Shane Coonan and Mike Finn in their flooded furniture shop in Ballinasloe last November

ALMOST half of the funding urgently requested by local authorities to deal with the aftermath of flooding and disastrous winter conditions was turned down by the government.

One-third of councils which applied for the emergency financial aid received significantly less than they had asked for.

Last November, the government was criticised by the opposition for not providing enough financial relief to those areas worst hit by bad weather conditions from November's flooding and December's big freeze.

A total of €16.5m in supplementary funding was made available by the Department of the Environment and Local Government at the end of last year, but this fell considerably short of the €28m sought by councils.

Of the 19 applicants for emergency relief, six – or 31% – were refused their initial requests.

Cork County Council, with the largest single application, had requested €15.5m following a disastrous winter, but were allocated just one third of that – €5.7m – by the department.

The level of the application was due to the significant damage caused to the County Hall.

A spokesman for the department said: "The cost of the remediation works at the County Hall is estimated at €10m.

"An insurance claim will be submitted for this amount. Cork County Council estimate that the insurance cover in place will recoup 80% to 85% of this cost. It is proposed to provide €1.5m towards the estimated irrecoverable costs."

Limerick County Council also had a substantial part of its application turned down having received €180,300 from an initial request for €1.4m.

"What is it, 10%? The most likely reason that we didn't get the money is that we just didn't count. At the end of the day, local authorities just don't have the money," said Limerick Fine Gael Cllr Patrick O'Donovan.

"This year because there was such a huge cry for help, they made this funding available. But after the media attention died down and things got back to normal we were forgotten about.

"The biggest problem that I have with this is that the damage that was caused in 2008 is not being factored in."

Responding to the deficit between applications and grants, a department spokesman said: "In some cases the local authorities had applied for funding for items which were outside the scope of this particular scheme, for example road and bridge reconstruction works which are capital items and would be funded from other sources."