Anne Farrell, Renua’s representative in Roscommon, has repeated her calls for the publication of the Flood Risk Management Strategy “as soon as possible”.
Picture Credit: Irish Defence Forces
In a statement released this morning she said that having visited many of the flooded sites in the Roscommon and East Galway area during her election campaign she saw that the devastation and destruction that was caused and again called for the publishing of the Flood Risk Management Strategy to ensure that the areas visited never again have to endure such an impact.
Anne said that the report on RTE’s Six One News this week, regarding the lack of action by our government regarding the flood risk management situation was “embarrassing” and “another damning indictment of how short sighted our Governments have been when it comes to actually preventing issues from becoming a national crisis. The report said that groups established by Government to oversee a national programme of flood risk assessment and management, hadn’t actually met for several years. The steering group hadn’t met for 4 years up to November 2014 and the interdepartmental group to oversee the co-ordination of flood risk management hadn’t met for 6 years up to July 2015. Added to this, the OPW only proceeded with 4 of the 9 pilot projects proposed on flood risk management, all of which were delayed by 6 years.”
She added “Our own delegates from this constituency who went to Brussels at the start of this year, got the thumbs up from Europe, being told that the Habitat and Wildlife Directive must take second place in the interest of the common good. Especially in light of this knowledge, the obvious failure in the duty of the State to undertake such necessary measures as is deemed necessary to alleviate potential hazardous conditions from prevailing again, realistically, is no longer acceptable”
She concluded “We have never been in a better position to demand more from our Government than now, when they are courting our elected officials for support. So I would appeal to all elected representatives, from high profile to new comers, who, by appearing in all the photo ops in these disaster areas showed their solidarity with those affected by the floods, to put pressure on the Government, whom ever it may be, to respond now, before the next looming crisis. Show proper leadership and invest, as prevention costs much less, in every way, than the clean up.”