Yesterday’s flooding in Killarney was the “absolute worst in living memory”, the town’s Mayor has said. 

Cllr John O’Donoghue described the deluge as a “once in a lifetime” he hopes he will never see again. 

Homes that have never been flooded before are now underwater and cars are submerged. 

“There are almost six centimetres of rain in a four-hour period, but the majority of that fell in about a 90-minute spell,” he told Newstalk Breakfast. 

“So, it was absolutely unprecedented, we didn't have any advance warning that rain at that level was going to fall.

“It caused huge destruction in the town.” 

Cllr O’Donoghue continued that even the town’s pensioners cannot recall anything as dramatic as the rain that poured down on them yesterday. 

“Last night, everybody seems to agree that it was the first time anyone can remember that the entire town was - and the roads around it - were covered in water,” he said. 

“It was incredible to see, to be quite honest.

“I would have been getting phone calls from countless homeowners in the town last night, some elderly people very upset on the phone, saying there's water pouring in my front door, it has never happened before, what can I do?”

Transport links in and out of the tourist town are also hugely disrupted due to the flooding. 

“Not only was the centre of the town flooded, but the roads around the N22 that you mentioned, which is the main road between Kerry and Cork, completely flooded as well,” Cllr O’Donoghue said. 

“In along Park Road, which is the main artery into the town, completely impassable. 

“It was absolutely shocking to see.”

In the last Dáil term, then Environment Minister Eamon Ryan warned people that climate change would mean rain ‘the likes of which we’ve never seen before’ to Ireland and urged local authorities to prepar for more flooding events.

Main image: Killarney underwater. Picture by: Kerry County Council.