Hundreds march in Cork in protest at lack of flood relief –two years after communities were deluged

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

On the second anniversary of the storm that brought devastating flooding to Midleton and the wider East Cork area, up to a thousand locals came together at the weekend to protest the limited progress of relief works aimed at preventing a similar disaster happening again.

When Storm Babet hit in October 2023, it brought a month’s worth of rain to the town in just two days, causing damage estimated at nearly €200m. The nearby communities of Mogeely, Castlemartyr, Killeagh, Rathcormac, Whitegate, Ballinacurra and Ladysbridge also suffered flooding.

Participants in Saturday’s march in Midleton said they fear another storm like Babet might not just cause material damage but could also bring fatalities as they stressed the need to speed up the flood relief works.

“We have waited decades for a flood scheme to protect this town and we have possibly, in the best case scenario, eight more years to wait while the surrounding towns and villages will be waiting for multiples of that,” Caroline Leahy, secretary of the Midleton and East Cork Flood Protection Group, told the gathering.

Mona Stromsoe, the chairperson of the group, said that two years on, “heartbreakingly little has changed to protect our homes, businesses and people’s lives. Two years on and we are still standing in fear every time it rains. We are just as vulnerable today as we were on the 18th of October 2023.”

The Midleton Flood Relief Scheme is expected to cost €56m and has a scheduled completion date of 2032. In an update given at a local authority meeting this week, Cork County Council (CCC) said “a Marine Area Consent Application (MAC) for the scheme was submitted to MARA [Maritime Area Regulatory Authority] in late June and validated in July. A decision from MARA is anticipated in late October. The MAC must be in place before the planning application can be submitted to An Coimisiún Pleanála.”

“Based on the current programme it is anticipated that the scheme will be submitted for statutory consent in mid-2026. Once submitted, the statutory consent timeline is not within the control of CCC or the OPW.”

In Castlemartyr and Mogeely, which are hydraulically linked, the council said that excess gravel has been removed from the river and engagement is ongoing with a landowner about an interim upstream flood storage solution.

An interim scheme by CCC and the OPW is providing flood barriers to the owners of affected properties in East Cork. Ms Leahy told the Irish Independent that the latest update that her group received from the local authority was that around a third of applicants have received a barrier with the scheme not expected to be completed until mid-2026. The council has blamed the slow rollout on a poor market response to both supplying the barriers and carrying out the required building works.