheme involving earth mounds and walls up to 2.75 meters high. However, substantial local opposition emerged in 2011, not to the need for protection, but to the potential impact on the promenade’s aesthetic and recreational value. Residents feared the structures would obstruct views and compromise safety.
The council offered to reduce the height to 2.17 meters, the minimum permitted by the planning board, but this also faced resistance, leading to the shelving of the original scheme. A working group was established in 2013, comprising residents, businesses, councillors, and council engineers, to seek a compromise. Agreement was reached in principle in 2014 on a “dual wall” solution, incorporating the existing sea wall and a new, lower wall near the roadside, designed to contain floodwaters.
Consultants developed designs for the dual-wall solution in 2018, with the new roadside wall reaching heights of 1.6 meters in places. However, concerns over height persisted, and in 2020, the council proposed a solution involving demountable barriers for sections exceeding 1.2 meters.
Little progress has been made since. Dublin City Council stated last month it would engage new consultants by the end of 2026, but anticipates completion of the defenses no earlier than 2033. Meanwhile, Uisce Éireann’s watermain replacement project is underway along the coast road, requiring excavation of the promenade, which may need to be re-excavated once flood defenses are eventually built.
Deirdre Nichol, of the Clontarf Residents Association, and Eilish O’Brien, a community representative, emphasized that their concerns have been misinterpreted. “We’ve been saying, right from the beginning, we absolutely want the flood defences, but we don’t want to lose the promenade,” Nichol said. “It doesn’t have to look exactly like it does now, but it has to have that amenity space – amenity space that’s used by the whole city, not just Clontarf.”
O’Brien added, “We’ve never rejected the dual-wall solution, it was just the height of the permanent element that we had an issue with, due to safety concerns. A permanent wall of 1.2m and putting demountables on top of that wouldn’t be acceptable.” She stated the core principles guiding the community’s position are to provide flood defense, preserve the environment, promote amenity, and protect public safety.
Joe McDonagh, a Clontarf Road resident since 2000, urged the council to prioritize the project. “I sense that the council should simply take the bull by the horns and get on with it. End of story. I’m all for collaboration, consensus building, ground-up approaches towards development, community engagement, but somebody has to call a spade a spade.”
Shamus O’Donnell, a more recent resident, acknowledged the risks of coastal living but supported the council’s efforts. “It’s a tough balancing act to get right. People do enjoy the promenade and don’t want the views obscured. But, given the way the climate’s going, maybe we should all treat these floods as an early warning and take the solution on offer.”
