GOVERNMENT approval is this week being sought for an emergency humanitarian flooding scheme for homeowners and businesses in Bantry.

Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Peter Burke will request approval from the government to compensate those affected by the most recent flood event in Bantry town.

At 3am on the morning of Tuesday, November 4th, the heavens opened and, within 60 minutes of what Met Éireann deemed to be a Yellow Rainfall warning, an estimated 20 properties at New Street, Main Street, Barrack Street, and the quays, were impacted by water that a Cork County Council spokesperson confirmed ‘appeared to be coming from both surface water coming down Bridge Street and High Street and also from road gullies and manholes which feed into the main culvert underneath the town’.

The emergency scheme provides support for businesses who are unable to secure flood insurance, and are impacted by flood water as a result of severe weather events, which the townspeople of Bantry believe is happening with increased frequency and intensity.

An articulated truck makes its way through the floods at Ardcahan bridge. For the second time in eight days the main Dunmanway to Macroom road R587 is again impassable at Ardcahan bridge due to flooding of the upper Bandon River, north of Dunmanway. Over 50mm fell in the area during a yellow rain warning which lasted fourteen hours in Co Cork, starting at midnight and ending at 2pm on Tuesday.
Picture: David Patterson.

Every time there is a severe weather event, such as the most recent Yellow Rainfall warning by Met Éireann from midnight on Monday of this week – which saw roads flooded throughout West Cork, particularly the perennial problems of road surface flooding at Madore, near Caheragh, and the Ardcahan Bridge outside Dunmanway – residents worry that it could become a flood event.

‘The stress is relentless,’ according to local Independent Ireland Cllr Danny Collins. He said: ‘The fear of flooding is only the half of it. Then there is the damage to property, the clean-up, and knowing that an insurance company isn’t ever going to cover that person’s property again.

‘The only solution is for Bantry, like other West Cork towns, such as Bandon, Clonakilty and Skibbereen, to have its own major flood relief scheme,’ he added.

He acknowledged the minister’s assurance to traders, and the wider Bantry community, that his department is liaising with the department of local government, as well as Cork County Council, to activate the emergency scheme, but he said the people of Bantry would be more appreciative if the estimated €60m flood relief scheme, and a major plan to upgrade the town’s subterranean culvert system, could be fast tracked.

Cllr Collins said the emergency scheme, which is administered by the Irish Red Cross, will provide ‘some welcome financial support in the coming days, but nothing can lessen the level of frustration that the people of Bantry are experiencing’.

Minister for nature, heritage and biodiversity, Christopher O’Sullivan TD, said it is important that the funding is provided without delay and he said he would be ‘pressing the Office of Public Works to accelerate the delivery timeline for Bantry’s culvert works’.

Deputy O’Sullivan said a team from Cork County Council will ‘verify affected premises and insurance status’ before the department of enterprise will activate the scheme with government approval.