Farmers are frustrated with failure to deal with the ongoing flooding of the River Mulcair in County Limerick.
Recent heavy rainfall has caused severe flooding around the River Mulcair (or Mulkear) in County Limerick, leaving thousands of acres of farmland under water. This is not a seasonal issue however, as conditions like these can occur at any time throughout the year along this particular stretch of the river.
Some of the worst of the flooding took place this year in August, causing thousands of tons of hay to rot in the fields.
Local farmers have for many years been receiving broken promises from politicians that solutions will be found, but they say nothing has ever materialised. The introduction of new taxes mean that people here are feeling the economic burden of this flooding, says farmer James Hammersley,
Those people that own this land, they're liable to full rates and resource tax, and they have no income.
A feasibility study carried out on draining this section of the Mulcair found that the productivity of the surrounding 160,000 acres of land would increase dramatically, resulting in £16 million a year in extra output.
Huge sums of money is being spent improving poor land in other parts of the country, says another farmer, and a little would go a long way to improve conditions here in County Limerick, as
We couldn't even put out fertiliser, let alone harvest the silage that we should have got.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 29 October 1980. The reporter is Michael Walsh.
