Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this opportunity to contribute. I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward the motion in its Private Members' time because it allows me a little more time today than I had last week to go back on some of the topics. This is very important. The motion and, indeed, the amendment, in part, are good in that we have acknowledged all the good work on the ground. That has been set out clearly and this is very important. I also acknowledge the latest update we have as of today after 5 p.m, which was that ESB Networks said all the power will be back by tonight. That will be particularly welcome, if the company succeeds in doing that mar tagaim ó chathair na Gaillimhe agus bhí an chathair agus an chontae sin thíos ó thaobh na stoirme seo. Bhí sé buailte go dona. Bhí daoine gan cumhacht go dtí inniu agus seo an tríú seachtain tar éis na stoirme. In ainneoin na hoibrithe agus an méid oibre atá déanta ag na heagraíochtaí ar an talamh, tá sé soiléir domsa nach raibh plean ar bith i gceist i ndáiríre. Tá súil agam go mbeidh ciall ceannaithe againn anois as an méid atá foghlamtha againn an uair seo.

I have no interest in criticising people and we have set out how much work has been done on the ground. It is clear, however, that this Government and previous Governments have not learned from the fact that we have declared a climate emergency, a biodiversity emergency and that we have also had a pandemic we were ill-prepared for with our infrastructure on every level. What I would like to see arising out of this situation, therefore, is that we will learn. I briefly quoted from Annual Review 2024: Preparing for Ireland’s Changing Climate from the Climate Change Advisory Council last week. I will refer to it again because it is extremely important. This report makes observations, very helpfully identifies the gaps and makes recommendations. Following on from my colleague, Deputy Healy, one of the recommendations that jumps out is the inadequate resourcing of local authorities. I could mention many more. It is set out here in black and white for us and it has been set out every year. While this storm was unprecedented, we knew well that storms were going to come and get worse. As I understand it, there were 11 named storms alone in 2023. It was the warmest year on record, followed by 2024. We either make our words mean something in declaring a climate emergency or we might as well give up. This report, among many others, very helpfully points out as well the cost of not doing something. We are now looking at the cost of this. I have headlines here from the city council in Galway and €15 million is being spoken of to address some of the damage done. The city was badly affected but the county was much worse. That is a very conservative estimate and I understand that the council has also written to the Minister in this regard. We now have a local authority struggling full time in respect not having enough funding. That is the case with the city and the county councils. They regularly tell us that. Only two weeks ago, they told us they are the worst funded local authorities in the country. Now, they are struggling after the stomr and appealing to the Government.

On top of that, we have all the confusion that exists about the schemes. Like with Covid, the Government has done great work in helping, but there is total confusion as to who will benefit from that under the humanitarian assistance scheme or whether businesses will and so on. I read out some of the seven headings that a local doctor kindly put together to highlight what should have been done, the fact it was not done and that it should be done in the future. It is building on the resilience of communities themselves to be able to withstand a storm like this and even worse in the future. If we learned that, I would be happy. My experience in here and of other institutions, though, is that they do not learn. They have to be forced and forced and reactive and reactive. This report is telling us that we have to stop that and be proactive because not alone will the costs of dealing with the damage be extraordinary but also, more importantly, the costs of not dealing with it will be as well. Research has been done between the Climate Change Advisory Council and the ESRI into the economic costs of not dealing with climate change, in addition to the funding local authorities, being one of the gaps existing. They also highlighted the need for an urgent national coastal strategy. There is not a sign of it. A scoping exercise was undertaken but no national coastal strategy has been rolled out in respect of erosion and the sea level rising.

Another thing that has come up for me today, which is significant, in the area of wind energy and renewables is the plan to build extraordinarily high muilte gaoithe off the coast of Carna. The plan is to put more than 30 windmills seven times higher than the Eiffel Tower - and I stand to be corrected on that - has gone before An Bord Pleanála. No hard copy is available for the local people to examine. I say this as someone committed to renewable energy. We want people in the community to come on abroad with these endeavours and then we have such a big scheme as this going to An Bord Pleanála with no hard copy. I mention this in particular because I have a letter here about an existing wind turbine project that has been there for more than 20 years. During the storm, the wind turbine was knocked to the ground. The photos are quite dramatic. The nearest house was 300 m away, while the road was only 10 m away. This wind turbine project has been up and running for more than 20 years. These concerned residents have written to the Health and Safety Authority and anyone else they can to draw attention to the fact that there is no clarity at all concerning how long a wind turbine lasts, its life cycle, its recycling, the dangers involved and who monitors it. The other project I refer to is off the coast of Carna. To say it is off the coast is misleading because it is very near to the coast and the highest winds during this storm of 184 km/h were recorded there. The figures are all set out. In using this time that Sinn Féin has provided, my hope is that we would keep the pressure on to get proactive plans in place in relation to making our communities resilient and have a plan that puts the vulnerable first. There was absolutely no indication of that. We have a communications system that is not fit for purpose where people could not even make emergency phone calls. We heard that from everybody, from the GPs on the ground to the ordinary people who could not have dialysis.

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