Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time, four and three and a half minutes. I really enjoy listening to members of the Government throwing their hands up in the air and saying "God, if only someone had done something". Indeed, there are more lessons to be learned and we see more new pupils sitting opposite us. Let us hope lessons are learned. They certainly have not been up until now. The leaders in the Government may listen to what their own backbenchers have been saying, although previous experience would not give me much hope of that.

I want to pay tribute to the men and women who have been on the front line of dealing with the aftermath of Storm Éowyn; namely, the council workers, the emergency services, the ESB, Uisce Éireann workers and healthcare workers delivering care in absolutely appalling circumstances.

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A special word of thanks goes to those volunteers who manned and womanned the community hubs and to those who opened their hotels, bed and breakfasts, coffee shops and other businesses to help their neighbours in need.

My mentor and very good friend Patricia King used to talk about the threshold of decency. It is the job of a functioning society and, in particular, the Department of Social Protection to be that safety net. This is now the question the Government needs to ask itself to allow it to evaluate its response. When the chips were down and people sought help, did they get help or did they get a list of excuses and a comprehensive explanation of why they had to wait? For most of the hundreds of thousands of people impacted, the immediate issue has been resolved. For thousands, however, the nightmare continues. This is in the here and now. In truth, though, the reverberations of this will be felt, particularly in the west of Ireland, for years to come. When members of the Opposition, such as TDs like my colleague Deputy Claire Kerrane, make practical suggestions, these should be acted on. We saw the Department of Education provide support for generators for schools but nobody thought of crèches. Please, make that make sense. Parents cannot go to work. They are having to use up their annual leave. I have spoken to parents whose annual leave is now going to be depleted. That is it now until Christmas for them because they have used their leave to care for their kids. This is because nobody had the foresight to think that kids in schools would need generators but so would kids in crèches. Why not? Please, please do make this make sense. Likewise, when supports are structured in a way that means they must be claimed back rather than paid upfront, what does this say to people who do not have the money upfront?

I was very struck by the words of a young woman who lives in Athenry. Emma is a student, a journalist, a campaigner and a wheelchair user. She told me she never felt so forgotten in her life. The power outage meant she could not charge her powered wheelchair. Emma explained that the powered chair is comfortable and safe for her because it gives her body the support she needs. Without it, she is in constant discomfort. Added to this is the additional pain caused to her poor bones by the cold. This means she had to leave her family home to go to relatives, where there might not be as much accessibility as she has at home. She could not go to college. Her whole life depends on her being able to access power. As I said, there is a threshold of decency, a minimum standard that it is the duty of the State to uphold. I do not think this happened in Emma's case. I do not think the threshold of decency was upheld. Emma's power came back yesterday, thankfully, but the feeling of being forgotten will stay with her for a very long time. Emma says she does not believe enough was done for vulnerable people to prepare for this storm and its impact. The minimum threshold of decency should be upheld. When the Government falls below this threshold, it should rightly accept responsibility, apologise to those it let down and show us with its actions that it has learned. It is not surprising that none of this has happened but it is, nonetheless, shameful.

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