Minister of State Kevin Boxer Moran brief An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on the Inishowen flooding crisis this afternoon.
Longford-Westmeath TD Moran, Minister of State for the Office of Public Works and Flood Relief, attended an emergency meeting of the Inishowen Municipal District in Carndonagh today.
Moran was joined in Inishowen last night by Shane Ross, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, while the Minister for Employment and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, is expected to visit the peninsula tomorrow following the announcement today that her office is setting up a Humanitarian Assistance Scheme for flood victims.
“Whatever measures have to be taken, we have to put that into co-ordination,” Minister Moran said in Carndonagh.
“This is on a scale that if you are going from one to ten, this 11. That is how bad the scale of it is up here at the present time.
“To see people go in and carry belongings out of their houses, that was terrible to see.
“I am so used to seeing the hardship of flooding, but not of the scale I saw yesterday. I have never seen anything like this. This is all new. This has to be brought to the Government.
“The funding has been announced this morning. We have never been found wanting in terms of flooding. This is something that I have never seen, on this scale.
“My office is open. I don’t want this to be a political debate. We want this to be about helping people.”
While funding has been promised, no figure has been put on the allocation to Inishowen as officials and experts continue to assess the scale of the widespread damage that has devastated the area.
Five main locations in Inishowen were rendered as impassable following the flash flooding on Tuesday evening: at the Three Trees, Cockhill Bridge, Craignahorna, Riverside and Gortaran.
Cockhill Bridge and Gornaran have since reopened, while the road at the Three Trees is to reopen with single-lane traffic.
Council staff were still working today to repair damage to a bridge at Craignahorna, but the road at Riverside, on the road between Quigley’s Point and Carndonagh, remains impassable as a bridge has been totally washed away.
Brendan O’Donnell, a Senior Engineer with Donegal County Council, said: “The damage here was unprecedented. We had one incident where if we had 30 loads of stone, it still wouldn’t have filled the hole. It wasn’t just about a surface being washed away. We have no estimate of the cost yet.”
Fianna Fail TD, Charlie McConalogue, who also attended this morning’s emergency meeting, said: “The key challenge now is dealing with it and get things back up and running. Inishowen has got the brunt of this. It is quite localised, but it is a scale that we’ve not seen before. It is not just a matter of helping and doing emergency repair work – it is a matter of the breadth of the response.”
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