Mattie McGrath: Calls to clean rivers, criticises flood policy
Mattie McGrath addressed flooding, praising local staff and urging urgent river cleaning and dredging. He criticised ecological objections and called for reform of the OPW, warning that neglected maintenance has left defences vulnerable.
Thanks to local teams
He thanked the minister for his work and paid tribute to the late Dr Erhara Mancher for his contributions, noting the Clonmel flood scheme and praising local Clonmel and Borough District outdoor and interviewing staff including Gillian Flynn and Paul Coffey for maintaining front defences during bad forecasts.
Calls to clean rivers and dredge ports
He pointed out that Waterford deep-sea port was cleaned biannually for decades but that dredging stopped about 25 years ago. McGrath warned that silt and debris from streets, roads, fields and building sites wash into rivers, and argued that unless rivers are cleaned the front defences will be rendered useless.
Criticism of ecological objections and proposed engineering solutions
He said international proposals from Denmark and Holland had been offered, and recalled plans to deepen the river near Clonmel by removing topsoil and restoring grassland. He criticised ecologists who he said opposed such work to protect frogs and snails, arguing that people’s homes and property should take priority.
OPW reform and local impact
He urged reform in the Office of Public Works, warned that current policy and what he described as ‘folly’ from political colleagues undermine flood response, and expressed sympathy for communities in Wicklow, Waterford and elsewhere affected by flooding.
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I want to thank you, Minister, for all your hard work in different parts of the country, and at least you understand. I saw you in Manning the Pums back a good many years ago in that own town, so you lived with it and you understand it. I also want to thank the late Dr Erhara Mancher, who did a lot in that department. He passed away recently, and we extended to his wife, lives in family, and he was the Minister who did help greatly in many areas, but also mainly in Clonmel. Clonmel has that scheme. We suffered for decades and we had the problems, and we have a great scheme there now. Obviously, there are little tweaking problems and pushing the water back. I want to shout out to the Clonmel and Borough District area staff, outdoor staff, and interviewing staff, Gillian Flynn and Paul Coffey, and thank them for their work, putting up the front defences each time there's a bad forecast, and they are working, thank God. But they won't keep working, because we have the folly here, and we have it from our left colleagues, the Royal Tosche and Emma now, they're like snow off a ditch, they come in and put out their fantasies, radical grammar was talking about keeping water up on the side of a hill. How would you keep water up on the side of a hill unless you had it in a bucket? And you couldn't even hold the bucket of that. But anyway, unless we clean the rivers, the Waterford port, deep sea port, was cleaned biannually for decades, up to about 25 years ago. It's not cleaned anymore. Every piece of dirt of this roof had dust off the streets, off the roads, the fields, of anything, building sites, eventually washes into the rivers, as well as it says to go. So we must clean the rivers, because the front defences would be rendered useless. I sympathise and sympathise with the people all over Wicklow and Wixford and many other areas in the Waterford, who were flooded, and it's not a nice situation, because you don't get water, you get lots of other stuff as well. But as I said, we had solutions come over offered to us from Denmark and Holland. Imagine schemes about moving water on faster, faster. And we also wanted to, we had offers of land down south in Clonmel to open there, to deepen the river, take off the top side of the land and put in all the spile and put it back again to grassland. But no, the ecologists and we have frogs and we have snails and everything else. People's lives and property, people who can't get a jones, is much more important than all these ecologists and all these green people who want to tell you that you can't do this and snails and everything else. We have to have a reform also in the OPW. Go to Markwood. Dave for 16 hijos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cognome. .
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