State’s response to Cork floods ‘pathetic’

The State’s emergency fund response to Cork’s flood disaster has been branded as “pathetic,” with government ministers accused of peddling “meaningless, empty rhetoric” about financial aid.

Brendan Dempsey, the Cork regional vice president of the St Vincent De Paul, launched a broadside on the Government yesterday exactly two weeks on from the flood.

He said red tape is strangling the ability of community welfare officers to make swift pay-outs to some of the worst affected.