North Cork anglers meet Government Ministers regarding amid ‘pollution crisis’ on local river

A meeting between government officials and representatives from Kanturk and District Trout Anglers to outline plans to keep local rivers clean was described as “informative.”

Minster of State for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Timmy Dooley, joined his Fianna Fáil party colleague, Minister of State for Education, Michael Moynihan, on a visit to Kanturk on June 20.

The River Allow, which flows through Kanturk, has endured extensive pollution over the past 13 months.

In June 2024, a chemical spillage from an Uisce Éireann facility in nearby Freemount killed at least 5,000 fish in the river.

Last week, another pollution incident occurred on the Allow, with 3km of the river now closed for safety reasons.

Kanturk Anglers secretary, Dan Dennehy, told The Corkman that he hopes the meeting with Minister Dooley, who also serves the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment, will have a positive outcome.

“It was a very informative meeting, and I found it very helpful, and I found Minister Dooley very obliging and forthcoming with his views,” Mr Dennehy said. “I hope that we will be able to work together in the future to solve this pollution crisis.”

The meeting took place before the most recent pollution incident, which is subject to ongoing investigations.

The Kanturk-based North Cork Creameries notified the EPA after 2pm on Sunday, June 22, that a discharge into the River Allow had been stopped at 10am that morning.

The cooperative has stated that it identified additional levels of discharge of treated wastewater from its dairy processing facility.

Mr Dennehy said the pollution of the Allow cannot continue.

“We had a wipe-out last year of nearly five or six kilometres of pollution,” he said.

During the meeting with the anglers, Minister Dooley was shown examples of commissioned reports and media coverage of pollution along the rivers that serve North Cork.

“We had a very frank discussion on the issues facing our rivers and we discussed the effects of pollution on them,” Mr Dennehy said.

“We also showed extensive press coverage and various reports we commissioned on the river by environmental scientist Paschal Sweeney.

“We outlined our youth development programme, which he was very impressed by I may add.

“Timmy made no promises, which is great, and he will arrange a meeting with a delegation from the Inland Fisheries Ireland to see how we can move things along in Kanturk rivers.”