Denis O’Donovan

Dairy farmer, Rosscarbery, Cork

“We escaped the worst of it. It was worse in north Cork. We still got plenty of rain. We had 40mm over 24 hours from Tuesday morning through Tuesday night, but it was definitely worse to the north of us.

“Conditions are very bad. We’ve had an amount of rain for February already.”

Cheryl O’Brien

Sheep farmer, Kildorrery, Cork

\ Donal O' Leary

“We’ve had a pile of rain here. We have streams running through the farm but they haven’t burst their banks. The land is saturated and we had to bring the sheep in. We got over an inch, maybe two inches of rain [on Tuesday].

“We’ve had way worse torrential rain earlier in the month, but this was persistent rain [over the last few days]. There are ponds in the fields. I had strong pedigree lambs out and we had to bring them back in. It’s just desperate.”

Anne Baker

Beef farmer and north Cork IFA chair

“We’re on the Blackwater belt here and Mallow and Fermoy have been badly affected. An awful lot of land in floodplains is absolutely flooded. We’ve had torrential rain in north Cork in the last 10 days, all day and night.

“Trafficability is bad and there’s been very little opportunity to get slurry out. Slurry tanks are under pressure, that’s the biggest issue. People who have cows were intermittently grazing and were anxious to get them out, but everything was housed in the last 24 or 48 hours.

“There’s been a bad spell [of rain] in Cork for the last fortnight and this is impacting on farmers’ workload. Land is saturated and it will take time for the floods to abate.”