A Maguiresbridge farmer impacted by severe flooding for over a month has spoken of his anger, accusing Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill of neglecting rural Fermanagh.


Barry Read, who has had £150,000 worth of machinery under water on his farm near Ballindarragh Bridge, has yet to receive assistance from the Department of Agriculture or receive a visit from any of the government agencies, such as Rivers Agency. 


Mr. Read has hit out at Minister O’Neill for visiting the flood hit area of Derrychara Link in Enniskillen in December and not the farming community, though, amid mounting anger, the Minister finally visited some farmers in Lisnaskea on Tuesday. 


“DARD’s effort was to send Michelle O’Neill to Enniskillen to wash her wellies in a puddle the same day as we were cleaning up carnage in this yard. If she has no interest in any farmer in Northern Ireland and would rather go to the towns that’s fine. I think she is the wrong person for the job. ‘Rural’ is in her job title and rural to me is the countryside, but she hasn’t been to me,” he said last week. 


Mr. Read is having to stray into floodwaters in the middle of the night to measure the depth of the floods. 


“This is the third time it is had flooded in six years, the last time was in 2009. It is far worse than then because before it was only ankle deep and now it is much deeper. The problem is that they have carried out flood defences upstream and dredging down stream and have done nothing with the Ballindarragh capacity.”


Mr. Read explained that at the beginning of December the flood near his home was rising one inch an hour. 


“Then an inch and a half come evening time and then something like two o’clock in the morning it decided to rise by five inches an hour,” he said. 
His father Norman keeps 1,200 sheep and his ewes are currently inside for lambing in February and March. 


“They are at the stage of their pregnancy where you don’t want to be moving them. There is 500 or 600 sheep in the house at the minute, there’s another 500 to go in which he’s reluctant to put in just in case we flood. At the start of December we had to move them all out by hand, knee deep in water but we had to to move them on a welfare basis because they were going to drown.


“And yet Michelle O’Neill suggested we look at maps and don’t drive through water. If we did that my father would be three or four hundred sheep less. Then he would be in trouble for letting his animals drown. By the end of this week there will be over 1,000 sheep in the house,” he said. 


The situation, which appears never-ending at the moment, is beginning to take its toll on Mr. Read.


“This has cost me so far £7,000 from lost grain, lost straw, extra grass to re-dry the grain, extra wages, extra wear and tear on machinery to try and dry gain. We have used three times the amount of gas to try and dry the grain than we actually did when we harvested it. Machinery wise we don’t how much it is going to cost us until we use it next Summer and know what is going to fall apart. Once the water entered this shed we automatically had a bill for £4,000 or £5,000.


“Over the past two nights I haven’t got any sleep, I have been going out every two hours to mark where the water is coming up. I am out in the dark with just a torch, you can’t sleep. I have had my fill of it,” he said.


The McManus family from Inishroosk, Lisnaskea have also had enough of the flooding having been surrounded by water for most of the last month. Such is the severity of the situation for Gary McManus’ 89 year old mother, whose carers are now unable to visit her, that the Coastguard helicopter was nearly drafted in.


“There are three floods from our house and the crossroads. I would say there is about a foot of water here. My mother is in care and needs care four times a day; morning, dinner, three o’clock and bedtime. That has all stopped; they are not fit to go through all that in the car. It’s upset her and that’s that. They offered the helicopter to bring her to respite but I didn’t want the issue of moving her,” said Mr. McManus.


“They say in 2009 that the floods were about this height, but I would say they are higher than the last time. It is having an impact on our lives, I am restricted here and can’t do a lot. We want to know how long is this going to last?” he said. 


Despite some families saying they have been left to fend for themselves, First Minister elect Arlene Foster says she does not believe that Stormont has not done enough in response to the flooding. 


“I don’t accept that we have neglected them. It is very difficult to hold back water, and the weather has been atrocious. Do I think we can do more in the future? That’s certainly something I will be looking at,” she said.


Asked if it was acceptable that people like Mr. Read or Mrs. McManus have yet to receive one visit from any of the government agencies four weeks on, Mrs. Foster said: “The agencies are dealing with the most severe cases and if they receive a report of a particular issue then they will deal with that particular issue. If the agencies have ignored telephone calls or e-mails then that is wrong obviously. I don’t know if these people have contacted them directly,” she said. 


Mrs. Foster, who visited Mr. Read’s farm last Thursday with Councillor Paul Robinson, says she is going to call together all the agencies involved in publishing the flooding taskforce report in 2010. 


“I am going to be taking over as First Minister on Monday and one of the first things I will do is pull together the agencies at the earliest opportunity to look at all of those issues. I want to see if all the actions from the taskforce report have been implemented and if there are other things that can be done. 


“I think lessons were learned the last time. Some money was spent on raising roads, and they have been of assistance. I have had people suggest that we need to raise other roads, or look at widening roads, or dredging rivers, or looking at bridges to see if they can deal with the amount of water. I will be taking those issues to the different agencies when we return next week,” she said.