Loss of Lough Funshinagh home ‘like a death in the village’
The demolition of a family home in South Roscommon, which had been ravaged by flooding from Lough Funshinagh, has been likened by a local councillor to "a death in the village".
The former Lyons-O'Meara house in Rahara was razed to the ground over recent weeks, with the demolition concluding on Thursday last, November 10.
"It's something we knew was coming for a while, but when it happens it's like a death in the village. The finality of it is cruel," said Laurence Fallon, a county councillor and nearby resident.
"The whole area is numbed by it, and it brings (Lough Funshinagh) nearer to people's houses, because when that house was there it was the frontline. That frontline has now been broken and there is a new frontline."
The Lyons-O'Meara house first flooded in 2016, and its occupants then became the first people to be permanently evacuated due to the worsening flooding crisis in the area.
"It hasn't been an easy journey, and I wouldn't like to see anybody else having to go through the same process," homeowner Mary O'Meara told RTE News recently.
"If the overflow pipe (to remove floodwater from the area) isn't allowed to progress, this could be a precedent for what will happen to other homes and farms."
Cllr Fallon said the demolition of the house had been particularly difficult to witness given the rise in the level of Lough Funshinagh as a result of heavy rainfall in recent weeks.
"In the last three weeks it has risen 15 inches, which is almost half a metre, so it is higher than the normal winter level now," he said.
"If we were to have a continuation of the weather we've had for the last three weeks, there is no doubt that we'd be in serious bother at the end of the winter."
Work on the overflow pipeline that Roscommon County Council and the OPW had planned to put in place for the area was halted last year by a successful High Court challenge taken by the Cork-based Friends of the Irish Environment group.
When asked about the current prospects for a solution to the crisis, Cllr Fallon said his concern was around how long it might take for one to materialise.
"There appears to be a determined commitment both from the Minister for the OPW and the OPW itself to find a solution, and they have more or less said that they will fund it.
"That is the positive, and that's very good to have. The difficulty is that this is being made into a major issue of legality, environmental issues, the Special Area of Conservation and everything else.
"The timeframe is going to be the problem, and at all times that is predicated on not having another High Court case and losing it.
"But even assuming that didn't happen, we had been talking about two years (for a solution). Now, the more I hear, it seems like it will be longer than that.
"So there is a huge urgency for everyone to get around a table sooner rather than later and progress it as rapidly as possible.
"It would be very unfortunate if we found a solution but by the time we found it there was untold damage done to other houses," Cllr Fallon concluded.