Mr. Seán Hogan:

I will try to clarify and explain my view on this matter for the Chairman and Deputy Barry. The existing legislation with regard to people at work is not entirely as clear as it may seem. Emergency services are governed by health and safety legislation and have to make judgments. By and large, unless there is life at risk emergency services will not respond to significant numbers of incidents. No employer is going to put his or her employees at risk unless there is a reasonable possibility of saving life. That is something that cascades right across. I might draw out of the experience. One of the lessons we took from Storm Ophelia and Storm Emma is that conditions can vary across the country. I meet people who tell me we were very worked up about something in Dublin even though it had no impact at all on them in Mayo or Donegal. It was an ordinary day for them. That is one of the difficulties with using a legislative approach. One of the learning points we have taken out of our experiences with Storm Ophelia and Storm Emma as red-level events is the need to mirror what we do at national level in our 30 local co-ordination centres around the country. We would like to move to a point at which the group that meets in Castlebar has access to the best information in Mayo, assesses the weather and issues the definitive local advice, just as we issue the definitive national advice. There were significant variations across the country in the two instances we are discussing. In the case of Storm Emma, southern counties like Wexford, Wicklow, Carlow and Kildare and places as far north as south Meath were significantly affected by snowdrifts, whereas counties like Donegal on the west coast were not affected at all even though they were covered by the red-level alert. It can be a bit of a blunt instrument. That is part of the difficulty we would face if a legislative approach were taken. At the moment, all employers are required by health and safety legislation to consider the conditions and whatever. Many of them have developed their arrangements since the experiences of Storm Ophelia and Storm Emma. I am not sure that legislating to insist on closures would necessarily be of benefit from the perspective of public safety, which is the area to which we are giving the most consideration. Along with the Department of jobs, we are pushing the possibility of additional guidance for employers where that is a possibility. The Department has certainly done that. A consensus on whether people consider that to be appropriate, relevant or effective will emerge in due course.