Summer may sound like a good time to publish a report on flooding, and to host a public meeting. With record rainfalls in June, however, the streams, turloughs and loughs have been swelling in south Galway. "We're watching them - and the Government!" warns Michael Kelly, chairman of the local branch of the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA).
"Lively" is the most apt description for the atmosphere in Glynn's Hotel, Gort, last Thursday, when the Office of Public Works hosted a public meeting to discuss its final report on the South Galway Flood Study. Published in May, the report recommended that no major engineering works be undertaken to prevent the sort of situation which turned some 6,000 acres to swamp in 1995, and forced people to leave homes. "No, we are not looking for compensation. We don't even want to mention the word," Mr Kelly insists, as he dismissed the OPW hearing as a "PR exercise". He and the couple of 100 farmers he represents believe an engineering solution must be applied, if a "disaster" is not to recur in five to 10 years' time. The level of pollution in the area's groundwater supplies is also a major concern, and one which he believes is not being taken seriously by the local authority.
"We fully endorse the report. It was a brilliant piece of work, but it took the environmental line," Mr Kelly says. He particularly welcomes its dismissal of claims that farmers had contributed to the flooding by discarding dead animals and silage wrap and blocking drains and streams.
"Compensation here would mean a scrappage scheme for farming families, so we don't want a penny," he says. Where designation of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) is concerned under the EU Habitats Directive, landowners must be looked after, however. "It is this SAC issue that has stopped engineering works, at a period when this economy is awash with money. It is time that some of this money was spent here." The two-year study by Jennings O'Donovan and Southern Water does make some recommendations to minimise flood damage costs in the future, and points out that Galway County Council now has detailed information to assist in to decide on planning applications in the locality. Some £500,000 has been paid to applicants who suffered losses in 1994/5 - a scheme which some locals acknowledge to have been subject to abuse.
The IFA intends to continue to push for a more radical solution, in the knowledge that local elections are less than a year away.
Significantly, the Minister of State for Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Mr Eamon O Cuiv, was not at the meeting, but was attending another gathering in Galway over a contentious housing plan by the Western Health Board.