THE MAN from the Government extracts a small copybook from his overcoat pocket, adjusts his spectacles and records his latest observations, writes
MIRIAM LORDin Athlone and Banagher
The pages are crammed with closely written script; a jumble of jottings in red and blue Biro.
In the heart of Athlone, where the Shannon waters overflow, he looks out over the river and surveys the scene. What to do, in these days of sandbags and circuses?
“I was in Cahir and Limerick yesterday,” says Martin Mansergh, minister with responsibility for the Office of Public Works. “I also went up to Ardnacrusha. I’ve never been there before, so that was interesting from lots of points of view.”
He is brimming with facts about tidal flows and scientific studies.
Away to his left and to his right, residents in Wolfe Tone Terrace have managed to banish the water from their ground floors.
With the help of the Army and hard-working volunteers from the Civil Defence, they have sandbagged the areas around their front doors. Now, for those few who remain in their homes, it’s a waiting game.
There’s supposed to be a window in the weather today. It’s scant consolation, for the rain and the wind is set to return with ferocity tomorrow.
Most of the residents have moved to drier ground.
What’s left now is the circus, the political equivalent of a team of council workers leaning on their shovels and looking into a hole: Minister Mansergh, local Fianna Fáil TD Mary O’Rourke and her Fine Gael shadow for the day, Deputy James Bannon.
And with them – in case one of them should fall into a manhole or be assailed by a damp householder – is a large contingent of gardaí, the local Garda superintendent, the county manager, various council officials, Civil Defence personnel, a few journalists, the uniformed contents of an Army jeep and two plainclothes detectives parked up the way in an unmarked car keeping a close eye on the junior minister.
Watching them is Harry Waterstone, who lives nearby.
His home wasn’t flooded, but “the sewers are bubbling up and coming into the house.” He buttonholes Minister Mansergh.
“Can you do anything for us?”
He doesn’t want to hear talk of statistics or earnest progress reports on programmes in the pipeline (of which there is a lot).
“The sewers are totally inadequate. You had the money to do something about them and nothing was done. I’m not in the business of having a go . . .”
Mary rushes in: “Oh I know, I know.”
“. . . but I’m frustrated and drained and we’re working around the clock here. What can you do for us? Look at the place.”
The Minister pushes back his tweed cap from his forehead. “We have to see and study from this situation to see what is needed to be done.”
Harry stands his ground.
“This should absolutely be declared a national disaster, because in any other country, it would.”
Dr Mansergh, with the air of a man compiling material for a science project, demurs.
“Well, the whole country isn’t affected. Dublin is entirely unaffected, eh, at the moment.”
Harry’s indignation wells up from the toecaps of his Wellington boots. “Well you’ve struck a chord there. When Dublin isn’t affected it doesn’t matter half as much.”
Minister Mansergh makes to reply, but Mary interposes.
“Aaah, it does. It does,” she soothes, before pushing off to knock on a few doors, cutting through the floodwaters like a happy seal after a bucket of sprat.
“I haven’t a bad word to say about the Civil Defence,” says Harry, pointedly, to the Minister, who is busy recording complaints in his little book.
“I want to look at this because we’re going to do works here and in other parts of the country,” he explains. “I’m not going to blame everything on climate change. Look, there is also a planning question – at least half of the places I visited that were flooded involved housing built on flood-plains.”
One could have gone for the open goal and asked whose fault that was, but its hard to kick a Fianna Fáil man when he’s sincere and wearing Wellingtons.
Speaking of flood gear, there isn’t a wader or Wellington to be had across the border in Banagher.
Shirley McIntyre, who runs S D McIntyre’s pub and grocery in the picturesque village of Shannon Harbour in Offaly, had to borrow her daughter’s pair to show the full extent of the havoc the floods have wrought.
If the evidence of houses under water in the submerged main street wasn’t enough, one sight confirms that this is, indeed, a catastrophe. For, emerging from the flood in the dying afternoon sun is the distinctive figure of a tall, white-haired man in distressed waders that have seen their fair share of active service.
It is RTÉ’s western correspondent, Jim Fahy.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen, the local TD, had visited on Tuesday, but Jim’s arrival yesterday seemed to hold out more hope that something might be done than any number of condoling politicians.
The village’s plight has been well documented. The houses, and farming livelihoods with them, are destroyed. People have to go up and down in a little boat to check on their homes.
The politicians in Athlone earlier in the day were lavish in their praise of the community effort that has marked these days of human crisis. It was equally evident in Shannon Harbour – the floodwaters carrying with them an undercurrent that community effort is all they have to see them through disaster.
Paddy Nevin (83) lives in a small house off main street. His bicycle is propped against the wall of his flooded garden, a redundant plastic bag over the saddle.
He’s on his own now since his 95-year-old sister moved out last week.
“I had to put her out, she was 40 years in England in Marks and Spencer. She wouldn’t have been up to this.”
The water came into the house, but it’s gone now. Paddy’s cooker and fridge are up on wooden blocks in the kitchen, the lino is caked in silt. The sofa and good armchair are up on blocks in the living room, and Jackie the dog is propped up on the easy chair.
Paddy won’t leave. “What’s the need, when I’m only going to move back in again. I have the upstairs.” He says he’s seen the river burst its banks before. He knows the way it acts, “but it’s never come into the house before”.
He was in the village when the Taoiseach visited, but didn’t think there was any point in saying anything to him. “I’d have had nothing to say, except to ask him if he can stop it raining.”
The electricity is still on – it’s keeping the Sacred Heart lamp going in the front room. If that goes, “there’s always the candles”. The carpet is sodden. Paddy thinks it’ll all dry out if he keeps the range going full blast.
A retired farmer and postman, he’s happy if he can keep getting down to McIntyre’s for a drink every day when he goes down to collect his groceries.
And still the surveys go on.
Ireland’s Northwest MEPs sent out a press release yesterday to announce they “had taken an aerial trip over the constituency to view the full extent of the flood damage”.
Martin Mansergh and the rest of his colleagues will continue their tours.
The sandbags will stay in place.
The circus will move on.
Paddy will find he’ll have to throw out his carpet.
At least the community will know how to help.