LATEST: Flood defence delays too long and must not be repeated says Tipperary TD
Healy tells Dail 17 year wait brought hardship as he urges faster action nationwide
A Tipperary TD has said the long and painful road to securing flood defences for Clonmel must serve as a warning to other towns still waiting for protection.
Speaking in the Dáil during a motion on flood prevention on 11 February 2026, Seamus Healy described Clonmel as proof that flood relief works can succeed, but only after years of delay and hardship.
“Clonmel is the good news story eventually where flooding is concerned,” he said. The town’s defences, designed to withstand a one in 100 year flood based on previous events, have held firm over the past decade to 12 years. That resilience, he noted, has brought relief to householders and businesses across the town.
Yet the TD was clear that progress came at a cost. “However, it took forever to get them,” he said, adding that he hopes towns such as Midleton and Enniscorthy will not face repeated inundation while waiting for similar works to be delivered.
Clonmel’s vulnerability is long established. The River Suir has regularly burst its banks, flooding hundreds of homes and businesses from the Old Bridge along the Quays and as far as Irishtown. The scale of past events remains part of local memory.
Healy recalled that his grandfather, Patsy Meaney, who worked for Clonmel Corporation at the gasworks on the old Waterford Road, had to travel to work by boat from the steps of the town hall during the highest recorded flood in 1925.
Seventy years later, on 9 February 1995, history repeated itself in a different form. Then serving as Mayor of Clonmel, Healy said he left a public meeting that had successfully opposed the closure of Kickham Barracks, only to discover that he could not return home to the Old Bridge area because of floodwaters.
“I had to be transported by the Army in a lorry and thanks the Army for that, they did tremendous work over the years,” he said.
That night marked the beginning of a sustained campaign for permanent flood defences in the town. But the scheme did not materialise quickly. According to Healy, it took 17 years before works were delivered, a delay he described as far too long and one that brought considerable hardship and damage to homes and businesses in the interim.
He argued that Clonmel should now act as a model for the State. The Office of Public Works, he said, must treat the town as a template for what can be achieved and dramatically reduce the time required to plan and implement future flood relief schemes elsewhere.