Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
BATTLE-WEARY BUT standing firm, Pat Mason declared the only way he’ll be leaving his flood-hit Co Clare home is in a coffin.
“The only we they’ll get me out of here is in a box,” he announced, as he watched the River Shannon slowly swallowing up his garden and driveway.
Springfield, Clonlara, where Mason and his wife Margaret, and twelve other families reside, is submerged.
Ten homes, protected by 7,000 sandbags, are under threat of being flooded.
Despite the best efforts of Clare County Council workers building up the bagged flood defences, residents began pumping water out of their gardens and driveways as the deluge crept in around them.
The ESB, which operates the Parteen Weir located upriver from Clonlara, increased the flow of water to maintain safe levels within the dam.
However, the knock-on effect is large scale flooding along the lower Shannon Basin, including Clonlara.
Two families have been evacuated to a local hotel but Pat Mason has stayed.
Despite previous floods surrounding his home, Mason, with the aid of pumps, his two children, and neighbours, always dug in and managed to keep the water literally inches from his door.
“I’m ready for the battle again,” he said.
Clutching a life-jacket, which he purchased following floods in 1995 and 2009, he showed photographs of his water locked-bungalow.
“The only thing that has changed down here is the colour of our hair,” he said. “We’ve gone grey, but nothing has changed, nothing has been done for us.”
Political promises ‘a waste of time’
Local roads were impassable by car, so farmers ferried water bottles to homeowners cut off from dry land.
Clare County Council delivered portaloos to residents whose septic tanks and water wells were compromised and backed up by the floodwater.
Life-buoys were also secured to posts along roads overwhelmed by the flood, which served to remind how dangerous conditions have become.
“Were in the same situation we have been for years, no improvement whatsoever,” Mason said. Past promises by politicians, he says, have been “a waste of time”.
His neighbour, Bridget Kinsella, also watched on as the river crept nearer to her home.
“I’ve had no sleep, I’m looking out the window at night with a torch to see is the field flooding across from us,” said Kinsella.
“It’s an awful hand of cards. We can’t sell our houses, the council won’t give us the market value for them, we are literally stuck here.
“We are literally prisoners stuck in our own houses and we can never sell. Who would buy this misery? If you gave it away, I don’t think anyone would take it.”
“I’m a widow and I’ve three sons and they are starting to grow up and they are going to move away and get on with their own lives. I certainly don’t want this for the rest of my life.”
Sean Lenihan, a senior engineer with Clare County Council, said the local authority was hopeful of re-submitting in the next “two to three weeks” a planning application that would see a 2km mud embankment and pumping station built to try to alleviate flooding.
A previous application to build the proposed local flood defence was withdrawn after an objector raised concerns about its ecological and environmental impact.
“We went back to the drawing board to make sure we had addressed all those issues and we are happy that we have,” Lenihan said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
and there will be hose pipe bans when it doesn’t rain for 2 weeks in July. Shambles.
@Green Lentils: if only the council would get off their arses and fix the weather…
@Green Lentils: That is literally not true
I’m not really familiar with that stretch of the Shannon but from what I’m hearing the problem lies in the failure to dredge the appropriate stretches of the river. It obviously can’t be done now when the river is in full flood but there won’t be a word about it when the river returns to normal levels!
That’s because it’s all a flood plain. No amount of dredging would make a difference.
Hard to believe that it’s legal to sell permission to build houses on flood plains. Our previous governments were fine with that, and should be helping those people now.
@Colm O’Leary: Not entirely true, flood plains can be reclaimed and be turned into fertile farming land. Ireland needs to turn to Dutch expertise. An Griannan Estate in Donegal was reclaimed by Dutch specialist engineers in the 1960s and is the largest organic farm in Europe at 2,500 acres. The affected areas needs government funding to resolve as many of the hard hit residential areas. If the Dutch lived in Ireland, they’d feed the world but if the Irish lived in Holland, they’d drown.”
@Seamus McLaughlin: if you hem in the Shannon you flood somewhere else! It’s as simple as that. You have x cubic meters of water coming down through that river. If you block it in A it will overflow in B or C! Either way, houses are flooded.
Wouldn’t buy house have history flood and loss value house. Sorry for people who live area flood nightmare & blame climate
@Green Lentils: silly comment
@Brian Flavin: as opposed to yours?
@Green Lentils: your comment ridiculous
@Green Lentils: not built on a flood plain. Lack of / no dredging of river Shannon and lack of maintenance by any authority is the cause. If you want to be more factual wait until ballinasloe or areas surrounding Dublin bay flood then you can post the same comment with some authority
@Nigel Barlow: all the dredging in the world can’t fix the shannon flooding. It makes no difference.
