Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be sharing time with Deputy Catherine Connolly. I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and wish him well in his ministerial role. I am sure his dad with whom I served in this House for nearly 16 years is absolutely delighted to see his son elevated to ministerial ranks. As I say, I wish him well.

As everybody has done, we need to acknowledge and thank all those who were involved in dealing with the aftermath of this horrific storm. I mention county council staff, ESB staff, Civil Defence, Irish Water staff, fire brigade and ambulance services, mountain rescue teams, various committees including local committees, community organisations and centres, sport centres, GAA clubs, local shops and a whole host of individuals who helped out and showed real community spirit in the aftermath of what was a devastating storm. In south Tipperary, while we were obviously affected by the storm with a lot of trees down, electricity outages and road closures, we certainly we were not affected as badly as our colleagues in the west and the north west. However, we have a lot of experience of events like this. Coming as I do from the town of Clonmel, we are well aware of them. Every five years we had massive floods in the town where businesses and families in the Old Bridge and the quay areas of the town, in particular, were flooded for days on end and affected on an ongoing basis over the years. Thankfully, the new flood relief scheme has solved that problem but we are well aware how families, individuals, businesses and communities are affected by these type of events.

It has been said on numerous occasions that this was an unprecedented event, which of course it was, but that should not take from the fact that we should be in a position to react to and be prepared for these events and have a plan in place for dealing with their aftermath. Dr. Catherine Sweeney who is a GP in the west put it well when she said that if people have no water, no electricity or no communications and limited access to medical care, it is essentially a humanitarian crisis. That is what we were dealing with. Of course, from a medical point of view, that also meant that ill people, particularly elderly, frail and infirm people were in need of admission to hospital. Similarly, people who were in hospital and ready to come home were not in a position to be discharged because they could not be discharged home to a situation where they had no electricity, water, services or communications.

The State was clearly unprepared for the storm and its aftermath. It is totally unacceptable even today that there are still families and businesses without power so long after the storm. Certainly, we have to be in a position in future to ensure there is a quick and an effective response. A task force including all stakeholders must be set up and it must respond and report urgently. We need a statutory authority at national level to deal with the preparation for and the aftermath of events like Storm Éowyn. At local level, local authorities must play a central role in responding to these events. Local authorities know the local area, the local networks and the local individuals. They have a very good track record in consultation with communities and of dealing with families, individuals and locally elected representatives. They must have a key role in responding but to do that they need to be funded. They need to have additional specific, ring-fenced and multi-annual funding to deal with a situation like this.

We cannot have a situation where local authorities would be responsible for dealing with situations like this and looking over their shoulders regarding where the funding is going to come from to fund the clean-up. Local authorities must have a key role but they must be funded properly to do it. ESB staff, in particular, did Trojan work, but the electricity infrastructure is deficient and needs to be upgraded urgently. It has been said that the infrastructure cannot be undergrounded but there are areas where this could be done at a reasonable cost. That should be done. Certainly, into the future, it should be examined to see where cabling and infrastructure can be put underground. Many other areas obviously need to be dealt with. There is the whole question of trees, the waiver of felling licences, etc., but I will leave my contribution there.

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