As a number of areas are counting the costs of flooding in recent days, one South Kilkenny councillor’s today calling on the council to outline its plans to prevent further.
The Piltown municipal district’s monthly meeting takes place this morning and the effects of recent torrential rainfall across the area’s set to be on the agenda.
It comes as further rain’s forecast for today (Wednesday).
Cllr Pat Dunphy says we can’t afford to continue as we are; “”It caused a lot of damage, I suppose the rain coming like that this country is not capable of handling it so I’d just like to know what plans do we put in place going forward to try and remedy the situation, I think this is a part of climate change in particular where you’re getting these downpours of rain, as the infrastructure is at the moment, it’s just not able to handle it”.
He adds that some of the areas hardest hit will need substantial investment and that can only be done through the roadworks scheme; “It would have to go in on the next roadworks budget, whatever we’ll have for 2023 which will be probably decided in early February, that time of the year, we’ll have to think about these things now because climate change is here and that type of torrential thing will come every now and then”.
Cllr Dunphy’s hoping the area engineer can shed light on the path to take; “They go out, they have a look and they would make recommendations and they do bring it back to the members in every area for a decision so it’ll be interesting to hear what they say can be done but I’m sure the different issues in different areas probably are leading to a lot of this so we’ll just have to see, take it issue by issue”.
