Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputies have asked a lot of questions. I welcome them all. To reply to Deputy Dolan on the review and the response, there will be a review. At the most recent meeting of the Government task force on emergency planning on 11 March, it was agreed that a review of the response to Storm Éowyn would be submitted to Government by the summer. That will be led by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and will identify recommendations regarding the response at the national and local levels, reducing severe weather impacts on critical infrastructure and essential services, assisting communities and individuals severely affected by emergencies, key policy issues and cross-cutting responsibilities.

I will make a point in terms of the role of NECG in particular. Storm Éowyn was named by the UK Met Office on Tuesday, 21 January. It was the fifth named storm of the 2024-25 windstorm season. It was set to track to the north west of Ireland, producing strong south-easterly winds that would then veer west to south-westerly and intensify through the morning of Friday, 24 January. NECG met well in advance of the storm.

I will make one overall point to everybody: do not underestimate the importance of the warning. That red warning saved a lot of lives. Of that, there is no doubt. Unfortunately, one person lost his life. This has been examined. I had meetings with everybody after the storm. There is an issue with transitioning too quickly from a red to an orange warning. An orange warning enables people to move about the place but the damage during the red period can impact or manifest itself during the orange period. People may be returning to work when a tree comes down, for example. We have to examine that again. We also have to re-examine warnings and directions to schools. I have ordered a full and comprehensive review of all of this.

Deputies Scanlon and Martin Daly and others talked about communications networks. There is an onus on the companies to do better in that regard.

Deputy Brendan Smith spoke about the need for tree corridors. That has been the most frustrating discussion I have had so far. The Minister for agriculture and I met the Department of agriculture and others. We need to improve the resilience of the grid. That means proper tree corridors. We need to engage with Coillte, private farm owners, private forestry owners, the ESB and EirGrid. Once and for all, we need a comprehensive programme to protect the grid from falling trees. It seems elementary. The issue is the lack of a single focus. Different people all say it is somebody else's problem. I am keeping a focus on this. I want to make sure that progress is made before the next winter with regard to the necessity for tree corridors.

One interesting positive outcome of the storm, if one can even say that, is the degree to which communities rallied. There is very strong community resilience in Ireland. We now need to institutionalise that a bit more. By that, I mean that we need to resource communities. Deputy Martin Daly referenced my visit to Ballaghaderreen. There was a tremendous community focal point there. There was tremendous co-ordination and all of the various schemes were used, from the rural social scheme to the solidarity grant payment scheme. The rural social scheme was used to purchase vans to get food to people living in remote areas. GAA clubs, soccer clubs, rugby clubs and so on need to be provided with generators. This needs to be done by way of a programme, as they cannot be provided to everybody but they can be provided where there are identifiable focal points in a given community. Some did not have generators. If, by the grace of God, such a focal point got power back quickly, it could then make the facility available to the public. We need to develop a support scheme, probably through the Department of Rural and Community Development, that enables us to strategically put in place essential provisions for communities, enabling there to be focal hubs to which people could come to shower, to charge phones, to contact people and so on. I am very keen to see that developed.

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The Defence Forces are brought in by the civil authority. They can only come in if they are asked by the local authorities. Local authorities lead on the ground. Under the national emergency plan and planning structure, every county has to have an emergency plan formulated and published. We tend to get different responses from different local authorities. We have to work to make that more uniform in the future.

The ambulance network is an ongoing issue and not just in the context of the storm. I will talk to the Minister for Health in that respect. I was at the recent launch of the helicopter emergency service in the south. Significant progress has been made. I am aware there are staffing issues but I hope negotiations can resolve that.

We have moved from a monocultural form of forestry.

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