No quitten we're whelan onto chitchat 12.

And it will go on unless some people fix it themselves.

I'm sure there is some wealthy families in that town, like an healy rae outfit that would get the diggers out and dredge it. 30 years whingeing is a dose

That's that the type of construction group I invisaged. They need support from protests or such to get them back digging out the sand, and anyone who says wishful thinking are just as bad as the 30 year conversation of talking about it.

Us neighbours here would've fixed similar problems here in the past before wasting time on councils.

We had Smaller simpler problems than dredging a town river but same mindset.

When the men that cleaned the rivers in the 60s and 70s died out obviously the back bone of others went with them.

Dredging actually makes flooding worse in many situations via speeding up erosion and the force of the water - and Ennicorthy is one of those sitations as the river is squeezed between 2 natural rocky bluffs at the location below the Castle, so no amount of dredging would make much difference there anyways. Just below the bridge there its also tidal and weeks of heavy rain plus tidal surge up the river is what did the damage. As for silt in rivers, alot of it comes from draining of wetlands, especcially peatlands eg. Vast amounts of peat silt continue to entire the River Shannon due to BNM ongoing pumping of water out from cutover bogs that if left to recover would naturally trap all that silt via the regrowth of wetland vegetation like sphagnum moss, reed beds etc. They are similar issues in catchments all over the country due to ongoing loss of natural buffers and soakage via spruce forestry, intensive farming, peat extraction, wind farm construction, overgrazing of uplands etc.

PS: this not just an Irish issue - the destruction of rainforest and wetlands in Indonesia was a key factor in devasting floods that killed nearly 1000 people just before Christmas

https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/indonesia-closes-2025-with-rising-disasters-and-stalled-environmental-reform/#:~:text=Researchers%20and%20activists%20have%20long,forest%20between%202014%20and%202024.

No not all situations - if river is blocked by man-made debris like plastics(silage wrap etc.), logging waste, old fencing, silting from quarrying etc. As i said alot of the silt issues in rivers are acutully caused by deeping or new drains on certain types of farmland. I observed something similar this last week in another part of Mayo were vast amounts of black silty water was escaping into a river feeding Lough Carra from new drains dug in nearby farmland. Clearcutting of spruce forestry on peaty soils is an even bigger issues in this space on upland catchments in particular - and that would an issue on the upper Slaney in South Wicklow

Yep - theres a group battling BNM out in Derryadd Longford over that and they have produced drone footage showing the scale of flooding of farmland due to the companies constant pumping of peat laden water from the site towards the Shannon.😔

There are also engineers reports that states the "new" bridge is a large part of the problem, and a plan in place to replace this "new" bridge in Enniscorthy as it is blocking flow of the river, causing a back up of silt between the bridges.

Guess where the river flooded worst? Between the bridges.

That river needs dredging all the way out to Wexford harbour.

I made that point in the dairy tread last night. On top of that there’s factories discharging (look up Tom Ryan and the Raheen Industrial estate in limerick). Our wastewater treatment plants are completely f*cked because there hasn’t been any investment in them for decades while the population has exploded at the same time, all discharging into rivers / the sea. Look at the cancer / death rates in the areas around Aughinish in Limerick (a disaster waiting to happen), they’re operating on the banks of the Shannon and it’s all good yet I’d be the worst in the world if a fu*king calf drank from the river on my land. The reality is the Government etc. couldn’t give a sh*t about it, it’s just easy for them and the fools they have brainwashed to blame farmers for everything.

Yea but you still need to clean drains.

But the rivers and lakes should have capacity to hold more water before movement taken into account , their choked up with silt, branches and rubbish. As already said here open the harbour and sea points and work back.

Landed home from the office early and the F8ckers in the hunt were in….I'd love to take a few sucklers to their back yard and see how much they like it. Such an inbred shower of idiots….again with the usual "I've hunted here for 60 years…." well F me you never asked for my permission. At least there were no horses, but the pack went past a shed full with cattle and they are doing their nut driving the cattle mad in the pens.

I’ve seen it, it’s unbelievable. It’s mad the way they just average the test results just to hide the bad area, goes to show what you can do make the numbers say what suits, paper never refused ink. If any of the bunds burst / leak or that area giving sky high results gets worse there will be a disaster the likes of which this country (and many others) has never seen. The Russians will pull out of town and the council are the state agency with the responsibility of cleaning it up.

Frightening stuff. Mental that the water treatment plant is less than 100m from a toxic dump.