ASSESSING THE DAMAGE:A NORTH Dublin resident whose home was inundated at the weekend said construction on the flood plain has put her house at permanent risk of flooding.
Alice Geraghty is the fourth generation of her family to live in a cottage built in the 1920s in Balgriffin, an area on the border of Dublin city and Co Fingal which has seen extensive housing development in recent years.
"I've lived here all my life, my father and my grandfather lived here before me. It was always agricultural land with natural soakage but all that's been taken away and replaced with houses."
Ms Geraghty's house flooded in 2002. At this stage there was only a small number of new houses, although construction was under way on several estates. Now there are several thousand houses to the front and back of her home.
"We have objected to every planning application on the basis of the flood risk. We were told that flood protection measures would be put in and that this was a condition of the planning permission, but whatever protections have been put in have been for the new houses, not ours."
Following the 2002 flood Ms Geraghty and her husband Mark decided to take steps to protect their house against floods. However, these measures could not withstand the weekend's deluge.
"On Saturday evening when the heavy rain started, Mark went out to clear any leaves from the storm drains. He came back in and said it was all going horribly wrong. He tried to put towels against the flood banks, but he was like the little boy with his finger in the dam."
Ms Geraghty said she called the fire services but they were "inundated with calls".
"We were waiting for them to come, but the water went to about three feet high very quickly, it was covering the beds and had reached 10 inches in the upper end of the house. Mark turned to me and said, 'we're going to have to go'."
The Geraghtys had to leave their house through the window because the water had made the doors impassible. "We took our two children, aged 10 and three, and climbed through the window. We could see our freezer which was in a shed out the back floating around."
When she returned to her house on Sunday morning it was "like returning to a war zone," she said. "Everything was ruined, and the smell, it was just an incomparable smell. It seems to be getting worse if anything."
Ms Geraghty said she contacted Fingal Co Council who told her the housing developments had complied with planning permission.
"Quite evidently they haven't complied. I feel my property is now absolutely valueless."
A spokeswoman for Fingal Co Council said they received more than 1,000 calls to their emergency line and they would continue to respond to residents' concerns.
