Flooding crisis - Prepare for the future

IT is hard to find words powerful enough to console the thousands of people who have had to watch powerlessly as frightening floods destroyed the homes and businesses they worked so hard to build up.

Today’s report that Cork came within four centimetres of an absolutely catastrophic flood can only deepen that concern.

Water levels in the Inniscarra reservoir came that close — the width of a small hand — to spilling over the top of the 1950s hydro-electricity dam and turning Cork into New Orleans.