Residents in Laxey took the opportunity to put pressure on MHKs to repair the damage to their village.

The meeting, chaired by Captain of the Parish Stephen Carter, saw over 175 residents vent their anger and despair at the lack of action taken before last week’s flood.

Criticism ranged from the lack of action in previous years despite a succession of reports highlighting flood risk in the village to work carried out in the river in the days leading up to the flood.

Glen Road resident Richard Kneen told the meeting that he ’can’t believe the lack of inaction for many years’ and that ’after seeing the devastation on people’ he felt he had to ’do something’.

For Mr Kneen this has included walking the banks of the river to record the amount of debris and conducting research into salmon migration which led to him saying that the work being done in the river to aid the migration of fish was ’unnecessary’.

He added that ’this is not only Laxey river, it’s all over the island’ and that government ’needs to listen to people who live by the rivers’.

Mr Kneen also called for ’more boots on the ground and less people in offices pushing paper’ to resolve the issue of the island’s rivers and in particular Laxey.

Another resident asked Manx Utilities chairman Dr Alex Allinson to confirm it was MU which authorised the work, he confirmed it was.

The man said that the decision to block the hole in the wall created to allow a digger into the river with ’some fencing’ given the weather warning was ’a bit stupid’.

Dr Allinson said that the government and the contractor had been caught out by the amount of rainfall that fell.

He said: ’We knew it was going to be bad, but no one predicted it would be that bad.’

Other residents raised issues surrounding their insurance companies saying they would not be protecting their homes against flood damage in the future.

Dr Allinson said that the government is planning to hold meetings with local insurance companies to see what can be done to ensure residents can afford to insure their homes against flood damage.

Another resident told the ministers gathered, Ray Harmer, Geoffrey Boot and their department’s chief executives that they had ’failed’ the village by not acting sooner.

There will be more updates about the meeting both online and in Tuesday’s Examiner.