As Galway prepared for a battering from Storm Frank yesterday evening, Ardrahan-based county councillor Michael Fahy called on An Taoiseach Enda Kenny to visit south Galway to see the destruction caused by recent flooding in the area.
Cllr Fahy said there were areas around south Galway under several feet of water, with the church in Kiltartan completely flooded and some residents marooned in their homes and receiving deliveries of groceries through their windows. Ardrahan, Labane, and Kiltiernan had also been badly affected, with worse expected as the sixth storm of the winter bore down on the west coast last night.
Meanwhile, he said, flooding at the entrance to a local quarry was hampering the delivery of sandbags to help locals hold back the rising waters.
"The people in south Galway have had this in 1990, in 1995, and then in 2009, and again in 2014," he said. "The people cannot take much more of this. Sympathy is not much good to people at this stage. We need compensation for those affected, and something has got to be done to solve the matter."
Cllr Fahy has called on Mr Kenny to visit the area and see the level of destruction for himself, and to look for EU funds for repairs and preventative works to ensure the area is not hit by such catastrophic flooding in future.
"Come, Taoiseach, to south Galway and see for yourself the misery and human hardship that has not been seen since the troubles of 1916 to 1921," he said yesterday. "Come and see this disaster."
Meanwhile Cllr Fahy had high praise for local council staff in the area, who had worked throughout the Christmas holidays to protect residents from encroaching flood waters.
"The council staff in the Gort engineering area were outstanding during Christmas," he said. "They are a small workforce and they are example to the whole country."
