Following on from the recent flooding in south Mayo - including the closing off a major artery between south Mayo and Galway at The Neale crossroads - Fianna Fáil Cllr Damien Ryan has called for the Office of Public Works to appear at a meeting of the Claremorris-Swinford Municipal District.
Cllr Ryan said he wanted to see the the OPW come to a meeting of the district to hear about their plans for flood alleviation in the area and in particular, at The Neale crossroads. He told the meeting that in the past they were told that the major flood events were one-in-one-hundred-year events, but in reality flooding has occurred at the location in 2006, 2009, 2016 and again now in 2020 - making it a one-in-four-year event, rather than a one-in-one-hundred-year-event.
The south Mayo based councillor told the meeting that his family currently were facing a 40km round trip to bring his children to school each day and others were facing longer round trips for the same reason; he did acknowledge that consultants had been appointed to produce a report on the best way to tackle the issue, but said it needed to be fast-tracked and a timetable put in place to get the works needing to be done completed.
