"Weather knows no borders."
On Wednesday, Sinn Féin Senator and Party Spokesperson on North-South Integration Niall Ó Donnghaile issued a statement titled 'Why can't Met Éireann reflect all of Éireann?'
The statement points out that the same weather often affects counties north and south of the border, and that there would be more cohesion if Met Éireann could issue information on the six counties in Northern Ireland.
“It is a cause of great frustration when the north-east of Ireland is amputated from maps that are supposed to be about alerting people to adverse or emergency weather situations.
"Weather knows no borders; neither should strategies that are meant to be about communicating the very real dangers posed by emergency weather situations."
Ó Donnghaile acknowledged that there is a distinction between the methodology and standards behind Met Éireann and its British counterpart:
"While I understand that Met Éireann and the Met Office operate two different standards in relation to weather warnings, I don't believe these competing approaches should lead to an inability to represent weather situations when/where they occur across Ireland."
As it stands, Met Éireann is the meteorological body with jurisdiction over the Republic of Ireland. When it issues a nationwide warning, for example, it is referring only to the 26 counties in the Republic. When it publishes a map, the six counties in the north are left grey.
The Republic of Ireland is currently in the midst of
a snow-and-ice warning, and the Met Office in the UK has issued a similar warning for Northern Ireland.
JOE has reached out to Met Éireann for comment.
