Farmland damaged during flooding to ‘compete’ for limited resources

Farmland damaged during recent river flooding in East Cork is still under review by local authorities, but requests for reinforcements must compete with housing for scarce resources.

Cork County Mayor Barbara Murray has visited the 250 acres of land along the banks of the Womanagh River in Ballymacoda, damaged as a result of a severe storm a month ago. The river, which carries large volumes of water out to sea in south-east Cork, burst its banks as the flow of water from the river hit both high tide and high winds coming in off the south coast.

The county mayor said that she would bring the matter to the immediate attention of the senior county engineer Noel O’Keeffe to ask him to explore ways that Cork County Council can help out. Mr O’Keeffe plans to discuss the matter with the Office of Public Works.

Mr O’Keeffe said: “This is more a matter for the OPW to consider, and I will be raising it with them at our next meeting. The OPW decides upon the priorities for how we decide to use whatever scarce resources we have available to us. In terms of flooding defences, our first priority would be houses with people living in them.”

The county mayor’s visit to the damaged farmland was organised by the chairman of Cork Central IFA Jimmy Hosford, who remains hopeful that the OPW and Cork County Council will come to the aid of the East Cork farmers.

Mr Hosford and the local landowners stressed to the county mayor the importance of a co-ordinated approach, by both the council and the OPW, to fix and reinforce the section of riverbank to protect the land from turning into a permanent lake.

Ms Murray said it was sad to see such a large area of good agricultural land flooded due to lack of maintenance of the river bank over the years. The landowners present pointed out that a few years ago, the OPW had carried out very successful work to reinforce another section of the Womanagh River bank nearer the coastline, and it was important now to reinforce some of the other sections of the riverbank that have been weakened by the flow of water over years.