The tender document for the design says the framework has a maximum estimated value of €7.5 million. It also gives a tentative construction estimate of €25 million.
More than two decades after severe tidal flooding struck Clontarf, Dublin City Council has launched a competition to appoint a design team for a permanent flood-defence and public-realm project.
“It's actually a momentous day in the long saga of the Clontarf flood defence,” said independent Councillor Kevin Breen, who sits on the flood defence working group, but hadn't heard about the tender until Thursday.
The council published the current competition on 1 October, with applications to participate due by noon on 30 October.
It plans to establish a seven-year agreement with an integrated team of engineers, landscape architects, environmental specialists and other consultants.
While the members of the flood defence working group – including local elected representatives and stakeholders like the Clontarf Residents Association – only heard Wednesday or Thursday that the tender had been published, some details are welcome, says Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney.
“You think they'd have sent it to us that they were going out now for a tender or that the OPW have come back and approved it,” she said on Wednesday, with a chuckle. “But it's great we're at that point of getting a design."
That the tender points to a multi-disciplinary approach to the project is extremely welcome, and just what the group have been after, Cooney said.
“We didn't want just an engineer-based approach,” she said, adding that it is vitally important to consider things like “place making and landscape art”.
The project’s origins trace back to February 2002, when the highest tides seen by the city in hundreds of years sent seawater across Clontarf’s promenade and threatened homes and businesses.
Experts have said that due to climate change, the area’s flood risk has increased four or fivefold, while rising sea levels mean that severe flooding is more likely when storms coincide with high tides.
Clontarf is currently the least protected point in the city, said Gerry O’Connell, a council engineer, to local councillors at a meeting in May 2022. “It’s the area most at-risk.”
The council developed a scheme combining an arterial watermain with a flood-protection mound and wall extending for about three kilometres.
An Bord Pleanála approved the €4 million scheme in 2008, allowing for walls and embankments reaching 2.75 metres in places.
But Dublin city councillors rejected the plans in December 2011 following large public protests over concerns that the scheme would obstruct sea views, damage the promenade and make it less safe for walkers due to a lack of passive surveillance from the main Clontarf Road.
A day-long mediated discussion in 2012 didn’t prove fruitful either. In February 2013, a working group was set up with residents, businesses, and council managers.
Large sandbags installed as temporary protection became a permanent feature of the promenade from around 2015.
The council defended them as necessary until stronger barriers could be constructed, while they were labelled “an eyesore”, by Deirdre Nichol, chairperson of the Clontarf Residents Association.
In 2025, the council and Office of Public Works examined 12 possible replacements and recommended an 850mm-high interlocking concrete barrier along the roadside.
Flooding last winter renewed pressure for action.
By April 2026, the council was considering removable barriers, a raised wall near Clontarf Baths and a water-filled “beaver dam” near Vernon Avenue.
Cooney warned that residents cannot wait “possibly post 2033” for a permanent scheme to be finished.
The tender represents a more substantial step than the earlier interim measures.
It seeks a team from an array of disciplines like landscape architecture, ecology, environmental assessment, planning, arboriculture, archaeology and heritage.
The proposed scheme covers the stretch of coastline between Alfie Byrne Road and the Wooden Bridge. Its wider flood-relief area extends across about 379 hectares, and impacts approximately 13.3 hectares of public realm area.
The team must develop protection against both tidal flooding and surface water that cannot drain during high tides.
The coastal defences are intended to protect against an event with a 0.5 percent “annual exceedance probability” – the percentage chance that an extreme natural event will happen in any single year.
However, the commission is not solely for a flood wall.
It requires a landscape-led redesign of the promenade incorporating a continuous two-way cycleway, improved public spaces, biodiversity measures, nature-based drainage and protection for the adjoining ecologically important sites – and their species – and Dublin Bay Biosphere.
“Its core focus is to create an exceptional place for people; a high-quality public space that supports everyday life, wellbeing, social inclusion, and biodiversity,” the tender summary document says.
The design must also be coordinated with Uisce Éireann’s separately planned North City Arterial Watermain.
The tender document for the design says the framework has a maximum estimated value of €7.5 million, excluding VAT. That's an indicative, upper limit, a summary says.
It also gives a tentative construction estimate of €25 million excluding VAT, contingency and inflation: €12.5 million for coastal protection, €5 million for surface-water measures, €3 million for active travel, €1.5 million for landscaping, and €3 million for consultancy and supervision.
The coastal works are expected to be funded by the Office of Public Works, with Dublin City Council funding the remaining elements, the tender documents say. The National Transport Authority will support the project's “active travel element”, the documents say.
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