Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have to agree with Deputy O'Reilly. I do not know how many times we have come in here and heard about learnings and that lessons will be learned. We all accept this storm was what we now say was a "once in a lifetime" event, although they seem to be happening a hell of a lot more frequently than they did previously. I think we can accept we will be dealing with more situations and circumstances like this in future. It is not like we were unaware we were going to have this circumstance. There are things that could have been put in place previously and preparations that could have been made.

A new term we have decided we are going to talk about is "resilience building" and that we are going to check in relation to our capacity, but we must actually do this. I commend the huge amount of work done by people in Uisce Éireann, the local authorities, the ESB and the foreign teams that have come in to help to restore electricity. A huge body of work has been done. Anybody who has witnessed any of it or seen people literally going in for some food and then back out at ridiculous times of the night, and all the rest of it, will realise they are actually doing everything. The fact is that we are dealing with some of the capacity issues we have all known about for a long time. I also add that all our feelings are with the family of Kacper Dudek. This reminds me of the case of Fintan Goss, who tragically lost his life in 2017 during Storm Ophelia. We all know the dangers these circumstances cause. We have all been contacted by families that have been in dreadful sets of circumstances. Even though a large part of my county did not suffer the same as some neighbouring counties and, obviously, parts of the west, there are still people who do not have electricity or water now. We know people are very reliant on electricity these days. Many have electricity-fed water systems. This creates its own difficulties.

We all know that, as per normal, the community voluntary sector groups, including the GAA and others, all stepped up to the mark. This must be welcomed. We have all welcomed the humanitarian assistance scheme, but we have had major issues in respect of the flexibilities that need to be put into the scheme and the fact that there has been a lack of clarity. I agree with many of my colleagues that we could have been here at an earlier stage when we could have brought up these issues and brought this to a conclusion. I raise a specific issue in my constituency concerning a water system in Hackballscross. It is a pump system that has always had difficulties. It is the end of the line. Not only were the monitoring system and pumping station knocked out, but even when water was resupplied and the power came back to a degree there were issues with airlocking and whatever. This is an issue that has been ongoing for a long time and it needs to be addressed. Like many other issues, whether we are talking about forestry, the resilience of the grid or that we have not anywhere next to near what is needed in relation to renewables or any of this, we have an opportunity now to take a look at where we have failed and to see where we can do better. This must be done.

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