County Council to establish dedicated flood relief team, Interim CEO says

CORK County Council is establishing a dedicated flood defence/flood relief team.

It is awaiting confirmation from Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe that he will release the funding to the authority to ensure such a unit would have its own ringfenced resources, council interim CEO Valerie O’Sullivan said.

Ms O’Sullivan was speaking in response to a motion proposed during yesterday’s council meeting by Midleton Social Democrats councillor Liam Quaide calling for the establishment of a ‘one stop shop’ or dedicated national agency which would deal with flood prevention and the aftermath of the likes of Storm Babet.

Mr Quaide had called for a ‘one stop shop’ because the flood risk in certain parts of the county gave rise to a number of challenges that were “enormous in scale and complexity”.

“These challenges are going to test us more as time goes on and our climate crisis deepens,” he said, adding that there are many people in east Cork “who feel deeply let down by the council”.

“They feel they have been left exposed to flooding, or not helped when the last floods took place, and not provided with interim measures that may provide more protection than they currently have. When you’re in that position, a natural response would be to think that the council is detached or uncaring — I don’t believe that that was the case.

“On October 18 and in the days afterwards, all the statutory agencies — the council, the HSE, the emergency services — were working flat out.”

The interim CEO responded to Mr Quaide and several other councillors who expressed their support by saying the solution was more local autonomy rather than another national agency.

“If we had local governance, local autonomy, local power to make decisions, things would happen quicker and better,” said Ms O’Sullivan, stressing that the appropriate agency to deal with flooding in Cork is Cork County Council.

“There is no community that was affected by the flood that was left by Cork County Council to fend for themselves, none,” she said.

She disclosed to the meeting that she had been working since October to establish the council’s own dedicated flood defence/flood relief team which would be independent in that the resources within that team could not be drawn into other areas of council business.

“I’m hoping, because Minister Donohoe told us that funding wouldn’t be a problem, that the funding of that team will not be a problem and that it will be established pretty quickly.”