Edward Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, I pay tribute to the people of County Wicklow who elected me here. I thank them for placing their trust in me. Second, I would like to say that I want to work with the other three Wicklow TDs - Deputy Whitmore has just stepped out of the Chamber - for the betterment of County Wicklow. Third, and probably more importantly, I want to work with every Deputy in this House for the betterment of this country. I am happy to work with everyone to improve the quality of life for the citizens of this country.

I will be brief in my contribution on the power outages because I do not want to repeat what has been said already. I will say a couple of things, however, the first of which is on the whole area of tree maintenance. I actually met with senior ESB people across the road in Buswells Hotel in October when they made a presentation to Deputies from County Wicklow because there had been a considerable number of outages last summer all over the county. I learned from this that the main issue was that there was a serious issue with poor tree maintenance. That was the main cause of many of the problems. It is easy to be wise after the event, but this storm was much worse because tree maintenance was not at the standard it should have been.

That is a lesson that has to be learned. I am sure the ESB knows it a lot better than I do, but it needs to be put out there. The second point is around communication. Obviously, phones, TVs and so on do not work during the power outages, but there are other methods of communication. A lot of people pull down the radios, get batteries and get them working. The information on the radio from the ESB could have been better. All the ESB communication mechanisms need to be improved. The other area that can make for good communication is local and national newspapers that come out on a daily basis. The ESB did fantastic work with great people who worked overtime. I know that myself, I saw it all over the place. They just need to communicate their message better to the public.

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