Kya deLongchamps offers some advice on the various options available to good neighbours.

Direct defences are essential to protect Cork City from flooding and will not be dropped from the State’s largest ever flood defence scheme, the OPW insisted last night.

Cork’s business leaders have criticised opponents of the city’s €140m flood defence plan amid fears that their “last-minute” intervention could delay the largest scheme of its kind in the history of the State.

Walls dividing Protestant and Catholic communities in the North should be down within the next seven years, a government minister has said.