Letters to the Editor: Spend €6bn surplus on tidal barriers for our cities

Flooding on Douglas Street, Cork. It may be time to begin a serious conversation about tidal barriers to try to repel rising seas as nearly all our cities are built on estuaries.

What a dilemma: Our government must decide, before the next budget, how to spend the €6bn or so provided by soaring corporation taxes. This process will of course be objective and unrelated to short-term electoral ambitions.

In those circumstances, it may be time to begin a serious conversation about tidal barriers to try to repel rising seas as nearly all our cities are built on estuaries and face changing circumstances that make today’s floods look almost irrelevant within the lifetime of today’s minor hurlers. One projection focused on Cork suggested that the high tide mark would be at the traffic lights outside Ashton School on the Blackrock Road shifting the banks of my own lovely Lee dramatically.