Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Comhghairdeachas leis an Aire Stáit nua. Guím gach rath air ina ról nua. I welcome the short amount of time I have to speak on this. It goes without saying that I fully appreciate the work of all the workers on the ground. I will use my time to highlight what has been brought to my attention. I have a file here with a range of human experiences. There are 13,000 households still without power as I stand here today. Quite a lot of those are in Galway county and some in the city. I have a letter here that was sent to the Taoiseach and all the TDs in Galway. I am not going to read it out but it is from a doctor in which she sets out in seven paragraphs under the headings communication, health, electricity, water, business, community hubs and the Government's role. I could not put it any better and I do not think any Minister could put it better. I advise everyone to read that. It contains practical suggestions and absolute dismay at there being no proactive work on the issues.

As a human being and as a mother, I cannot identify with a Government that allows somebody who relies on a hoist and electricity to get into a bed and they cannot. They had nobody to call. That is exactly what happened in one case. I will come off the anecdotes because, although the storm was unprecedented, the Government had plenty of warning of what we needed to do. We have a climate advisory council, which quite helpfully does a report every year. There are seven key recommendations and there are key observations. I did not hear any Minister or the Taoiseach discuss the lack of action on those key recommendations and observations in every area.

Separately, there is a subcommittee that Professor Peter Thorne sits on. He dismisses the excuse that this was an unprecedented moment because, in a reasonable, worst-case scenario, this should have been anticipated. He goes on to give examples of how that should have been done.

I was at a presentation on infrastructure and the lack of it in Galway city last week. Top of the list were flood defences, the cost of which has gone from an estimate of €9 million to €15 million and rising. It is top of the list but no further development is possible without doing this.

The storm might have been unprecedented but we also failed to act on previous storms. During 2023 alone, we had 11 named storms.

The trend in 2024 was the same. The ferocity of this storm was worse but we knew about it in advance. We need to take action to make our infrastructure resilient, and we have utterly failed.

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