Once the dredged section fills up with water, it might as well be full of concrete.
Well if you buy or build a house in a floodplain, even if it only floods once in a hundred years, what can you expect? And it’s no good saying that you built it on land you owned because then you should know that the risk was there.
@Colm O’Leary: Certainly the government was happy to take fees for such building sites. Payback time, I reckon.
@Colm O’Leary: Try rebooting mate… the empathy chip seems to be broken. Let’s hope your house in Enniscorthy never flooded or hit by lightening or burns down. Cos there are clowns on here who will actually blame you. I know, crazy, isn’t it??
@Colm O’Leary: Better to build living quarters on upstairs levels and have a garage on ground floor
@Paul Whitehead: no My house will never flood because I had the good sense to by a house on a hill. The whole of the slaney valley would have to be underwater to 60+ meters before my feet get wet. I simply don’t have much empathy for people who build a house where they shouldn’t and then want a goverment hand out when it floods. And yes, the council took the fees for planning. but you were the one who wanted plannning permission to build there. And If they had declared that you couldn’t build there or turned down your application you’d still be complaining about that.
The plan to divert water from the Shannon would that stop the flooding in the Midlands?
@Dave Byrne: Good point. It may also solve the water shortage in the eastern counties. A lot of tjhe opppsition to this plan comes from people living beside the Shannon!
@Dave Byrne: it wouldn’t affect the flooding because they would only be removing a small percentage of the flow of the river.
@Neil O’Connor: Yep people living along the river were up in arms about the river being diverted to Dublin and surrounding counties.
Maybe it could be used as a pressure relief valve in the event of flooding the water is diverted elsewhere.
@John Murphy: So why are all these people opposed to it then?
@Dave Byrne: Not as easy as you suggest. Water abstraction causes ecological problems and your would still have problems if the same amount of care and maintenance that is given to the river Shannon ie very little was given to a pipeline. Leaks everywhere but no fixes. Pumping stations and water purification plants going unrepaired. That’s already happening elsewhere. Water desalination plants off the east coast may be a better idea.
@Dave Byrne: can’t remember exactly but I think it was proposed to remove 500k litres of water a day to the east. Parteen Weir is letting out 300k cubic metres of water a second. So no, the pipeline wouldn’t even scratch the surface.
@Nigel Barlow: so does dredging…
@Attilio: dredging will have zero impact on shannon floods.
Is ticket touting really any different than hotels in cities charing premium rates for high demand weekends because of their locations. Surely the price of a hotel room should also be the same price all year around if concert tickets can only be the same price too.
@Ashley Rowland: wrong turn :(
@Ashley Rowland: ok I still LK don’t know what a tracker mortgage is
They say “we can never sell them” but, have they actually tried? Even if they were to get below market value, surely that’s better than living in “misery”? I’d much rather sell and be able to take all of my possessions with me than go through the place getting flooded and everything wrecked and lost forever.
@Sirius: If they got say 50k for the house due to its flooding problem where do you think they could buy a new house?
@Sirius: you have to declare that it’s been flooded already, if you’re selling a house, so who in gods name would risk it. No insurance company would touch it.
@Sirius: Who would buy a house that is declared to be on a flood plain and uninsurable? I wouldn’t give you 10K for one.
Lots of houses are built in the wrong places. Councils let builders put houses on flood plains and the owners suffer and complain years later. The unfortunate miral of the story is don’t buy a house where the ground is liable to flood.
So clare co co had a plan to fix it. Mud bank and pump station. Can’t because of an objection. Well that’s just great isn’t it. Councils just can’t win.
Sirius !! Go back to bed .
Why dont the local.authoritys map the flooded areas using drones or other technologies and build the database of flooded areas. They refuse any planning permissions within a 100m distance of any current flooded areas
@Raymond Murphy: problem is historic, houses already built.
In many cases, planners refused permission but councillors forced the overturning of these decisions.
@John Mulligan: And yet they keep electing these muppets into power.
The bottom line here is people are suffering, so all these unhelpful comments only make matters worse for these people
The esb have a lot to pay for yet every year they open the flood gates on the shannon. Weather this person is affected or not. the esb need to store the water until its actually needed
In my book the esb should be paying for all this damage or at least to secure these houses from flooding
Still water restrictions in place lol
Just wondering if area had cheap housing due to being built on bog land. Were houses priced accordingly? Or did purchasers have no knowledge of area prone to flooding?
have your say