Tipperary to benefit from 10-year €1billion Flood Relief funding

Tipperary will benefit from a ten-year €1 billion Programme of Investment in Flood Relief Measures, Fine Gael general election candidate Garret Ahearn has said.

The first tranche of €257m in funding for 50 new flood relief schemes to proceed to detailed design and construction phase was announced in Athlone by An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran today (Thursday).

The Flood Risk Management Plans published allows the Government to build on significant investment on previous flood defence schemes around the country.

These schemes successfully provide protection to 9,500 properties and the economic benefit to the State in damage and losses avoided are estimated at €1.9 billion.

There are currently also nine major schemes under construction and a further 24 at design/development which together will provide protection to a further 12,000 properties.

Garret Ahearn said: “This is great news for people in Knocklofty, Golden, Holycross and Nenagh. I’m delighted to see the Government have listened to the people here in Tipperary. This investment in our community will benefit our communities for decades to come.

“We all know that flooding can have an appalling impact on our families, through these state of the art flood defences we will be able to give people some piece of mind.

“The flowing schemes here in Tipperary has been selected as part of the initial phase of projects.

Knocklofty Scheme, Golden Scheme, Holycross Scheme & Nenagh Scheme. Each Scheme will cost under 1 million Euros.

“A new website, www.floodinfo.ie has been launched where people can view the community risk and measures in place, underway and now proposed to tackle flood risk in these 300 areas, and nationally.

“This map and plan viewer website is another important resource, to support planning, emergency response planning, and to empower people and communities to plan and respond to flood risk,” the Fine Gael Candidate Garret Ahearn said.