Business owners in Midleton have described the extent of the damage caused by the flooding during Storm Babet.

Rachel McCarthy, who owns Ina McCarthy for Flowers on Main Street, said the shop's Christmas and branded stock was destroyed in the floods.

She told RTÉ's Six One News: "One of my girl's got on to me to say the water was coming up the front of the shop and the wheel of my car and by the time I got halfway up the street, the water was at the top of the wheel. We had no time to get the stock off the floor.

"The cameras inside the shop are all live to my phone so I watched the water slowly come in the front door and then the back door.

"I could see buckets falling over, really heavy objects falling over and thankfully the cameras cut out because I couldn't watch it, it was devastating, absolutely devastating."

Andrew Duggan of Repairit.ie explained how he and his fellow staff decided to leave the shop as water began to fill the premises.

He said: "The staff were all in the shop and we were barricading the doors, we thought it was going to come in from outside. It was biblical, it started coming through the floors, the walls before it came in through the doors.

"At that stage we decided to leave the shop, we had intended to stay in the shop and we just wanted to make sure all our customers' products were safe before we left."

Mr Duggan explained how he grabbed a canoe he had stored at the back of the shop and he and another kayaker decided to go around the town to help get people to dry land.

He added: "When people saw us they waved and asked for help to get out, people who wanted to get home were nervous and panic.

"The water was chest high up in spots, we did what we could do to try help locals. We helped a man out of a window, managed to get him in the canoe and to safety."