Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I hear his concerns with regard to farming and small businesses in particular.

With regard to the humanitarian assistance scheme, to date, the community welfare service of the Department of Social Protection has issued more than 5,000 stage 1 payments, totalling almost €1 million, to people who at the time their application was approved did not have any power or water supply following Storm Éowyn. The community welfare service continues to be available to citizens who are experiencing extreme hardship as a consequence and it continues to work closely with local service directors in local authorities and with other organisations. Community welfare officers continue to be on the ground to support people. They are visiting people and supporting them through it.

My Department of Rural and Community Development has also provided a strong pipeline of investment in community infrastructure through schemes such as LEADER, CLÁR and the community centre investment fund. This investment was crucial and played an important part in having a network of emergency response hubs available for all communities. We already have a comprehensive range of capital investment schemes in place. Local authorities and communities can utilise these funding schemes to ensure continued investment that will enhance the resilience of rural communities. Included in this, I have asked my officials to examine the provision of local generators in communities across the country that can be used in circumstances like those of the past two weeks. As I said previously, the programme for Government commits to developing an extreme weather event assistance scheme and work on the development of this new scheme will commence as a matter of priority through the relevant senior officials group.

The estimated effect of Storm Éowyn on telecoms networks was the largest in ComReg's recorded history. A significant number of outages experienced on the telecoms networks were due to the lack of power to fixed and mobile infrastructure. While many key sites had battery back-up to maintain service, once battery capacity was exhausted, some network areas experienced severe outages. The deployment of generators meant that connectivity was maintained at core sites across the country. At peak, more than 281,000 fixed broadband customers were completely without services. Also at peak, more than 2 million, or 35%, of mobile customers experienced a degradation of service.

ComReg has monitored the situation and liaised with operators throughout Storm Éowyn and the repair operation and is receiving regular reports on the restoration of services. I have asked, along with the Minister, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan, to meet the CEOs of all the communication companies next week to discuss their response. We will ensure that connectivity is restored. I have also asked the Chief Information Officer of the State to provide me with an update on the issues around the TETRA system and how that went down during the storm.

The office of emergency planning has established a critical infrastructure committee to oversee the EU critical infrastructure resilience directive. The office has engaged with regulators and established national competent authorities to reinforce compliance with these new regulations across the public sector, with an emphasis on integrated forward planning. This includes working with ESB Networks and Uisce Éireann to improve infrastructure resilience. This involves regular reviews and updates on those resilience measures and, in particular, aligning preventative measures and resilience measures across key sectors.

The oversight and regulatory bodies are working with organisations to address the shortcomings that have been exposed over the last two weeks and to ensure continued compliance with various directives. The support for this work will strengthened.

It also has to be recognised that the challenges of the scale and severity of Storm Éowyn were unprecedented. We had sustained hurricane force winds right across the western seaboard. This led to a major impact on many communities. The initial focus of the Government was on safety and the protection of life and critical infrastructure. The focus for the last number of weeks has been firmly on the restoration of power and services, providing assistance to those most impacted and the vulnerable, and getting back to normal operations. Now that this phase is beginning to pass, we will look to the future and a future response that is more resilient to the kind of precedent that has been set by Storm Éowyn. In that context, it has to be noted that the response was timely. Given the circumstances, every effort was made to protect life and minimise disruption. However, that is not to say that lessons do not need to be learned. They will be learned and I look forward to working with Members from across the House in doing so. The humanitarian assistance scheme is still open and I am available to engage with Deputies on it.

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