Athlone has already received €353,000 to help with emergency flood relief, it was reported at the first meeting of the town council earlier this week, in an update on the situation given to the members by Barry Kehoe, the local director of services.
Some 60 skiploads of destroyed property were removed from the flooded homes in the region by the Council by December 14, giving some indication of how much damage was actually done by the extreme weather conditions .
Pleasantly, there was no extra charge for this service and all sandbags were removed two days before that.
All local authority tenants who were affected by the unprecedented pre-Christmas flooding have been consulted with already, and Mr Kehoe expects all the re-accommodation will take “a couple of months”. “No-one is left in hotels or B&Bs,” he said.
“The [affected] roads were swept and disinfected and the sewers were cleaned,” said Mr Kehoe. “Vermin control measures are now in place and the flood relief centre [in the town centre] is still up.”
He told the meeting that after applying for funds from central Government, the town council received €353,000 to aid in its flood relief measures.
The council will look at the feasibility of flood defence measures “as soon as the present severe weather is over”, however, Cllr Boxer Moran (FF ) declared he wanted to set up a sub-committee to look at this issue immediately. Cllr Gabrielle McFadden (FG ) agreed with this and wanted to know about the local authority tenants in Iona Villas who have declared they wouldn’t be returning to their flooded estate.
Mr Kehoe suggested the offer of another address to these tenants would depend entirely on the level of housing stock available to the council at the moment. He also added that the €353,000 from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government was only for flood relief and that any monies sought to repair roads damaged in the floods would have to be applied for directly from the Department of Transport.
All councillors who spoke felt that any flood defence measures should look at the whole river, but Mr Kehoe scotched this possibility by pointing out the wideness of such a remit and that “our limited resources were for the town only”.
Mayor Mark Cooney suggested the sub-committee meet between now and the next monthly meeting and come back to the council with a remit for the town’s flood defence measures and this was agreed upon.
