Flooding victims take compensation case to Europe

FOUR families devastated by the loss of their homes due to flooding took their case to Europe in a desperate effort to get some compensation from the state.

Fine Gael MEP Jim Higgins told the petitions committee of the European Parliament that it was well known that the area where Galway County Council gave permission to build was subject to flooding.

“I know because when I was a minister in the Government in 1994-5 I commissioned a study and maps to be drawn up of the areas liable to flooding and said that planning permission should not be given for those areas,” he told his fellow MEPs.