Government must 'underwrite' Midleton until flood defences are in place

IT WAS standing room only yesterday morning in Salina’s Bistro on Midleton’s main street for a meeting of the town’s trading community. They met to deliberate over their response to an enhanced emergency relief scheme which could see payments of up to €100,000 for individual businesses to get back on their feet again after Storm Babet.

Local GP Mike Thompson described the 100 or so people in attendance as being from the “engine of the town”, the main street and surrounding streets. He said there was energy, emotion, and some anger in the room. “But there was also pragmatism, altruism, and there was a lot of logic as well,” he added.

“The meeting opened and closed with gratitude, yes, to central Government, but also gratitude to our own people, our own town folk, the GAA club, the rugby club, the schools, the TY students, neighbours, surrounding towns; the altruistic support has been humbling, to be honest — more offers of support than we will ever need, thankfully.

“A week ago we were getting ready for Christmas, some people had lots of orders in, they will be having their trades’ creditors calling for that now, people had existing loans, some people were paying loans off from the previous flood, we’re paying our tax bill too,” said Dr Thompson.

He welcomed news of funding as a “reprieve” but added that “even with the funding we get we still will not be where we were one week ago”.

“It’s a sensible decision by the Government to keep the town going. We certainly wouldn’t survive a second flood like this, albeit this is our fourth such flood in 25 years.

“We very much called for the Government to underwrite our town, until the flood defence scheme is up and running in five or six years, that any further flooding event will be underwritten by the Government and that includes other places in the jurisdiction.

“Through no fault of our own, and we pay the same insurance as everyone else, we cannot have the protection of flood insurance because we don’t enjoy the benefit of flood defence, unlike other major trading towns in Cork and elsewhere.”

Now the focus is on getting Midleton back on its feet. “We’re very glad of the ‘white smoke’ but now we want to get on and let people know, we’ve 60 days until Christmas, the town is clean now, we’d welcome people’s support as well at this stage, from our traders, our restaurants, and from our health centres.”