Sinn Féin is calling on Met Éireann to "better represent weather events" across the whole country.

Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile is the party's spokesperson on North-South integration.

He has written to the director of the Irish forecaster seeking a meeting.

Currently, weather alerts issued by Met Éireann do not cover the six counties of Northern Ireland.

These are covered under the British Met Office.

Irish weather alerts are issued whenever weather conditions meeting certain thresholds are anticipated within a 48-hour period.

This includes factors like wind speeds, rainfall and low temperatures.

A Met Éireann yellow weather alert in place for Ireland | Image: Met Éireann

Whereas the British system sees warnings issued depending on a combination of the likelihood of an event happening - and the impact the conditions may have.

Senator Ó Donnghaile said: "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.

"Ireland works best when it works together.

"I have previously raised this issue under a 'Commencement Matter' in the Seanad and Government acknowledged that communication and information sharing needed to be improved.

"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."