Floods aftermath - A rural and urban crisis

While floodwaters have receded in many urban areas around the country, there is still an amount of debris to be cleared up, as well as restoration work on flood- damaged homes.

There is also the danger of more flooding posed by the further heavy rains forecast.

Half of Cork city’s homes are still without fresh water. It is expected that supplies will not be restored to the north side of the city until the coming weekend. Hence most schools in the area have been closed for the week.

Rural communities are also seriously hit, with land flooded and feeding stocks destroyed. The ICMSA has called on the Minister for Agriculture to introduce exceptional measures that would allow farmers to drain floodwaters from slurry tanks. That excess water is now considered tainted and cannot be drained until mid to late January, so there is no room for new slurry.

Padraig Walshe, president of the IFA, warned that talk about building structures to protect urban areas merely means moving the problems downstream to rural areas. The best measure, he argues, would be to maintain our waterways properly by dredging the silt that has been allowed to build up over recent decades.