LESS than two weeks ago Tullow in Co Carlow was the coldest place in Ireland, recording night-time temperatures of minus 17C.

But during the weekend residents were forced to travel by kayak after heavy rainfall left parts of the town under water.

Entire swathes of the country are today counting the cost asWicklow, Wexford, Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Waterford,Tipperary and Monaghan were hit by floods.

The quays were closed in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, and in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, while residents were evacuated from their homes in Bray, Co Wicklow.

Businesses were also badly affected after the main bridge through Arklow town was closed after the River Avoca burst its banks.

A number of residents were forced to leave their homes, but yesterday Wicklow County Council engineers passed the Nineteen Arches bridge as safe after a structural examination and re-opened it to traffic.

Local councillor Pat Fitzgerald (FF) said it was the worst flooding to hit Arklow since Hurricane Charley in 1986.

Damage

“Whole sections of rural roads were swept away by the floods and the council will be carrying out a detailed assessment of the damage. . . The cost of repairing the damage will run to millions of euro,” he claimed.

Bus services were suspended through the town, while Iarnrod Eireann was forced to operate bus transfers between Wicklow and Arklow on the Dublin to Gorey/Rosslare line due to flooding. Rail services resumed at 4.30pm yesterday.

Elsewhere in Wicklow, the main street in Baltinglass was closed after being flooded.

In Carlow, roads were washed away outside Borris, while Tullowbeg in Tullow was closed because of flooding, with one man pictured travelling through the town by kayak.

AA Roadwatch advised motorists to drive with extreme care because black ice continues to cause problems in Wicklow, Cavan and Monaghan.

It also said there was extensive damage to roads in Wicklow, Carlow, Cork, Kilkenny, Wexford,Meath, Tipperary, Offaly and Sligo.

Met Eireann said today would see patchy rain and drizzle over Ulster and parts of northConnacht and north Leinster, which would die out this morning to give a mostly dry day with some sunny spells.

Early frost in the south and south-east will clear quickly, with highest temperatures of 6C to 10C with light southerly breezes. Tonight will be dry, with ground frost in places and patchy ice or fog possible. Rain will reach the south-west by dawn tomorrow.

Meanwhile, North Tipperary TD Maire Hoctor (FF) has called on Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith to help farmers hit by the big freeze, which rotted thousands of acres of unharvested potatoes.

“The estimated damage is being put at €15m,” she said.

- Paul Melia, Tom Ryan and Mark Kennedy

Irish Independent

Munster experienced the worst of it, with flooding in Cork city and near record rainfall in Co Kerry.

Yesterday Met Eireann said the big freeze should be over by Saturday, with “normal” weather of wind and rain returning.

The country was in the middle of a “transition period” and the widespread freezing conditions would end tonight, it said. However, roads would remain dangerous.

“The winds won’t be as intense but there’s still a risk of some sleet and snow on higher ground,” Met Eireann said.

“There will be dry spells in west Munster and Connacht, and temperatures will be 6-8C in the south and south-west, 3-6C in the midlands and 2-4C in the north.

“Nowhere will be below freezing and the strong gusts should ease off.”

But the prospect of lighter winds was cold comfort to passengers left stranded at Cork Airport yesterday, where storm-force gales of up to 120kmh disrupted flights.

Swamped

Heavy rainfall combined with melting snow also swamped drains and resulted in several rivers bursting their banks around the south-west.

Cork — still recovering from the worst floods in the city’s 800-year history last November — suffered widespread flooding in the Lee Road, Kinsale Road, Sarsfield Road and School Hill areas.

Flash floods made some roads impassable, while high winds also brought down a number of trees.

In Skibbereen, west Co Cork, members of the Civil Defence and the Defence Forces helped to distribute sandbags in the town after a flood alert was issued.

The Defence Forces remained on standby last night, ready to assist local authorities if called on.

In Co Kerry an almost record-breaking amount of rain fell, with 44mm of rain logged at a weather station in Valentia at noon — just 7.2mm short of the record level for a 12-hour period set last November in Cork.

Up to 5,000 householders in Co Carlow and Co Wexford were without power for a number of hours, and snow returned to parts of the south-east.

Blizzards swept across parts of counties Kilkenny and Carlow while counties Wexford, Waterford and south Tipperary experienced a day of almost constant rainfall.

There was also snow in Co Mayo and in south Dublin, while thousands of homes in counties Limerick, Tipperary and Clare were left without water for a second successive day.

ESB crews and Eircom engineers also tackled localised outages due to fallen branches and downed wires.

In Co Leitrim, the Defence Forces cleared ice from paths and roads, while motorists in Co Donegal were advised not to travel the Errigal road linking Termon to Dunlewey because of hazardous conditions — up to six cars were reportedly off the road due to ice.

