Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and it is plain to see that he has done a lot of work already. There is one thing I have noticed over the years. We have a lot of various Departments, and everyone is busy, but no-one seems to spend time talking to one another. I saw this happening when we had flooding on the Shannon many years ago - about 12 years ago. The local authorities were blaming one another, the ESB was blaming the OPW and the OPW was blaming Waterways Ireland, but we got them all working together. Now, years later, although flooding happens, it is being managed to a certain extent. That is because of co-operation. On this occasion we need co-operation.

I have a letter here that was sent to me by a lady who is a single parent with a son for whom she is a carer. She is living in a house beside a wood in rural Leitrim. She has a history of outages because the trees in the wood are falling down. On 21 January, there was an outage for two hours. On 22 February, there was an outage for 5.5 hours. On 1 March, there was an outage for 12 hours. On 8 April, there was an outage for 2.5 hours. On 15 April, there was an outage for 4.5 hours. On 21 April, there was an outage for two hours. On 19 August, there was an outage for two hours. On 19 September, there was an outage for four hours. She has now been without electricity for two weeks. How can anybody live in rural Ireland if they want to work from home or care for a child with a certain diagnosis? How can people live with these outages?

I know the Minister of State will work hard. We need to step up to the plate because by God, we were caught napping on this occasion. It was a severe storm, but we could have done better. The argument we hear is that if the damage was done nearer Dublin, the full resources of the State would have been set aside. We took our eyes off the ball, perhaps because there is a new Government and the people in the Department did not fully get it. The people of Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Donegal, Mayo and Galway are equally important as the people in Dublin. On this occasion, we did not step up to the plate fully enough.

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