A brainstorming solution to the increasing flood threat confronting Downpatrick
Sometimes you get an idea in your head and you just have to tell someone about it.
What you read below is an out-of-the-box ‘solution’ to the increasing flooding issue in Downpatrick facing us which we all know is not going away and indeed may well get worse as sea levels rise in decades to come due to global warming writes Jim Masson©.
What I am presenting below is an ‘ideal’ strategy to work with the issues of climate change and within this gargantuan problem of global dimensions, Downpatrick may find an opportunity, at local level, to make a meaningful response, and even Make Downpatrick Great Again.
There are some people out there who think climate change is in the same category as Santa Claus. At least when we reach a certain age we ‘get in the know’ and true reality takes over. But some people never really grow up and live in Never Never Land!
My comments may come as a total shock to many, if not all of you. And before I have even spilled the beans I can just see people reeling in all sorts of directions in denial before you get to the end of this article at the greatest existential threat to our modern civilisation and before you have fully understood and internalised the argument.
Fundamentally, we need to change the way we think about climate change, rising sea levels, flooding etc etc. It may be a ‘top down’ global problem eg regulation of fossil fuel emissions, but the responses to it can and often do need to be local.
We don’t have an Independent Environmental Agency probably because historically power, and indeed resources, are vested in political parties whose first priority is their own survival. And to that end political relationships are build, and clientelism flourishes at the expense of rational thought and discussion
The Belfast Tidal Barrier is a great invention, but will it stem the waters in several decades from now with projections ranging widely from a metre to a 100 feet ?
And around Scotland, England and Wales we’ve all heard of the coastal erosion that is eating its way slowly through the landscape cliff by cliff, but what about the low lying areas, populated with home and business owners soon one day to be ousted by rising water levels ?
This may sound cataclysmic – it is ? Polar ice is melting before our eyes and we yet haven’t managed to join up the dots on reality.
No amount of civil engineering will stem the rising tide as polar caps thaw out and precipitation increases with rising temperatures and extremes in weather from torrential downpours to tinderbox forests that explode into walls of flames with horrific consequences.
So locally, fighting fires literally and figuratively seem to be a key response from fires in the Mournes to flooding in Downpatrick.
Granted, the Department of Infrastructure has put together a solution to curb the flooding in the county town, and the financials are being examined at present, but that paper will not be unveiled publicly until next spring (2026) – in a few weeks – and in the meantime the Downpatrick shopkeepers and businesses have to hope and pray that the flood does not return. It is indeed a political gamble!
And even if the Assembly/TEO gives the ‘go-ahead’ to the DfI plan after a further period of consultation, it will take time to go out to tender and then to deliver the flood alleviation project planned. Another few years wasted.
Having said that, I was on flood watch mode during December during a spell of heavy rain, and the River Quoile was running very high… and still is into January and now February. And if there is an extraordinary spell of rain coupled by a high tide, and a full moon , then that combination could be a disaster for Downpatrick.
So, my solution is simple. Let’s cut through the all of the Politics. Let’s take a deep breath and do something that no administrative district in this country has done or even contemplated.
Let’s create a ‘unified systematic community response’ and look at the options. You may say the Dfi has already done this through consultation but to be honest I don’t know if they have or not.
It may or may not just be a box ticking exercise. I know bureaucrats can be very sensitive about analytical questions, especially ones they can’t or don’t want to answer.
I’ve attended a couple of meetings but the question is, how far have they consulted ? I suppose they have looked at all the options within their financial and time frameworks.
What I am suggesting is completely radical and in my opinion logical. But then again when did logic even come into Politics or politics at a local level? We need to rise above localism in our culture, but you may argue, deterministically, ‘we can’t’.
My proposal is that we create a ‘fluid’ think tank. That is a forum that is open to everyone and dominated by no-one in order to address the implications and strategies for re-designing Downpatrick away from the sticking plaster strategies determined by poltical parties and finite Assembly budgets that are term-tied and subject to the whims of the The Executive Office (TEO) and the Assembly itself.
This forum will initiate the co-design of Downpatrick so that future generations can live without the fear of flooding, waste, chaos, and generally lower health expectations as second class citizens.
