Leo Varadkar has revealed he is planning on visiting Cork following Storm Babet.
The Taoiseach will visit areas that have been affected by flooding to assess the damage that has been caused.
Describing the floods as a ‘devastation’ in parts of Cork such as Midleton, Varadkar spoke about schemes being put in place for those who need help with clean-up costs after the flooding.
Flooding has caused carnage across #Cork. Thank you to the emergency services.
— Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) October 18, 2023
We will work with @corkcitycouncil & @Corkcoco to assess damage and respond quickly with financial supports for businesses impacted.
@DeptEnterprise https://t.co/dNkHapB35S
Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Today with Claire Byrne earlier this morning, the Taoiseach explained, “It seems like these are very serious floods and there is real devastation in Midleton in a number of towns. The defence forces were out last night helping people to move things to prevent the flood from spreading”.
“We're putting in place humanitarian schemes to help householders, families, businesses with some of the costs of the clean up”.
He continued, “It's very evident that there's a lot of damage to the roads and a lot of damage to things like walls, for example. We'll need to assess the damage, put a costing on the repair of it and make a special allocation so that the repairs are done”.
“There are different flood schemes in different places and in some places they've been built and they've worked very well and other places that they get stuck in planning because there are big environmental issues around, around flood works and some are stuck in the courts and that is a real difficulty.”
Trojan work by @cc_civildefence volunteers today … spent the afternoon pumping water in Blackpool village leaving just before 6pm with most of flood waters gone #StormBabet pic.twitter.com/jyzOSR0AYx
— Cork City Council (@corkcitycouncil) October 18, 2023
Varadkar went on to mention the warnings that were issued by Met Éireann before Storm Babet and said he didn’t want to put blame on people who may not have realised the severity of the warnings.
“I'm not the expert in the area, and I certainly don't want to be blaming anyone because I'm not. But what we'll do after any flood or any severe weather event is we'll do a sort of an after the fact analysis, look at what was done, what could have been done better, and what can be learned from future events. But today isn't about that”.
Leo added, “Today is about the clean up and making sure that we protect people and property, and then also assuring people in the areas affected that there will be help, financial help for homes, businesses, sports clubs, any infrastructure that has been damaged will be repaired”.
