Yesterday afternoon.
The Bastion Apartments, Athlone, Co Westmeath
Poland-born Emily Topka sips tay after being evacuated from her home due to flooding from the River Shannon.
Ms. Topka purchased a ground floor apartment in the block last April.
Good times.
Eamonn Farrell/Rollingnews
Meanwhile…
Anti Irish Water Interlopers during a live flood report by Ciaran Mullooly in Athlone on RTÉ One’s Six News last night.
Thanks Ultan Monahan
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Good trick Emily but Dynamo does it better.
To say nothing of our Lord and Saviour, Jay-Cee.
This is what happens when you hand your planning system away from qualified chartered planners and give it to councillors and engineers with no qualifications or training in spatial planning
but they fix the road, and are great for the owld back handers,.
+1
Investigate, then lock ’em up! …oh wait, Hogan closed the investigations, the scumbag.
This is what happens when you buy a ground floor flat without having a professional survey undertaken.
Never, ever buy a house or apartment without having it surveyed. A decent surveyor would have pointed out the threat of flooding.
Either way what a disaster it must be to have your gaff flooded. More tae.
As they say in Poland; tough pooski.
So the water protesters don’t see the need for updated drainage systems, while standing in a flood? ok so….
Feel sorry for any resident who is watching their home being destroyed.
I believe the point that the water protesters are making is to do with the ‘conservation’ angle of water charges, which, in light of this deluge, and how our summers look like this too except that it might be 16 or so degrees, is rather hilarious.
Completely agree with your point about decent flood defences, mind.
Sorry, updated drainage. I’ve not had the tae yet so I’m a bit… fuzzy.
Really?
I thought what they were trying to do is to is to highlight the fact that they don’t agree with water charges.
Although I would say, our summers don’t look like this.
Our winters don’t often look like this.
And also the water on the ground in Athlone isn’t treated.
Or pumped into your taps.
So its not really hilarious.
Also I’d remind you that we had water shortages a few years back during the snows.
For the same reason that people are now proposing taking water out of the shannon to Dublin.
Because people use considerably more water than the water network can supply in a moderately stressed state.
Water Conservation is an issue regardless of whether water is charged for or not.
But the thing is people tend to value stuff that costs money more than free stuff, so conservation happens to make a useful argument for charging.
I’m not getting into an argument about water charges. We’ve all heard them ad nauseum. As it is, I agree with conservation of water, it is a precious resource. But, dressing up water charges as part of some water conservation programme is utter rubbish, on the part of the government. They’ve been so ham-handed that water charges at present are not encouraging any real conservation efforts. And I imagine you’re right as regards charges making people more likely to be frugal in their water usage, when implemented correctly.
But if drainage were correctly managed in this country, could the rainwater not be harnessed in some useful way? I’m curious.
Would need to be managed at source by retrofitting the internal plumbing of buildings to harvest and use rainwater. This wont happen until it’s too expensive to flush your toilet with drinking water.
It makes very little sense to distribute undrinkable rainwater to homes when so much falls out of the sky.
Managing drainage is a matter of getting it away from where it might cause damage and putting it somewhere it wont do damage.
Thank you :)
That was very informative. I really don’t understand how the water and drainage works in this country, hence my ill-informed spouting above.
The protesters are objecting to supporting FG/Slave Labour’s bloated quango by paying again for water services which they already pay for?
Ok so…
Yeah, but Irish Water wont be improving surface drainage, flood prevention or river basin management.
What has been bundled up are the assets to treat and distribute drinking and waste water and this is being handed over to a company it was felt was in the best position to implement billing.
Irish Water isn’t a body put in charge of managing and planning the whole water cycle in the country ala Scottish Water. It’s the sectioning off of the revenue creating elements (after water billing) that the local authorities managed, but without the burden of those pesky liabilities of surface drainage, flood prevention or river basin management.
I think the water protestors just saw the opportunity for a Photo Op
Nothing more
Poles coming over here
Taking our water
Taking our tay