Impossible you may say ?!!! Indeed it will be a major town planning exercise, one that is literally ground-breaking.
But it will take courage and real community leadership and what is more… vision and real leadership and partnership thinking to achieve this within a time scale and sensible cost.
Councillors, MLAs, MPs and other public representatives tend to be term-tied to strategies that are constrained by budgets, law, finances, and indeed local culture. So this alternative mode of thinking I am suggesting will be a strategic, quantum shift in thinking.
It means leaving the subjectivity of the past behind to create a better future. Aha! Some of you may snort in labelling mode, “Jim’s a communist! Or a ‘green’, or an eco-socialist, or he’s just a cantankerous ‘person’… I always suspected there was something about him.”
Well, I’m none of that. I’ve just a fair bit of imagination like many thinkers and if an idea is worth its salt then it needs to be tested in the cauldron of community opinion. One of the great points in brainstorming is that an idea, completely bonkers (as some may argue this one is) can stimulate positive thinking in a different direction to constructive ends. There is theoretically no such thing then as a bad idea ! That is the essence of brainstorming.
As yet I have said almost nothing about what this re-design will look like. Giving land back to nature – which has rights – is an idea we need to grasp. And then work out how we do it.
We certainly need to adopt the usual principles of openness, transparency, accountability and democracy into this mix (which will be difficult due to the inherent narcissism and self-interest in individuals and groups) but nothing ventured nothing gained.
I have a vision of a fair system being set up when the physical layout of Downpatrick changes in a huge scale, with the consent of the local people of course in this co-design process.
Fundamentally we need to move to higher ground – mentally, as well as in reality. And that means three things:
- Creating the physical basis for a new model Downpatrick ensuring fairness and justice are key principles in allocating property.
- And allowing nature to reclaim the flood plains etc after is has been ‘sanitised’ eg physical infrastructure removed or minimised (ie recycled).
- Downpatrick could become an exemplar of good planning and development action instead of being a ‘backwater’.
Firstly, it will mean creating a new business heart for the town. It will mean changing road, water, electricity and other infrastructures. Some of you may say “impossible, it will cost too much.”
This isn’t about cost, but the survival of Downpatrick in the longer term. It needs a re-design, not a cheap, politically-unacceptable retro-fit by bureaucrats.
It may also challenge the landlord culture too but that issue too will need to be sensitively addressed to prevent property prices being gazumpted as we move forward.
And secondly, it will mean a just system where re-location of businesses and homes and properties is managed fairly and within the means of everyone. It will drive a stake into the heart of self-interest in a way we haven’t seen before.
Thirdly, with the right energy and focus, Downpatrick could be a model town going forward in determining its own destiny. Why be trapped in stultifying regulations and legislation, culture and political structures when we need to be creative in our response ?
Therefore, I know we don’t live in an ideal world and we live with all sorts of constraints, but the essence of brainstorming, which this article is essentially, is that the fundamental idea proposed in humility may be rubbished, but it may seed an idea in someone else’s imagination that eventually takes seed and grows, and benefits the future Downpatrick.
In theory, this simple set of principles could be replicated across the wider area in a bottom-up environmental planning revolution. But it will require co-ordination with other parts of the regional infrastructure with a liberation of thought.
So I have no fear of sharing these thoughts with everyone. You may come back to me in 100 years and say: “You know, there was some merit in what you say.”
Then again I may prevaricate like many government departments do, and post this up on April Fools Day. And then again I just might hit the ‘post now’ button.
I have many other thoughts on the matter, but conceptualising a vision of a future for Downpatrick is just one idea that could bring us all together in a common, existential cause.
I’ve often quoted Jonathan Swift, the Irish satirist/writer/poet. (1667-1745): “Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.” (Gullivers Travels.)
Swift was berating the two kings (in Gulliver’s Travels) in Lilliput who were engaging in war where thousands of their citizens died over a principle: what was the correct end off the egg to open it with, the round end or the pointy end ? War and even discussion can be futile unless it has a genuine, sincere and honest purpose.
Can we step out of the bureacratic straightjacket we are in ? We can but try.
My thought for the day:
“All ideas are good, but some are better than others.”
PS: Check out this interesting UK government document HERE released in October 2025.
(Copyright: Jim Masson 2026 ©).
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