The Kileenmór region just outside Sallins was flooded again last weekend for the third time in three months. There are maybe twenty houses along this road and they have been hit each time it rains with water on the road, in the gardens and in some of the houses. The water is coming from the Morell stream which flows nearby and joins the Painestown river shortly afterwards. There are many possible routings for this water and some of these form a relief valve however the overspill goes across a field, through a set of culverts under the railway line and right onto this road and all its occupant houses.
I have been down at the location a few times recently when this has happened and I brought Michael Fitzpatrick TD with me on Saturday morning. We drove around courtesy of a resident in a 4×4 as no normal car could get through the feet of water across the road. I know Councillor Liam Doyle also visited later that day. Anecodotal evidence suggests the situation has worsened since the motorway upgrade as surplus surface water increasingly swells the streams.
There is a small aqueduct by the 14th lock where the Morell goes under the canal and it is just downstream of this that the problem occurs. At the aqueduct there is a sluice gate beside Kileen golf club which appears to be perennially closed. Whilst this does not cause the problem it doesn’t help matters either. 
I feel a comprehensive drainage report needs to be compiled for the whole region from Ardclough down to Johnstown. Whilst this straddles at least two electoral areas (Clane and Naas) it needs to be considered in tandem. We have been in touch with both areas about this and I hope to arrange a meeting onsite shortly. Will post here with updates.
I know this is not relevant to the main subject matter but…
At first glance, Kileenmór seems something of an oxymoron. Cillín mór?
Maybe the placename derives from elsewhere? Perhaps a local hermit or saint whose name resembles ‘more’, and may be incorporated into the name of this problematic ‘Morell stream’? Do you have local knowledge? Just curious.
Hi David. Welcome back to the blog. Good to see you back in action! I am not sure about the placename. I did notice a Killeen beag further up the river bed on the map. Which suggests it is the prefix rather than the suffix that drives the name. Maybe our resident local cartographical expert can advise (Conchubár?)
James
@ David W and James
A few things further on this particular discussion:
1. Kileenmór makes no sense. The English language word for the townland is Killeenmore. The Irish language name would be Cillín Mór, unless our English forefathers made a complete dogs dinner of the anglicisation.
2. Cillín Mór is a bit of an oxymoron. It translates directly as big small church. But, maybe cillín was a particular architectural design of church, so you had big ones and little ones.
The OSI map viewer is down, so can’t comment whether a church actually existed in the area or not.
Anyhow, any update on the flooding down there?
Having examined the 1830s OS map of the two townlands, Killeenmore and Killeenbeg, there doesn’t appear to be any sign of a church in these areas. There are some lockkeepers houses and a farm, but no church or ruins or anything similar.
I did some further research on place names and sometimes Killeen (or variant spellings of it) can mean “little wood” i.e. coill beag or coillín. Therefore, Killeen might mean little wood. Although, there were no extant woods in the townlands at 1830.
Furthermore, the endings relate to the sizes of the townlands. Killeenmore having an area of 363 acres is indeed much bigger than Killeenbeg which only covers an area of 82 acres. So the “more” and “beg” relate to the land parcels on which they are named (simialr to say O’Connell Street Upper and O’Connell Street Lower).
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