Secondary roads in north Connacht remained dangerous, and in Galway city drains were monitored amid concerns that grit would clog up underground pipes.

There was limited interruptions to Dublin Bus services but Iarnrod Eireann operated all routes. Dublin traffic was very busy with the M50 slow at Ballinteer due to heavy snow.

AA Roadwatch advised motorists to take extra care on secondary routes and in housing estates where conditions remain very slippery, with heavy snow reported in Dundrum and Ballinteer and slushy conditions in Glencullen and Stepaside.

Additional reporting by , Ralph Riegel, Brian McDonald and Conor Kane
- Paul Melia and Anita Guidera

Irish Independent

There has been a qualified welcome for the decision of Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe to close primary and second-level schools on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation said the decision was sensible in the circumstances.

The Irish Primary Principals’ Network said it welcomed the fact that schools had been given direction.

However concern has been expressed around schools where conditions in their area do not present a safety hazard.

The Minister said he took the decision on health and safety grounds following a meeting of the Government’s emergency planning group and in the context of a poor weather outlook.

Acknowledging that there may be some schools that are in a position to open, the minister said that on balance this was the responsible and prudent approach.

It is welcome news for the many school principals who had serious concerns around health and safety issues but it will prove a headache for many parents.

It also raises once again the question as to who is actually responsible for schools.

The Minister is not legally the employer in schools, Boards of Management are.

There may now be concern in some quarters as to his right to make such an order.

see more: http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0109/education.html

Dr John Tyrrell, the head of Tornado Research Organisation in University College Cork, said that, contrary to the public perception, phenomena such as tornadoes are well documented in the country’s meteorological history.

The expert said these events should not be read as confirmation of strange weather or signs of global warning.

We had endured three awful summers, he conceded, but “we had a series of disastrous summers in the mid-1800s, that’s what gave us the famine”.

Cluster

A cluster of years of terrible weather was “part and parcel of the history of Irish weather”, Dr Tyrrell said.

He has been carefully documenting the country’s tornadoes over the past 12 years and is adamant that there is no evidence of an increased incidence.

Dr Tyrrell questioned whether it was actually a tornado that occurred near Cloughjordan in Tipperary last Saturday afternoon — pointing out that violently rotating air needs to get to the ground to qualify as such.

Instead, the vortex could have been a funnel cloud, he said, adding that he planned to go to Tipperary to investigate the possibility more fully.

In general, Dr Tyrrell insisted that the meteorological data did not point to a deterioration of the weather but rather to a slight improvement.

But try telling that to 20 families in a remote part of the Donegal gaeltacht who were cut off by a giant mudslide on Sunday afternoon near the village of Glencolmcille.

The Mayor of Donegal, councillor Brendan Byrne, who lives close to the area, was one of the first on the scene and said that the landslide, which was caused by torrential rains, had covered a large area and in places had created “craters” of up to 7ft in depth.

“At the time of the incident there were quite a few cars on the road and it is a miracle that no tragedies occurred as the road has been totally washed away. It is also extremely fortunate that no major structural damage or personal injury has been caused.”

One local resident commented: “All we keep hearing about is a railway bridge collapsing outside Dublin, which was serious, but at least those people can get somewhere. We cannot move”.

Engineers are assessing the damage to establish what corrective action can be taken.

- Grainne Cunningham and Paddy Clancy
see more: http://www.independent.ie/national-news/twisters-and-landslides-are-normal-weather-1868294.html

Weather forecasters have predicted that wind and rain are on the way for the festival weekend.

“Fans are reminded to bring their wellies, waterproof clothing and bags to keep their possessions dry,” Oxegen organisers said yesterday.

Met Eireann said that tonight would be dry and cool and tomorrow morning would also start off dry with even some sunny spells in the morning, but that the weather would soon change.

“Cloud will quickly thicken and rain, developing in the West, will move to all parts of the country through the day,” the meteorological service said.

“The weekend will be wet, even very wet at times. Further outbreaks of heavy rain are likely through Saturday and Saturday night. More rain is likely on Sunday too, although there may be some clearance for Sunday afternoon,” Met Eireann added.

There have also been calls for the 80,000 people expected to attend the festival to consider using public transport.

Full details on travel to and from the Punchestown venue are on the Oxegen website.

see more: http://www.herald.ie/national-news/weather-warning-ahead-of-oxegen-1813742.html

In a statement released this lunchtime, Government Chief Whip Pat Carey said he would meet Opposition party whips to arrange the debate on the IMF and OECD reports. He said it was hoped the debate could take place on Friday, July 3rd.

