Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I dtosach, is mian liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil le gach duine a thug cabhair do na pobail timpeall na tíre. In that context, I acknowledge and thank everybody associated with the emergency services, including the ESB, the telecoms operators and all the volunteers who helped during what was a totally unprecedented event.

With regard to communications, the estimated effect of the storm on the national telecoms user base was the largest ever recorded in history. As of 10 o'clock on Tuesday, 0.79% of fixed service users are without services, which is down from a peak of 10% on 25 January. Of mobile service users, 2% are experiencing some level of degradation of service, down from a peak of almost 35%, or 2 million users, on 24 January. In response to the storm, we are inviting the main telecom CEOs to a meeting as soon as possible to discuss the learnings from the storm and how to improve the resilience of their telephone networks. We will also meet the telecom regulator, ComReg, to gain its insights on how the storm emergency was managed and how the network can be made more resilient into the future. All the operators are being asked to contribute commitments and actions to the State's sectoral adaptation plan for communications, which will build further resilience across all of our networks. The plan will be drafted by the summer and finalised by the autumn. I will be pleased to come to the House at any stage on that.

Work is well under way to introduce legislation to regulate minimum standards for resilience risk and incident management of entities decided within the physical space under the supervision of the national competent authorities, NCAs. The EU networks and information systems directive, NIS2, is planned to be enacted this year. The EU critical entities resilience directive was introduced last year. Repair and restoration work has returned normal services to most customers. Several fixed service operators have also returned to normal service operation levels. However, I am conscious of the fact that is not the case for everybody. Many areas in the north and north-west of the country continue to be affected by outages, which have been caused by the extensive damage to infrastructure in rural areas, predominantly due to forestry.

Restoration of full services has been hampered by the complexity of the repairs required to restore damaged infrastructure. Telecoms operators continue to engage with ComReg and report outages across their networks. They have mobilised all available resources towards further restoration of services. I can say to the House that no resources are being withheld from this. Full restoration may take more time in the areas most damaged. While the restoration of electrical power remains an issue at present, when power is restored, repairs to overhead copper lines and fibre en masse has to then begin. There are limitations to the speed at which operators can repair, such as resources, including the number of trained personnel and parts required; impaired access due to the effects of the storm, for instance, fallen trees and fallen power lines; assurance of safe access for repair personnel; trafficability of land in wintertime due to the heavy rain, particularly repair of base stations; and overhead copper and fibre where routed over land. The restoration of electrical power has also impacted on mechanical repairs.

At its peak, more than 60,000 National Broadband Ireland customers were without service. Some 49,000 have now been restored. The top six counties continuing to be impacted account for approximately 65% of the remaining customers without service. These are Galway, Roscommon, Cavan, Longford, Monaghan and Mayo. NBI customers experiencing outages can report these to their service providers. Areas throughout the country that remain most affected are, by operator, Three in counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon; Eir in counties Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan and Westmeath; Eir's fixed service in counties Galway, Offaly, Mayo, Roscommon and Louth; and Vodafone in all of the north-west region. Virgin has indicated a return to business as usual.

I will turn to my other brief with regard to sports facilities. The damage to sporting facilities throughout the country, including the Connacht GAA Air Dome, is a massive blow to sporting organisations and local communities. However, I will put on the record of the House the importance of the sports capital scheme that was used for many communities across the country in terms of resilience. Without the sports amenities we have throughout the country, we would not have been able to have a lot of the local hubs. I also note that for sporting facilities that are damaged, commercial insurance is the first port of call in the restoration of such facilities back to sporting use. Adequate insurance for facilities is a condition of sports capital funding granted by our Department under either of its funding schemes, which are the sports facilities fund and the large scale infrastructure fund.

During previous extreme weather emergencies such as Storm Babet in the autumn of 2023, the Government introduced an emergency relief scheme for community, voluntary and sporting bodies, administered by the Red Cross. Whether such a model is followed this time will be a matter for discussion and will be decided by the Government as a whole. I have asked Sport Ireland to engage with all of the local sports partnerships in the worst-affected counties to collate any additional information on the damage that has been caused which may or may not be within the scope of insurance companies and report to my Department as soon as possible. When this is done I intend to bring a report back to Government on the scale and the financial ask from the Department's sports capital funding envelope and to make sure, if possible, that these costs can be met.

Again, I thank all of those workers, particularly those in the communications sector, who have worked so hard to restore service to so many people across the country.

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