Intensified farming worsening flooding and road damage, Cork County Council warns

Waters pouring down the road from Dromkeen Wood forest walk at Innishannon after overnight rain and flooding Co. Cork. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

Analysis carried out by Cork County Council shows that increasingly intensified farming is having a major impact on flooding and damage to roads.

Meanwhile, the local authority is seeking a meeting with senior officials from the Office of Public Works and Inland Fisheries Ireland to allow it to carry out more dredging of streams and rivers to reduce flood risk.

One of the council’s most senior officials, Niall Healy, said the analysis was carried out in the East Cork region and highlighted that the increasing removal of ditches and drainage on farms is exacerbating flooding.

Mr Healy said rainfall “run-off” from agricultural land is causing more flooding downstream and is increasingly “diverting more and more water onto public roads.” 

He said the council cannot adequately mitigate this by improving roadside drainage as it isn’t getting the necessary money from the government for such projects.

The latest government allocation for drainage works in the county was €2.26m. “That is nowhere near what we had sought,” Mr Healy said.

The cause of flooding in many parts of the county last weekend is being put down to several streams overflowing because they haven’t been dredged for silt and cleared of debris in years.

A number of councillors have called for the Arterial Drainage Acts to be overhauled, pointing out that IFI and the OPW are preventing the local authority from carrying out such work due to an overly vigorous interpretation of EU laws.

Mayor of County Cork, Fianna Fáil councillor Joe Carroll, said a council delegation on a recent fact-finding trip to Brussels had been informed that other EU states are not required to and don’t have to take the same draconian stance as Ireland does on such issues.

“We are already down €275m on the expected funding from government for maintaining our roads since 2008,” he added.

Fine Gael councillor John Michael Foley got standing orders suspended at a meeting in County Hall to discuss the most recent flooding.

He said he’d seen the damage done in Ballinascarty and between Bandon and Kilbrittain due to streams overflowing. Mr Foley said the newly refurbished community centre in Ballinascarty was only saved by the prompt action of the fire brigade.

Mr Foley said the council had raised the road in a vulnerable section between Bandon and Kilbrittain, but because the stream had overflowed, it caused the road to be closed.

“Rivers and streams are being dredged all over the world, but for some reason, we can’t seem to do that. We have to clean them out,” Independent councillor Finbarr Harrington said.

“We’re more worried about fish and the (EU-protected) Freshwater Pearl Mussel than about people,” Fine Gael councillor Michael Creed added.

Fianna Fáil councillor Patrick Gerard Murphy said they were allowed to dredge rivers up until the 1980s and that didn’t appear to have damaged wildlife. He added that during floods, Freshwater Pearl Mussels are getting washed onto land and eaten by birds, which isn’t helping them survive.

Fianna Fáil councillor Frank O’Flynn said he remembers well when parts of the River Blackwater were dredged every two to three years, while Fine Gael councillor Anthony Barry said it doesn’t take a lot of work to clear them as there are certain pinch points at bends where debris builds up. 

“You don’t have to scour a whole river,” he added.