An Oireachtas committee has been advised a €50,000 boom will have to be deployed on a top angling and leisure river in Co Cork or risk cancelling a number of sporting and social events due to a rapidly-collapsing pier.

Anglers and conservationists throughout Cork, Tipperary, and Waterford were joined by watersports clubs at the weekend to protest the damage to a salmon weir and the risks to migratory fish on the famed Blackwater River.