'Government is here to help': Taoiseach visits flood damaged premises in Midleton

“GOVERNMENT is here to help.” That was the message from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to those grappling with flood damaged premises following the deluge of rainfall on Wednesday.

Mr Varadkar made the pledge while speaking to reporters in Midleton today – one of the areas most severely hit by flooding.

The Taoiseach, accompanied by Finance Minister Michael McGrath and Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW) Patrick O’Donovan, visited the town to witness first-hand the damaged wreaked by Storm Babet.

During the visit, they met with Fire Brigade personnel and spoke with business owners.

“I’ve visited a few places effected by floods in the past, but this is particularly bad,” Mr Varadkar told reporters after a walkabout of the town.

“Water levels rose very high, the water came very quickly and of course a lot of the water is dirty so a lot of damage done to businesses here, to homes as well.

“Understandably, a lot of people are very upset, very angry, but we’re not just here as a Government just to express solidarity, we’re here to help, so we’re putting in place a financial package to help homes that are effected, businesses that weren’t insured – clearly a lot of damage to roads and bridges as well and they’re going to need to be repaired but we’re going to make sure that that help is on the way.” Mr Varadkar said an initial funding allocation has been put in place to assist those who have been impacted.

“There’s an initial allocation of €10m to help families and businesses that are effected and clubs and voluntary organisations too, but it’s not capped at €10m, that’s just the initial allocation that’s made.

“What I’ve asked the council to do is to really carry out an assessment of the damage to the public infrastructure, in particular the roads and bridges, and send it into us and then we’ll have to make a special allocation to cover that, and we’ve done that in the past,” he said.

Mr Varadkar acknowledged that there have been “mixed reports” previously from people who have tried to access State funding after flood damage.

“It has improved over the years and we’ll improve it again.

“There is an initial grant of €5,000 just to get people going and then a higher grant of up to €20,000 after that, but I think we’ll have to increase that limit because the level of damage to some of the stock here - particularly people who’d brought stock in for Christmas - is very high, but there do have to be checks and balances – if we didn’t have them, if we didn’t have those kind of controls or balances, I think we’d face other criticism too,” he said.

In addition to funding, Mr Varadkar further pledged that a flood relief scheme for Midelton is being progressed “as quickly as possible”.

“Preliminary works are done already, the environmental assessment is underway and we intend to put in the planning application for next year but we can’t control whether or not people object, we can’t control the environmental issues and we can’t control the fact that sometimes it ends up in court so I don’t want to give people timelines that I can’t necessarily stand over, but what I can say is that the scheme is being progressed as quickly as possible,” he said.

The Taoiseach also moved to express his thanks to the emergency services, public services and volunteers in Midleton who said exemplified a community “pulling together”.

“The clean-up here is going to take quite some time and it’s going to cost, but we’re going to be here to help,” Mr Varadkar reiterated.