Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

The response of this Government to the storm is absolutely shocking. It took a full 12 days for this Dáil to meet after the storm. That shows how far removed the Government is from the needs of the people. The fact that not even a senior Minister has turned up for this debate is also shocking. In a parliamentary question I submitted to the Minister for energy a couple of days ago, I asked how many staff at the ESB are employed to reconnect homes, in response to which he stated he has no responsibility for that question. That is incredible. The Minister for energy has no responsibility for the reconnection of family homes to the energy system.

Today marks two weeks since Storm Éowyn and 13,000 homes are still without electricity. If we look at a map of where those homes are, we will see they are in the west and the midlands, areas that have been forgotten by this country. Sixty per cent of the Ministers of this Government are based in the greater Dublin area. There is one Minister from throughout Connacht and Ulster. There is a direct correlation between this Government's focus, in terms of ministerial power, and the lack of actual power in people's homes.

The Government is going to go ahead and build the North-South interconnector, which will put 90 m-high pylons across high land in the midlands. The Government is spending hundreds of millions of euro on a project that will be blown down in future. I ask it to refrain from that project.

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