“This will give members on all sides of the Dáil time to read the reports and then make informed contributions,” Mr Carey said.

According to a bleak assessment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published yesterday, Ireland’s banks face losses of €35 billion to the end of 2010, the economy will shrink by 13.5 per cent from 2008 to 2010 and unemployment will climb to 15.5 per cent next year.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said yesterday the economy will shrink by 9.8 per cent this year. The Paris-based think-tank has said that unemployment will reach 14.8 per cent in 2010, and that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) will contract by 14 per cent over the three years to 2010.

Mr Carey said the IMF report “broadly endorses the Governments actions to deal with the current economic challenges. He added: “It is ironic that many of the measures now commended are the same measures which the Opposition have opposed blindly.

“On a procedural level within the Dáil, it is worth noting that the Opposition had their Private Members time available to discuss these reports. Despite this, the Opposition pursued a time wasting parliamentary tactic delaying discussion on essential pieces of legislation.

“The Government welcomes this debate, and are more than happy for it to take place, during Government time.”

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said earlier he shared the IMF’s “broad assessment” that the Irish economy had overheated and this was contributing to the difficulties facing the country’s finances.

“We did overheat the economy, I have always accepted that and I made that clear in my last Budget speech,” Mr Lenihan said, adding he had “always acknowledged that to the extent that governments contributed to this, they must take responsibility for it.”

Mr Lenihan said the report from the global financial watchdog was supportive of the recent measures taken by the Government to try and address the Exchequer deficit and the banking crisis.

The IMF report says that during the housing boom “Ireland was perhaps the most overheated of all advanced economies and suggested that Government fiscal policy “needed to be substantially more aggressive than it was”.

“I wasn’t a member of that Government, but that is not the fact I supported it. I sat in Dail Eireann during those years and I didn’t see anyone making those points at that stage, he told RTE’s Morning Ireland programme.

Mr Lenihan said all the decisions being taken by the Government with regard the banking crisis, the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) and the budgets “were the right decisions”.

The Minister claimed that the IMF was “totally supportive” of what the Government was doing and said this was in contrast to public commentary on its budgetary decisions and Nama, including “nonsensical interrogations in Dail Eireann from the Opposition parties who haven’t put forward a single positive idea”.

In relation to next year’s Budget Mr Lenihan said the Government had indicated to the European Commission that it would seek an adjustment of €4 million with a minimum of €2.25 billion coming from spending cuts and €1.75 billion coming from higher taxes.

“I have indicated many times since the Budget that I believe we have reached the limits as far as income tax is concerned”.

He said a property tax would have to be paid out of income and “I don’t believe that a property tax can be introduced that would have any substantial yield next year”.

“There aren’t any easy tax solutions so the bulk of the problem must be addressed through expenditure reductions”.

In its report the IMF said pricing of the toxic bank assets to be moved to the State’s “bad bank” Nama might be easier if the banks were temporarily nationalised.

“An advantage would be that prices at which these assets are transferred would become less of an issue,” said the IMF, adding that such a move could also be used as a step towards mergers and the restructuring of the banking sector.

However, IMF report notes that the Irish Government “disagreed with the staff’s view that pricing of bad assets would be any easier under nationalization.”

Mr Lenihan what said the IMF report said was that nationalisation may be “complementary” to Nama and said he does not want to engage in “wholesale nationalization” of the banks.

“What I said in the [April] budget was that if the crystallisation of the loses at any particular bank mean that further investment had to take place in the banks it would take the form of ordinary equity”.

He said the IMF was not advocating a wholesale nationalisation of the Irish banks and pointed to the recent report from Anglo Irish Banks and the outflow of deposits that followed the Government’s takeover of the bank as an example of the dangers of wholesale nationalisation.

Mr Lenihan said the reason the Government had guaranteed the six Irish banks was to assure international investors that “their investments were safe and to assure domestic depositors that their deposits were safe”.

“As long as they [the banks] have these extensive defective loans on their balance sheets they will have a shortage of working capital to advance to small business”.

He said the Government was proceeding as quickly as possible with the establishment of Nama.

“The proposed National Asset Management Agency (Nama) is potentially the right mechanism to separate the good from the bad assets. Its success requires a comprehensive and realistic assessment of impaired assets,” the report says.

According to Mr Lenihan the issue of rising unemployment would be best dealt with by improving the State’s competiveness.

“To secure employment in this country we have to put the economy back on a sustainable path,” Mr Lenihan said.

The IMF issued a bleak assessment of the Irish economy last night saying that it will contract by 13.5 per cent between 2008 to 2010 while unemployment will rise to 15.5 per cent next year.
see more: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0625/breaking17.htm