What was left of the main Whitestown to Ballagan coast road on the Cooley peninsula following a storm last year.
Louth County Council has been allocated €45,000 for a project at Bellurgan under the Minor Flood Mitigation Works and Coastal Protection Scheme.
The funding was approved by Minister of State at the OPW Mr Simon Harris TD last week.
The project at Bellurgan will facilitate the transport of and stockpiling of currently available embankment fill material for planned works in 2016.
Woodies is the anchor tenant at Dundalk Retail Park
Dundalk Retail Park is amongst a portfolio of six retail schemes around the country and one office block that has been put on the market for €120m.
The Spectrum portfolio is for sale through joint selling agents Savills and Bannon, with the assets producing around €11m of income a year, offering an initial yield of 9pc.
The retail schemes are Douglas Court Shopping Centre, south of Cork city; Dundalk Retail Park; Quayside Shopping Centre in Sligo town; Bloomfields Shopping Centre in Dun Laoghaire; The Mill Shopping Centre in Clondalkin; and Kilbarrack Shopping Centre.
Also included in the sale is a State let office block opposite The Mill Shopping Centre on Ninth Lock Road. The whole of the three storey modern office building and its 94 car parking spaces is let to Dublin City Council and the OPW.
All properties are funded by Lloyds Bank, which is the appointed receiver. Combined, the assets provide around 569,000 sq ft of commercial accommodation and over 31 acres of development land.
Dundalk Retail Park owners Finnabair Estates went into receivership early in 2012 under interest payments of nearly €4 million a year to the Bank of Scotland and other lenders.
The retail park on the Inner Relief Road has 20 retail warehouses with an overall floor area of 21,578sq m (223,276sq ft) along with an industrial building and a fast food outlet. The tenants include Woodies, Currys, Homestore & More, Smyths Toys and KFC. Rental income comes to an impressive €2.67 million.
One of the offices at Finnabair Business Park on the Inner Relief Road
A private investor has bought three office investments at Finnabair Business Park on the Inner Relief Road in Dundalk in an off-market deal for about €5.5 million.
The buildings have an overall floor area of 8,500sq m (91,492sq ft) of which about 65 per cent is occupied, showing a yield of 11.8 per cent. Tenants include Teva Pharmaceuticals, Vesta, the OPW and Prometric. The income is €680,000.
JLL and REA Gunne Property in Clanbrassil Street were joint selling agents and Declan Bagnall of Bagnall Doyle MacMahon acted for the buyer.
Plans to build 40 apartments on the Ardee Road look to have been quashed after Dundalk Town Council refused an application to renew the planning permission for the development that was previously granted in 2008.
Danny Culligan of Danny Culligan Construction Ltd had applied to the council in January for an extension to his plans for 40 new residential units at Brookville in three separate buildings.
Despite being given the go ahead for the apartments six years ago, they were never built largely because of the collapse in the housing market.
The proposed development included plans for two three storey blocks. Type A would have included 24 two bed apartments with private balconies, with the ground floor apartments having their own access.
There would also have been one four storey block (Type B) comprising 16 two bed apartments with private balconies.
The council opted to refuse the application on two counts – firstly that a portion of the site is “in a vulnerable area to fluvial flooding and is designated as Flood Zone A as per the OPW Irish Coastal Strategy Study Phase 3 – North East Coast’.
They described the site as “highly vulnerable” to flooding and further rejected it on the basis that the plans were not designed having regard to flood risk management guidelines.
Flooding at The Loakers in Blackrock recently
There are no major flood relief work plans in the pipeline for County Louth, it has been revealed.
Despite the county being battered in the first two months of this year, no major flood defence work is earmarked for this year according to Minister of State Brian Hayes.
Responding to a Dáil question from local TD Gerry Adams, the Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform revealed that €39,725 had been spent on the Ardee Road in Dundalk in 2011 and €27,000 on the Bellurgan Embankment in the same year.
There was no spending on flood relief in 2012 with €71,820 being spent on the Blackwater River last year.
It was revealed that Louth County Council has submitted a study of the Bellurgan Embankment to the OPW and that this is currently being assessed. However, Minister Hayes insisted that there “are no further major scheme works currently planned for Louth.”
He added: “The Catchment Flood Risk Assessment and Management (CFRAM) programme is examining areas of significant flood risk in the main river catchments nationally, including in the Eastern region.
“Under the CFRAM Programme flood maps for these significant risk areas will be completed by the end of 2014 and Flood Risk Management Plans will be produced by 2016. The studies will consider the best possible options, both structural and non-structural, for dealing with the risks on a long-term basis and, when completed, will form the basis for decision making on capital investment by the Government on long term flood mitigation infrastructure into the future.
“It is open to Louth County Council to submit applications in the future to the OPW for funding of minor works under the Minor Works scheme,” he said.
A map that has circulated in recent days predicting areas of Ireland and England that would be under water by the year 2100 due to rising sea levels. This is very much a worst-case scenario and unlikely to happen this quickly but the recent OPW report emphasises that action is needed to protect our coastlines
Eight areas of Co Louth, including Dundalk and Blackrock, are at significant risk of flooding in years to come, according to a leading climate change expert.
Professor John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth has identified 300 cities, towns and village at risk in the years to come but warned that it would take years to make them all safe at a cost of billions to this and future governments.
He said in an article in today’s Irish Independent that this would leave the authorities with no choice but to accept that some areas cannot be economically protected given the rate at which seal levels are rising and the money that it would take to properly defend them all.
A detailed list of vulnerable areas, commissioned by the OPW, shows that areas of all 26 counties are vulnerable, including eight in Louth.
They include: Annagassan, Ardee, Baltray, Blackrock South, Carlingford and Greenore, Dundalk, Termonfeckin and Drogheda. Nearby areas in Co Monaghan such as Inniskeen and Carrickmacross are also at risk, according to the report.
The full list is contained in the National Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment overview report, with all areas set to be the subject of an in-depth investigation over the coming years before a detailed list of flood defences needed across the country is produced in 2015.
Despite frequent flooding in Dundalk and Blackrock in recent weeks, Junior Minister Brian Hayes has warned that because of funding restrictions areas most at risk may have to be prioritised, which would likely lead to heavily hit areas such as Cork, Clare, Waterford and other western counties put to the top of the list.
The report comes on the back of a predicted weather map that is circulating online at present, which suggests the whole of Co Louth may be under water by the year 2100 due to rising sea levels.
While that is a worst case scenario and highly unlikely to happen in less than 100 years, it is a reminder that action is needed both locally and nationally in order to protect our futures.
Talk of the Town 