Mr. Coilín O'Reilly:

I will, of course. It is important to understand the structure that operated. There was a humanitarian subgroup of the national emergency co-ordination group that met daily and every local authority had a local co-ordination group that I met daily. I was the link between the humanitarian subgroup and the national group, and I met every local authority daily after that. Among those groups was the HSE, the local disabled persons groups, local community networks, CDPs, An Post, ESB, that is, everybody who was active in the local community. Anybody who was vulnerable at that time was either identified through An Garda Síochána’s vulnerable persons list, or those of the ESB or Uisce Éireann. All together, those lists were used and in some cases members of the Civil Defence went out to check on people.

I note the Senator’s point with regard to people with wheelchairs and things like that. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to provide power on an individual basis. In some cases the HSE did, and sent in specialist care dependent on the care needs of the person. That was assessed on a case-by-case basis by the HSE. On a local basis the co-ordination group would have been the key point of contact because that is where it is best solved.