Flood crisis - Action must be taken

Flooding in the weeks before Christmas was so extensive that many people throughout the country can empathise with those who were inundated. In Cork city the flooding was the worst in living memory.

In comparison to horrific scenes being witnessed nightly on our television screens of the natural disaster in Haiti, there is a tendency for people to think we were lucky. Today’s the Irish Examiner has a horrifying account of an 1853 flood in Cork city where as many as eight people were drowned.

Those who were inundated recently can take some solace from the fact that things could have been so much worse. To an extent it demonstrates what we have learned over the past century and a half, but this must be small comfort for those who were affected.

Even if things might have been worse, this does not excuse the fact that they should have been better. With so much experience over so many years, surely adequate measures should be taken to prevent homes being flooded, even if it meant prohibiting building on flood plains.

Action should not simply be postponed because the problem does not seem urgent at the moment. Something has to be done.