Some Kilkenny city householders are angry that their homes were flooded again last week, while £10.3 million for a flood relief scheme lay idle in a bank account.
"You have £10.3 million in the bank and we have a foot of water in our homes," the secretary of the Kilkenny Flooding Committee, Ms Margery Brady, wrote to the Minister of State, Mr Martin Cullen, as the latest clean-up began.
Historically, the River Nore flooded homes in the John's Quay and Green Street area of Kilkenny twice every three years. However, changes made to the river bank as part of a supermarket development in the 1980s increased the incidence of flooding to three floods every two years.
A foot of water flowed in the front doors and out the back doors of homes on Tuesday morning, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage.
The £10.3 million funding was allocated to tackle the problem last year. A planned flood wall and bank would have prevented last week's flooding. The OPW plan has been drawn up, but is awaiting the opinion of environmentalists and fisheries experts before being finalised.
An OPW spokeswoman said she understood that advertisements seeking tenders for the project were issued last Friday and, on that basis, work on the scheme would start by the end of the year.
"The wall and the bank would cost buttons, but would save us a fortune," according to Ms Brady, who owns John's Quay property.
"Generally speaking, the river floods at night so the first thing we have to do is turn off the electricity and we are then working in the dark to get our possessions away from the flood water."
When the flood waters recede, the problem of cleaning away the sludge is aggravated by the fact that seven pipes pour raw sewage into the Nore at John's Quay.