Aid for Suir flood put on EU agenda

THE Secretary General of the European Commission, Sir David Williamson, has agreed to ask the Commission tomorrow for emergency relief for flooding in the Suir catchment area.

The pledge follows representations by the Minister of State for Finance, Mr Hugh Coveney, who has sought £600,000 in EU humanitarian relief for the flooding earlier this month.

Mr Coveney promised Sir David the Office of Public Works would come up with matching funds.

The Department of the Environment was also looking at longer measures for the river to ensure that such damage would not recur, the Minister said.

The request to the Commission for special funding was cleared later at a meeting of the commissioners' chefs de cabinet which prepares the weekly agenda.

Mr Coveney said the aid would be targeted primarily at the old and the less well off and those who had been uninsured or under insured in the Clonmel and Carrick on Suir areas. More than 250 homes were badly damaged after 11 inches of rain, a downpour not expected more than once in 100 years, Mr Coveney told Sir David.

The Minister said he was hopeful that the EU funding would be available in between 40 and 60 days, as clearance by the Parliament and ministers would be required. But he acknowledged that Ireland would probably not get the full amount requested.

It was still difficult, he said, to estimate the full costs, although South Tipperary County Council had put a figure of £1 million on damage to homes and land. A substantial part of that would be met by insurance companies.

The budget line for humanitarian aid was axed by the Parliament in the course of the annual inter institutional budget negotiations, and will have to be reinstated to make provision for the Irish cash and also aid for Portugal which had similar flood damage.