Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There have been question marks as to how prepared we were for a storm that we realised was coming. What we do into the future is about ensuring we have not only a plan but the capacity built into the system to deal with these sorts of circumstances, of which we will see more. Has there been a review by the NECG as to how the storm was dealt with and what we can do as regards ensuring we deal with these better into the future? Others have talked about the energy grid, water and communications. My constituency did not get the worst but many people there were out of action as regards communications and energy for long periods. We have huge issues with water infrastructure, and while water charges will not be the means by which these will be dealt with, we need to make sure we put the correct resources in to ensure that we have something that is properly robust. We need to look at the likes of CFRAM, natural flood barriers and all those other necessary technologies that can improve situations. We also need to look at our schemes. The humanitarian assistance scheme needs to be looked at as do schemes to pay farmers or whatever, because we will have more of these instances of extreme weather into the future.

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