South Galway residents have been granted an extension to continue consultations on proposed flood relief measures for the area.
An extra month has been allocated to allow one-to-one meetings to take place with landowners to ensure the preferred scheme is well understood and supported by local residents.
The change comes after the South Galway Flood Relief Committee held a meeting with public representatives last Thursday to highlight growing concerns around the public consultation of the emerging preferred flood relief scheme which is due to close next week.
The public consultation is currently online, and David Murray, chair of the SGFRC, says this is placing a restriction on many people.
"We have more and more demands from the members of our community to talk to people on-the-ground to explain what is happening," David Murray says. "There is no point asking people to put in their concerns if they haven't a clue what's even happening on their land."
He says the work to-date has been extensive and complex, but more clarification for landowners is needed.
"We have flood risk assessments, an emerging design, a detailed feasibility report, and a study from TCD on the flooding situation. It can be an information overload and it's not something that is easy to get through. It is hard to see what's proposed on a case-by case basis," he says.
"We are well aware the detailed design still needs to be done, but we will only get once chance at this, so we need to make sure that people are informed correctly and by and large many landowners want to be able to discuss 'on-site'.:
As this is not currently allowed under current Covid-19 restrictions, the SGFRC asked public representatives to formally request for an extension, which was unanimously agreed by Minister Anne Rabbitte, Deputy Ciaran Cannon, Deputy Sean Canney, Cllrs Joe Byrne, Gerry Finnerty, PJ Murphy, Geraldine Donohue and other members of the South Galway Flood Relief committee.
Following representations made to Minister O’Donovan it was confirmed both Galway County Council and the Office of Public Works would make arrangements for a further period of consultation following the easing of the present Covid 19 restrictions to cater for one-to-one meetings to take place with landowners and others, as required.
The SGFRC has also indicated that due to the nature of flood relief projects, works should be considered as part of essential construction services and the nature of these works can be done outside and with strong compliance to social distancing.
