Cowen joins country in that sinking feeling

Lise Hand in Ballinasloe

November 24 2009 04:44 AM

THERE was a bite to the wind which swept across Ballinasloe's inundated town square and the evening gloom was gathering by the time the Taoiseach arrived to survey the damage.

And as he stood and surveyed his fifth such desolate scene of the day, it seemed to sum up what he may one day come to regard as his very own annus horribilis.

From deep recession to tottering banks to strikes to the treacherous Hand of Gaul, neither Brian Cowen nor the citizenry of Ireland can seem to catch a break these days.

The floods may have begun to recede in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, but the misery visited on families caught up in the deluge is still in full flow.

Yesterday afternoon, the road bearing the grimly-apt name of River Street was still swamped. Fountains of water spouted from the doorways of houses on both sides as the laborious task of pumping out the flood got under way.

Newborn lakes formed by an overflowing River Suck eddied around the bottom of the sloping Market Square in the town centre, encircling the Catholic church, St Michael's -- the weekend Masses were held in its Protestant comrade, St John's.

But the floods wrought the most havoc in some of the housing estates just outside the town. The pretty Willow Park development was engulfed and