"Green" policies are destroying this country

National river management is based on the advice of experts in hydrology. That is why it is no longer standard policy to dredge whole rivers. In rare situations as part of a flood management scheme localized dredging is applied.

You cannot have failed to notice that national policy has shifted.

You cannot solve flooding by wholesale dredging despite what some local farmer with a digger might assure you.

Cleaning rivers is one part of an overall solution, not the only solution. Part of it.

Cleaning and managing of rivers has been done for centuries. Right up to the point some people got degrees and decided it shouldn't happen anymore. To be honest, you seem like someone with brains, but how you can advocate for not cleaning rivers that have things blocking them, be that trees, silt, rubbish, etc as being an actual positive is amazing. There's no logic whatsoever. If you carry on your thoughts then we'd be better filling in rivers altogether.

The callows flood every year, and it gets worse. Bord na Mona are actively pumping silt into the river making it shallower and narrower. The biggest river in the country is being restricted. Building on flood plains is the same thing.

Local clearing of blockages is not dredging.

Local natural hydrology will silt up a dredged stretch of river in absolutely no time at all, it's a waste of money. Rivers clear and maintain their own channels by water flow.

Dredging has never been as effective as some people claim, the issue is that rainfall has increased meaning floods at every point in a river system are more likely to happen.

The difference it seems to me between your opinion and mine is that I am listening to experts in their field.

That was not extreme. It happens in localised areas in Ireland every year. Every single year.

Yes, climate change is making is making these events worse and more frequent. Corrupt planning and funneling populations into flood plains however is having a far greater negative impact than climate change, the difference is not even close. The Corrupt politicians and planners are laughing at people going on about climate change when these floods occur. Full reversal of climate change will not have a significant impact on these flooding events.

It's always worth listening to farmers as regards weather as they are frequently at the sharp end, sometimes gaining from it and sometimes losing. And the general consensus I hear there is that yes, this is a wet spell or this is a dry spell or a stormy spell.. but we've seen it all before.

Frequency is hard to prove and can only be established over a period of years which spells in themselves have historically been cyclable. That's not to deny changing climate and weather patterns but it's very foolish to jump on every wet, dry, stormy, snowy spell and shout 'Climate Change'

I have actually pointed out to you that most of the work is in slowing down water flow as high up the mountains and at the midreaches. You seem to have cottened on to part of what I was pointing to but still miss the point about the negative impacts of dredging.

Excuse me, I've missed no point. I understand what you are saying. You want water slowed down. I get that and that's fine and acceptable. But once the water hits the rivers it's on the move to the sea. And you need to get it there as fast as possible. As more and more water makes it's way to the river, the river rises. Without flood defences (which may protect along the defence but cause issues upstream) then places will flood. The discussion here is about the water in the river, not how it gets there. We agree it should be slowed to get there. The question is when the water is in the river, how do we get it to the sea quick? And the only way is to increase the water carrying capacity of the river. Even if you cleaned 12" out of the river bed that is 12" extra capacity, or more time before the banks are burst and flooding occurs.

Using the flood plane as your buffer in the midreaches takes considerable energy out of the water which reduces its potential to do damage. By draining the flood plane as you advocate the you amplify the energy and it damage potential. The overflowing of the river in its midreaches is what defuses floods and dredging defeats that.

No it doesn't. It delays it. And when the flood plains in towns are built on, they don't exist anymore.

I would never be so rash to attribute any single flooding event to climate change, that would be up to a statistical analysis to decide. Such events are measured in return times, ie when would we expect them to happen at that magnitude again. If flooding at the scale experienced in Cork is a 20 year return event and it starts happening regularly at 10 year intervals then we can say flooding has increased and we can attribute it to a change in the climate.

Since both the intensity and level of rain events had statistically increased what I would say at the moment the likelihood that the cork flooding has shortened its return frequency is high and that I would expect to see more in a relatively short period.

That is a scientifically accurate and informative response to the current flooding, and the one you can expect from a climate scientist.

From what I’m seeing with my own eye’s nearly every field i pass on the road is completely over grazed for the time of year & climate we have.

All land grazed to an inch of the ground how is that supposed to hold the volume of water that could come this time of year?

Nearly every river i see when walking is brown with silt & muck also.

Been saying it for year’s, grassland management isnt anywhere near good enough.

Is this not farmers cutting all summer for bales of hay so they aren't caught out like they were a few years ago?

Could be wrong now.