A Ballinasloe councillor says the slow progress on the design of a scheme to alleviate the flooding risk in the town is leading to a lot of frustration.
Fianna Fail's Michael Connolly was speaking following a visit to the town by OPW Minister Patrick O' Donovan to talk about flood defence plans for the area.
The town suffered from two significant flooding events in 2009 and 2015 with several million euro worth of damage caused.
Plans were announced in recent years to tackle problems with the Suck and Deerpark rivers in the area, but the process is still at public consultation phase and it's not expected that any plan will be ready to be put forward until 2024.
Councillor Connolly says the environmental restrictions placed around these schemes seem top-heavy, and are resulting in these projects taking several years to prepare.
'If you have objections or anything , you could be talking about a longer timeline.
It's eight years ago since I was Chairman of the Ballinasloe Municipal District and I headed a delegation to go to Dublin with councillors and a local drainage group from Ballinasloe.
We put our case to Simon Harris and a lot of the engineering solutions seemed to be obvious at that stage , but we're talking now about a scheme that will be submitted in 2024.
This scheme is taking forever, and it seems to be indicative of the timeline that schemes of this nature are taking.'
