A widow from Co Cork has said she feels “absolutely let down” by State bodies after having to pay more than €70,000 to rebuild her garden wall after it fell into a river.
Lil Fullam (76), from Blarney, had to get loans from a credit union and family members to repair the wall which faces out onto the River Martin and came down in October 2022 following heavy rainfall. The wall was finally repaired last July, just months after Ms Fullam’s husband, Bob, died aged 81.
The couple bought the house, located at the Groves, in the late 1970s. Ms Fullam said her home’s proximity to the river was “without incident all the years” despite the “occasional light flood” in their back garden.
However, she got a call from Bob at the end of 2022 to say their garden wall, which adjoined the river wall, “had collapsed into the river”. She said they had flood insurance and contacted their insurer as well as Cork City Council and the Office of Public Works (OPW).
Reports from an engineer outlined that the flow of water and moving debris had increased over the years and this caused the wall to erode.
“We approached the council and the OPW [and] nobody could give me a definite answer as to who was responsible for the river and maintaining the river,” Ms Fullam said.
“Our garden wall took the brunt of debris and water flow all through the years. It never occurred to us that it was actually invading our foundations but the engineer said as much.”
Ms Fullam said it became apparent in 2023 that their insurer would not pay out. She and her husband unsuccessfully applied for help under a humanitarian assistance flood scheme established by the Government. She said there was also no financial help from the local authority or OPW.
“We applied for the [humanitarian] scheme and were turned down,” she said. “We appealed it and we were turned down again. Really, nobody wanted to know. Nobody took any responsibility whatsoever.
“They passed the buck from one to another. I pursued everybody who I felt I could pursue. They had no backup for something that we had no control over.”
Ms Fullam’s husband died in November 2023 and she paid for the new wall to be built in the months after his death.
“It was a harrowing time,” she said. “I’m fairly capable and resilient, but we were lost in the end and just had to pay it out.
“I really wasn’t able to afford it but just had to find the money … the local credit union gave me a loan and my children gave me some money. It left me almost penniless.”
She believes the wall is “very safe now” but that a flood defence scheme or other measures should be put in place by the council.
“They’re not going to build on the bank of a river anymore, but these were old council houses built in the 1940s,” she said. “There are other people living by rivers and the rivers are very neglected.”
Cork City Council did not respond to queries.
The OPW said the river Martin does not fall under its remit and therefore it has “no responsibility for the maintenance of the channel, nor any authority to carry out any works there”.
“Local flooding issues are a matter, in the first instance, for each local authority to investigate and address,” it said.
The OPW said that in relation to any localised or urgent flood risk identified by local authorities, they can apply for funding assistance through the Minor Flood Mitigation Works and Coastal Protection Scheme.
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