Residents around Lough Funshinagh say  they 'could be in for major trouble this winter’

The rapidly rising water levels at Lough Funshinagh in South Roscommon is causing huge concern among local residents.

Residents around Lough Funshinagh met with Sinn Féin MEP Chris MacManus last week to express their concerns.

The meeting took place at Ballagh Cross on Thursday afternoon last, adjacent to the now vacant lot where the Lyons-O’Meara house stood. The house was demolished last year. Four houses are now facing a very worrying time as water levels will inevitably rise over the winter.

Michael Beattie of the Lough Funshinagh Flood Action Committee outlined the situation to Mr MacManus since 2016.

“That year, with the help of the community, sandbags, pumps and the county council, we saved the Lyons-O'Meara house, temporarily, I suppose you could say,” he said.

He added: “Things got really serious” during the flooding event in early 2021.

“The OPW provided pumps to pump water across the road. The council raised the road and saved these houses on this side of the road for the time being. They would have been gone only for that,” he said.

He said that the attempts to install an overflow pipe later in 2021 were defeated following a legal action by the Friends of the Irish Environment.

“The pipe had to be ‘sterilised’, in other words concrete poured into both ends of the pipe, and any manholes along the way, and the land reinstated to the way it was. I was going to say, here we are ‘high and dry’, but we are anything but,” said Mr Beattie. “We could be in for major trouble this winter.” Citing figures from the Geological Survey Ireland monitoring station, Cllr Laurence Fallon said that the lake should be 63 metres above sea level.

“Today it’s 67.939 metres above sea level,” he said. “Last week it rose 121 mms. In the last month, it has risen almost two feet. If you compare it to last year, it is 1.15 metres higher than this day last year.” He said that in 2021, “the water almost came over the road”, and now it was 332 mms higher than then.

“There is no doubt we are in a perilous situation. The perception is you cannot rise that road any higher,” he said. “The difficulty is that while there is a lot happening, nothing will happen in time to solve this situation now.” He said the lake was designated as a special area of conservation (SAC) and farmers were “policed continuously” about protecting it.

“People accepted and understood that, but now the place is destroyed as an SAC. And the EU seems to have no desire to put that right,” the independent councillor said, and he accused the National Parks and Wildlife Service of “disappearing”.

Mr Beattie said that the committee would like to meet with the EU Commission to explain what was happening and asked Mr MacManus to help secure that.

“We have been told that the planning process could take five years – and planning objections along the way,” he said. “It could even be eight years or more, way too late for these houses.” The very legislation designed to protect the lake was now destroying it, he added.

Mr MacManus, who has visited the lake previously with Claire Kerrane TD, said arranging a meeting would be challenging. Following a question of his, he also said that the NPWS had told the EU Commission it has engaged with the local community about flooding and ensuring compliance with the habitats directive. Locals disagreed vehemently with the NPWS statement, describing it as “nonsense”.

“The commission is being told by the powers that be ‘We’re doing all the right things’,” said Mr MacManus.

He said that a case could be made to the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee to hold the state to account for not implementing the habitats directive, which he said would also be a lengthy process. He also promised to see if he could organise a meeting at Brussels.

The gathering heard that the situation was now in "legal limbo" with the state unwilling to appeal the decision halting the project.

Both the current IFA Roscommon Chairman, Pat Leonard, and former county chairman Jim O’Connor were present at the meeting. Both men expressed their strong support for the community.

Mother and son, Padraig and Mary Beattie whose house could be under threat, said they were worried about the future. In 2021, the water had reached their front door, and around 30 tonne bags of sand had to be deployed from one end of the garden to the other to help keep it at bay.

“It is not great getting up every morning, looking at the water,” she said. “The pump is turned on three times a day for the last two weeks, just before the October Bank Holiday. When we get up in the morning, we turn on that pump first thing. We turn it on again in the middle of the day and we turn it on at night before we go to bed. It is not on all night but it will be.” Both said that the only solution was the overflow pipe.

Edward John Beattie, who is aged 85, said the future of Ballagh Village was on the line. He and his wife were forced to leave their home in 2021 for a year due to safety concerns about the flood water.

“They almost had the pipe done. Two weeks more and they would have been finished,” he said. “They were not trying to empty the lake. I have seen it empty naturally three or four times. Now, all the trees are dead. There is no ducks or anything in the lake. Nothing in it at all, except water.”