Mr. Jim Meade:

Yes. For those who do not know Ballycar, it is a big turlough. It is a cast limestone area with one underground stream outlet from it. It is no different from the bath at home. If one fills it one third of the way and pulls the plug, the water is gone in a minute but if one fills it to the top it takes five minutes. That is what happens with Ballycar. When we have a particularly prolonged wet winter, and I do not mean a couple of storms, it fills slowly and eventually floods the railway line. The railway line is probably 2 m above where it was historically so we have been raising the line to the maximum we could do over the years but Ballycar literally gets bigger and bigger as we see the effects of climate change.

On the preferred proposal, various options and solutions were looked at, including raising the line even further, but it was felt that if we do not do something to allow Ballycar drain naturally the water levels would eventually catch up with whatever we do so we are looking for a permanent solution. Ultimately, it is about cutting out a channel from Ballycar, through the back of Newmarket-on-Fergus, out the back of Lough Gash and out onto the estuary. That will be through some existing waterways but we are making them significantly bigger. That would allow Ballycar to fill to a point. It would take a lot of the rainwater but then when it comes to a particular point it overflows out into the estuary. At a very basic level, that is the preferred option. It would ensure that no matter how bad a winter we get we will not have the ten and 15 week closures we have seen in the past.